Publishing overview

Publishing is the process of adding objects such as Crystal reports to the Crystal Enterprise environment and making them available to authorized users. There are several types of objects that you can publish to Crystal Enterprise: reports (RPT and CAR files), programs, Microsoft Excel files, Microsoft Word files, Microsoft PowerPoint files, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, rich text format files, text files, and hyperlinks, as well as object packages, which consist of report and/or program objects.

When you publish an object to Crystal Enterprise, an entry is made in the Crystal Management Server (CMS) database. The Input File Repository Server stores the new object below the \Enterprise\FileStore\Input\data\ directory. When a user schedules an instance of any object, Crystal Enterprise queries the CMS for the location of the object file; the appropriate server component then retrieves and processes the object file from the Input File Repository. The processed instance is stored by the Output File Repository Server below the \Enterprise\FileStore\Output\data\ directory.

Note:    Only reports, programs, and object packages can be scheduled. Thus, only these three types of objects have instances.

You can publish objects to Crystal Enterprise in three ways:

• Use the Crystal Publishing Wizard when you:
  • Have access to the locally installed application.
  • Are adding multiple objects or an entire directory.

    For details, see Publishing with the Crystal Publishing Wizard.

• Use the Crystal Management Console (CMC) when you are:
  • Publishing a single object.
  • Taking care of other administrative tasks.
  • Performing tasks remotely.

    For details, see Publishing with the Crystal Management Console.

• Save directly to your Enterprise folders when you are:
  • Designing reports with Crystal Reports.
  • Using the Crystal Analysis Application Designer.
  • Creating other objects with Crystal Enterprise plug-in components.

    For details, see Saving objects directly to the CMS.

Note:    Crystal Enterprise supports reports created in versions 6 through 10 of Crystal Reports. Once published to Crystal Enterprise, reports are saved, processed, and displayed in version 10 format.

For information about your publishing options, see Publishing options.