When a SalesLogix report is run, you normally see two different kinds of filter options/parameters. The purpose of this post is to explain what they are and how reporting filters in SalesLogix are different.

Normally when a report is run, the first set of filters is a set of options that appear on the report selection page. It looks like this:

These options allow you to dynamically specify the data that should show up in the report. For example, if the report is a contact based report and needs to be filtered to a certain group, or a certain record that the user is currently working on, this is where you would do it. It also allows you to save these criteria if you would like to reuse them the next time the same report is run.

Note that these filters are externally passed into the Crystal report from SalesLogix and are not a part of the Crystal report parameters collection.

The second set of parameters you could run into are the actual Crystal report parameters that are built into the report:

These parameters are designed into the report and allow you to specify additional parameters like date ranges or other options that you may way to have a user specify to control what data is shown, or even how it is displayed.

These filters get applied in addition to the SalesLogix filters mentioned above. The combination of both sets of parameters is what gives you the final result in the report.

A key point to note here is that the SalesLogix filters are meant to allow for filtering data at the entity level so that one may filter by Entity group, Date or User. The crystal parameters usually complement these filters by allowing complex formula based filtering to be used to change display formats on the fly and reformat a report to work differently based on the parameters specified.