I'm currently involved in an evaluation of Crystal Reports Server XI. If you purchase the Developer edition of Crystal Reports, it comes with a license for five named users (not concurrent users, although I'm sure it's that too, but registered users) to use the system. This saves several thousand dollars as compared to purchasing a full server product, and it will let various persons around the casino view reports without having crystal installed on their workstations.
This is all well enough, but the actual experience of getting CRXI server installed has been an absolute nightmare. I was originally assigned a sales rep, even though sales reps are only supposed to handle sales of larger products, like someone actually purchasing the server product. I am supposed to go through the general telesales department, but somehow this particular issue was not caught and I ended up dealing with an absolute bonehead who was telling me what to download when he in fact does not even know what software comes with what download! At his insistence, I downloaded the Developer edition - only to find that the server was a separate download. So I downloaded the server, and the files were corrupt. I downloaded it again, this time using BusinessObjects' download manager, and it corrupted my download!
You might imagine just how unimpressed I was with BusinessObjects as a company at this point. I finally got my ignorant sales rep to mail me physical media. I ended up with three identical sets of Crystal Reports installation media, and three sets of media for installing the XI server release 2; two sets were the same media set, and the third set was a different part number for the same product. This all came with a lovely keepcase that takes individual-disc binder sleeves, which is probably the best thing that will come out of this entire process. My sales rep didn't even know what comes with any individual shipped product. When I'd called to complain about him before, I asked to speak with a sales rep who was a little more competent, and the phone support technician (or as I call them, phone monkeys) got hot under the collar and actually argued with me about his level of competence! Seems the guy's been there for two years and he still doesn't know what they're selling.
Well, I got the product finally, and installed it. The first time I did so, it wouldn't even preview a report and wouldn't connect to the database in spite of the fact that I had successfully tested my ODBC connection. So I put it away and deleted the virtual machine. I came back and did the precise same install on a virtual machine set up precisely the same way (I have a couple of standard VMs that I create from an archive whenever I need a virtual machine) and what do you know? It worked.
So now I'm able to get into the product and preview reports. This is well and good, but the primary reason I want to purchase this product is to schedule reports for automatic distribution. For example, new player reports can be sent out automatically, as can inactivity reports; they can be mailed in Excel format (.XLS) on a weekly basis to our advertising agency, which is responsible for doing something with it. I currently do this manually and on request, but this seems very silly. So I schedule the report, and then issue a test run, and SMTP fails. It's unconfigured, that makes sense. I finally find documentation for how to turn this on (which, by the way, conflicts with a document in their knowledge base which tells you to do it differently, in a way that will solve another emailing problem, but not mine.)
The original error had been fairly straightforward: destination DLL disabled. CrystalEnterprise.Smtp: Okay, that makes sense, SMTP is disabled. It turned out this was what the error meant. So I had found the docs, and found how to enable it. The next error was less understandable; server error. CrystalEnterprise.Smtp: SMTP_E_TCPSOCKET_OPEN(2) Well, how helpful. After finally talking with support (more on this in a moment) I was emailed a PDF which I did not find by doing a search, which told me that meant that it couldn't find the mailserver on the given port. I can do a traceroute (or in this case, a tracert) from the system to the mailserver, but I can't telnet to port 25 on it, so I just went ahead and installed IIS on the local system, for SMTP only. Now I get address error. CrystalEnterprise.Smtp: (501) which is not mentioned in the PDF.
But now, let's talk a bit about how I actually got ahold of support in the first place. Like most "enterprise" software packages (meaning that there are for the most part only corporate and not home users to abuse) support is available either on a contract or pay-per-incident basis. You can get installation support for a trial, but it takes quite a bit of work. First I called Tech Support and explained my situation; they sent me to sales. Sales was where I should be (as I was looking at the Crystal Reports Developer product and the bundled server, not the server product) but they didn't seem to get that so they just went ahead and sent me to the "Customer Assurance" department. I am not making this up, they have a department called this. What are they going to assure me of? That the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing?
This was, however, the one pleasant portion of the entire experience. A lovely (at least on a customer service level, it's not as if I've met her) lady named Gina took my problem in hand and ironed it out for me. She explained in detail why I had been bounced around (or at least the reasoning behind it) and then proceeded to spend some 15 minutes with me on and off hold calling around and finding someone for me to talk to. She set me up with technical support (which ordinarily would have involved a discussion with the telesales department) and I got sent over to there.
But the ridiculous part of the story doesn't end there, if yo u can believe it. Once the support tech picked up the phone, I was dismayed to hear the phone menus being spoken to me while I was on the line with the tech! To make matters worse, the menus worked. So I pressed 0 which gave a brief respite as the system decided whether to send me towards an operator, and gave the woman my phone number. I hung up just as the operator was picking up, and the tech called back in less than a minute.
The tech was an ostensibly Indian woman (her name supports the theory, but it's not important as she was neither my savior nor my nemesis, and so I will elide it) and I had a horrible time understanding her not just because of her accent (which was thick but penetrable) but because there was rather intense noise on the line. Noise cancellation would wipe it out when she started talking loudly, but the result was that I could only hear her when she did so.
At this point, I'm left wondering what my alternatives are. The Crystal Reports Server product has obviously managed to remain ever young - or perhaps I should say immature. There is absolutely no reason that I should be getting cryptic error messages that have to be looked up in a book. There is no reason that I should have to hunt for anything, as their product has a web interface and it would be trivial to make interface changes to make it easier to use. It has all the soul of a race car built by Skoda.
This would be an excellent time for someone to bring out a competing reporting application and blow Business Objects out of the water - they are clearly not competent to sell and support software.
Update Wed May 23 08:24:04:
Last night I responded to my Indian tech's email with my latest error (after following directions in the PDF she sent me.) Today, I have no response from her, so I go to the website to address my case directly. Lo and behold, the website is broken! Both Firefox and IE6 provide the error "An error has occurred that has stopped this transaction from continuing." IE6 also made a popup saying "The defaults for your Call Center could not be found. (17831, 5219)" indicating that they are using peoplesoft (as per a google search) and that they're having problems with it. Why I'm seeing these error messages is beyond me, but it does indicate that either the IT department at BI or the nice people at Peoplesoft are a bunch of fucking idiots. Based on my experience with BI so far, I'd guess the former.
So I call up support and what do I achieve? Leaving a message for my already-unresponsive technician to call me back. Supposedly within the half-hour; I'll see what happens. The jackass I got on the phone wouldn't even look up an error message for me.
If this is what BI's technical support is like, how can I possibly trust them to support me when we're up, running, and depending on this software?