Crystal Reports: Best Practices

Crystal Report Best Practices

As we know the WeSuite Contracts Editor is currently an RTF editor with RTF capabilities but crystal reports that interprets this does not do a good job.

Although the editor displays bells and whistles on the toolbar we would follow the following guidelines

1. Font type – not all can work (Calibri for sure cannot be used – gibberish when pdf'ed, we try to stay with Arial)
2. Font size: no problems
3. Font style (Italic / Bold)
4. Numbering - can be used
5. Bullets – not recommended as they look nice and round on editor canvas but on proposal they look like a head of a pin, so not really usable. Instead of bullets we recommend using the "-" dash. 
6. Images – not allowed and will not show on crystal outcome.
7. Tables – not allowed

If you need and must have then using the tab instead although not recommended as the interpretation might not be consistent and can result in frustration when trying to align the columns.

Usually when the user types his scope in Microsoft Word and wants to paste it over to the editor (a legitimate request) we do not recommend it since we are printing a very simple numb down version of RTF and some hidden characters within Microsoft Word might not be accepted resulting in cutoffs and unexplained behavior of the language layout.

If Microsoft Word is still the preferred editor to type the mass piece, the user would need to save it first in notepad, (by doing so we make sure to eliminate all Hidden unknown characters from the text) and only then pasting it onto the editor.

In general the editor would accept paragraphs that can be manipulated (width wise) using the anchors at the top ruler in the same method it can be used in Microsoft Word.