Better Reporting

[PeggyAnderson1]

ArcGIS 10 has taken away Crystal Reports with no real improvements on the native reporting capabilities.  If you can select from a number of layers at one time, then you should be able to report on all those layers with one report. This can be done with Crystal Reports (no longer available) but not with the native Arc-reporting.

We have a project where we need to create a report of everything (churches, populations, wetlands, bats, etc., all in different layers.) that occurs within a certain distance to a roadway.  I can't figure out a way to do that with what is available in ArcGIS 10.  Other people must need this feature.

[EricDaniel]

 Great request Peggybill.  I couldn't agree more that this is greatly needed.  The new report functionality in ArcGIS 10 is pretty limited.  We need something closer to Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services so reports can be both Maps and non-map features that are all very dynamic.  

[AaronWeier]

Reporting is an essential tool for our emergency preparedness planning and response activities. It's amazing to me that there is great functional reporting in the Biz Analyst Online tool, but not in ArcGIS desktop...Thanks for adding the idea. I promoted it and hope to see ESRI finally add in much needed functionality!!

[RickWarner]

I am tired of having to export FGDB files to personal geodatabased inorder to use Crystal Reports and wish that ESRI would develop a driver that would hook up to the FGDB,  The report function is ArcMap is extremely limited and of no use to those who want to create standard cross tab reports..

[BradFisher3]

Isn't the report engine in ArcGIS Desktop now .net active reports (??) which is a powerful product - i just don't think there is much documentation about with regards to the current limitations with how it can be used / extended for complex reporting scenarios?  See http://www.datadynamics.com/Products/ActiveReports/Overview.aspx for more info.

Brad

[EricDaniel]

I don't think it's ActiveReports.  It think it just Esri own's reporting engine which seems pretty limited at this point.  

[RayChilcote]

In the middle of Crystal Reports' lifespan with Esri, I attended CrystalReports workshops at 2 UC conferences.  At both, users asked if a map could be included in the report (imagine that?!  A reporting tool in a map application that shows maps!).  The 2 Business Objects presenters simply looked at each other, totally lost.  Then said it couldn't be done.

There were tricks to do this with CrystalReports.  Create a report in CrystalReports with an image, add a live link to that image, which is the exported map.  But this had it's challenges.  The map proportions to begin with.  And a lot of programming for the attribute data to get updated (subject data, then point in polygon for several feature classes).

Not an easy thing.  Still this is needed.  Kind of like getting turn-by-turn directions and no possibility of maps.  Some people are happy with the one-way reporting.  But not good for us spatial thinkers.

Grouping functionality (sums, subreports, graphs) needs to be continued and easier to create than CrystalReports.

[SusanZwillinger]

The current reporting engine in ArcGIS is ActiveReports.  There was a bug in 10.0 that showed the following red text at the bottom of a custom report:  "This document was created using an EVALUATION version of ActiveReports. Only a licensed user may legally create reports for use in production. Please report infractions or address questions to sales@grapecity.us.com. Copyright 2002-2009 GrapeCity, Inc. All rights reserved." 

I use the Esri Business Analyst extension.  I'm not sure what the reporting engine is for that, but it is very easy to use.  It would be nice to have the same reporting tools in basic ArcGIS as I have in Business Analyst.  The issue with the BA reporting tool is that you can't control the names of the output files--only the folder names.  So, it would be nice to have the report output flexibility that is available through ActiveReports, but have the ease of use that we have with the BA reporting tool.

[JasonBalmut]

I wouldn't mind a better template import tool or a way to convert report templates from other formats into the RLF extensin that Esri is using.  People have been creating reports in MS Access for years; why not allow those reports to be imported as a template?

[KoryKramer]

We are closing this idea as it relates specifically to ArcMap reports and no further functionality or enhancements are being made to ArcMap. See https://support.esri.com/en/arcmap-esri-plan for more details.

ArcGIS Pro will allow adding maps to reports in response to this idea: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/add-map-or-layout-to-a-report/idi-p/930447 

See the help documentation for details: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/reports/reports-in-arcgis-pro.htm 

Please submit new ideas for reporting functionality against the latest version of ArcGIS Pro.

Thank you!