Label making .NET control.

[Jenner]

I was wondering if anyone knows of a third party control that would allow an end-user to design and print labels (i.e. fixed-size, single page only reports with barcode support, the kind that label-printers love).

Currently, our business philosophy was to do everything in Crystal Reports in-house, give the end-user a few dozen options to choose from and if they wanted more, they could get a license of CR and edit the label reports themselves.

Sales says "that isn't good enough, we want them to be able to do that on-screen within our software in a simple-to-use interface" so I'm stuck looking for alternatives. :cry:

Writing a complex drag-and-drop label maker control really isn't in our business plan and I'd hate to have to allocate the time and massive amounts of man-hours to develop one. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

[techgnome]

This is a prime example of why sales reps need to stay out of the software development process and stick to selling what it DOES do and not what they THINK is should do.... had the same problem at my last job. it sux.

There is one reporting tool that will allow end users to design reports.... unfortunately I cannot remember who makes it. And it wasn't cheap either.

-tg

[Jenner]

Yea, this was the VP of sales and marketing. Volume levels rose pretty high during that discussion. I used to have a project manager who knew software development who I reported directly to for input, but they let her go a few weeks ago so not I gotta deal with this idiocy directly.

Basically, no customer is ever 100% happy with what any report looks like or even what data is displayed on it. Already, our various sized label reports in Crystal Reports have a lot of "toggle-switch" parameters for viewing and hiding data labels, sections, etc and if they don't like the look of that, then they can choose from about 6 alternatives with different fonts and sizing and data options. If they still don't like that, then they can design it themselves by buying a license of Crystal (I even made it easy for them, you can tell the software to dump schema.xml for the various reports it produces).

The other option is we'll design a custom report for them ourselves for a price.

So far, I've explored DevExpress's report builder tool, but this thing is less intuitive than Crystal. If you find the name of that package, I'd be eternally grateful.

[dee-u]

Perhaps this?

http://www.perpetuumsoft.com/Product.aspx?lang=en&pid=21&tid=reasons

[techgnome]

that wasn't the one I was thinking of.... but nice find!

-tg

[Jenner]

That's a nice find dee-u. Problem is, it's still too "full featured" for most of our customers, who are as a general rule, computer illiterate shop-floor personnel. I downloaded the evaluation and am going to play with it some more to see if I can "turn off" or hide some of those buttons and options it has.

Basically, what I'm looking for is: A report builder that makes single-page reports with programmable page size. A text tool that lets you pick font and size, a line tool, an insert image tool, and a box where I can attach field tags to the thing.

Report-Sharp-Shooter looks nice to me, but things like the properties box, the 30 some tool buttons down the side and the 30 some across the top would confuse the heck out of our customers. :(

Thanks for the link though, it's definitely one I didn't know about.

[dee-u]

I knew I have also stumbled some reporting tool like that but I cannot remember the name so I did a search and came across Report-Sharp-Shooter.

[DeanMc]

Actually I think sales are right on this one. If I both some custom software that required me to buy some more software I would be looking somewhere else. You should look at making a self contained control that you can then sell third party!

[techgnome]

it's not that the buyers are required to purchase additional software.... the system comes with reports... customizable to a certain extent. it was sales that decide that wasn't good enough.

the last system I worked on was the same way... we use Crystal for all of our reports. And we had some canned... we were also willing to build custom ones too (for a price, which is dealt with up front) ... or you could purchase CR on your own and build your own reports.... but then we don't support those. Those who bought the system are given this up front, so they know what they are getting themselves into. But never once was CR a "requirement"... just an option.

Based on Jenner's comment "if they wanted more, they could get a license of CR "

I'd say the same thing applies here.

-tg

[DeanMc]

I dunno, maybe its the sales exec in me...

[Jenner]

I know I've always told our sales department that if they wanted to edit their own reports, they have the option to buy a license of CR. For most of our reports, there's only two or three variations at the most (English version, slightly different English version, Spanish version) but also you can toggle on and off some options from the reporting form that activate parameters in those reports to do things like show/hide graphs and various other bits of data. You can also set date ranges and choose specific records if desired from a checked listbox.

Our label reports though have about 15 pre-made varieties in different label size formats as well as different displays of data. Some people like different fields large enough you can spot them from across the plant, others want to hide fields from factory worker's view; like "cost/pound" information, others want to see detailed breakdowns of various things on the label... yadda yadda.

This report also has the most extensive schema, digging through about 12 tables to get every last bit of information on a specific job and the support data from those fields. As I said, the problem is, everybody wants a different combination of data, using a different combination of font sizes, on different combinations of fixed page-sizes.

At this point, I've given up on this request and told our wonderful sales and marketing VP that there is no other feasible alternative which will probably cause her to whine about me to the company president, but at this point, I could care less. At least my boss will back me on this. *groans*

[DeanMc]

An easy way to quiet a sales exec is to detail how this new feature would be cost effective for the time it would take. If he can furnish you with a detailed report that proves you can fine, you should do it. If he cannot (I bet he cant) he has nothing to complain about.

[Jenner]

Yea, I basically did the reverse of that strategy. I gave her my best guess quote of the man-hours it would take to develop such a control from scratch. :)