Workbench Reporting Platform

The company's legacy reporting system had become difficult to rely on. Crystal Reports and the Crystal Central Reporting Server were aging and no longer actively supported, the Crystal Reports Viewer was a dated Internet Explorer plugin that limited accessibility, and scheduling in Crystal was failing and not flexible enough for needs like relative dates and dependencies on data loads.

The environment was also fragmented, with reports split between Crystal and SSRS, some scheduled and some ad hoc, and no unified system to manage, view, or print reports across the two technologies. Operational inefficiencies added up: printing large batches of reports was cumbersome, reports had to be scheduled outside the main enterprise scheduler, and some complex Crystal-specific reports made migration to SSRS challenging.

Sembit recommended unifying the report inputs and outputs so all could be managed through a single system, enabling a gradual migration from Crystal Reports to SSRS that preserved critical functionality. They needed flexible scheduling integrated with their enterprise scheduler to support dependencies and relative dates, more accessible viewing and printing by moving from plugin-based viewers toward plain PDFs, and streamlined printing of large documents directly to specific printers. Throughout, the goal was to maintain operational continuity: keep existing reports running reliably, allow new reports to be created in SSRS, and eventually phase out Crystal Reports where feasible.

Sembit built a custom reporting platform that unified both Crystal and SSRS reports, combining a custom web app, executables, and a Windows service to manage reports. It generated PDFs from both Crystal and SSRS for viewing and printing, provided command-line tools for printing large PDFs directly to printers, and included a general report scheduler integrated with the enterprise scheduler to handle dependencies and relative dates. Deployment tools simplified uploading reports to the Crystal or SSRS servers, and both reporting systems became “equal citizens” managed under one unified platform.

The solution was thoroughly documented, with 25 pages for report developers, 20 pages for system administrators, and a full architecture document for platform maintainers.

The migration was a success, with all reports translated to the new system and more than 100 scheduled reports moved onto the enterprise scheduler. Users gained a single way to view, schedule, deploy, and print reports from one platform, and Crystal and SSRS reports ran more reliably and could coexist. Standardized PDFs, command-line printing tools, and enterprise scheduler integration streamlined workflows, and some reports were simplified for faster performance. The project was delivered on time and on budget, backed by comprehensive documentation for developers and system administrators.

The Workbench reporting platform shows how a custom solution can bring an aging, fragmented reporting environment into a single, modern system. By treating Crystal and SSRS as equal citizens, standardizing on PDFs for storage and viewing, integrating with the enterprise scheduler, and enabling a smooth migration path, Sembit created a well-documented platform built to serve their reporting needs for the long term.