Can I reference data in a published LBI spreadsheet in a Crystal report also published in LBI?

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Jan
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Posts: 55
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    Hello

    I'd like to create a Crystal report that uses dates in another published LBI report in order to select data. The Crystal selection could be done via parameters that are pulled from this separate report. The separate report would be an Excel spreadsheet that I create by hand and upload and publish into LBI. The only purpose for this spreadsheet would be to supply dates to my Crystal report. I'm asking this question because I've been told this is possible but I don't know how to do it.

    Here's the specific situation. We hold New Employee Orientation (NEO) on an irregular basis. Just prior to each NEO, I want to send a report of new hires to the person running the NEO so they can prep for the class. This report will select employees hired between the day after the previous NEO class and the date of the new NEO class. These dates, call them start and end dates, would be in the Excel spreadsheet which I would publish.

    The things I would need to do in Crystal are
    1) navigate through the published spreadsheet to find the dates for the current NEO class - I'm not sure how to do this since this wouldn't be a sql table
    2) select that line and pick out the start and end dates
    3) use those dates as parameters in my Crystal report

    I promoted an alternative plan to the above Excel but it was shot down for now. That alternate plan would be to use some existing Lawson screen to store these NEO dates. This would be nice because that table would be queryable - but as I said this is off the table for now.

    Any ideas? I can pass along additional information if that helps.

    thanks
    Ben Coonfield
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    Posts: 146
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      If the Excel file always has a fixed location, then you can configure ODBC to read the Excel file. You should then be able to refer to this like any other ODBC data source in your Crystal report. Not the simplest solution but it sounds possible.
      ric9d
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      Posts: 76
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        I was able to do this. I published a report reading from an Excel Spreadsheet. Prior to that I created an ODBC connection that is pointing to an ODBC.

        It took me several tries to do this, the trick is to create the ODBC. Initially I was directly referencing the XL spreadsheet and that just would not work for me.

        Hope this helps anyone out there.