Create Reports with Paylocity Data in SAP Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports has many options for offloading data processing to remote data; this enables real-time reporting. The CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity brings this capability to Crystal Reports. This article shows how to create a report on Paylocity data that refreshes when you run the report.

Refer to the given table for the tools and versions used for this article:

Connect to Paylocity Data

If you have not already, specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Set the following to establish a connection to Paylocity:

• RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.

  This property is required for executing Insert and Update statements, and it is not required if the feature is disabled.

• UseSandbox: Set to true if you are using sandbox account.
• CustomFieldsCategory: Set this to the Customfields category. This is required when IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The default value for this property is PayrollAndHR.
• Key: The AES symmetric key(base 64 encoded) encrypted with the Paylocity Public Key. It is the key used to encrypt the content.

  Paylocity will decrypt the AES key using RSA decryption.
  It is an optional property if the IV value not provided, The driver will generate a key internally.

• IV: The AES IV (base 64 encoded) used when encrypting the content. It is an optional property if the Key value not provided, The driver will generate an IV internally.

Connect Using OAuth Authentication

You must use OAuth to authenticate with Paylocity. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Paylocity using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the Help documentation.

The Pay Entry API

The Pay Entry API is completely separate from the rest of the Paylocity API. It uses a separate Client ID and Secret, and must be explicitly requested from Paylocity for access to be granted for an account. The Pay Entry API allows you to automatically submit payroll information for individual employees, and little else. Due to the extremely limited nature of what is offered by the Pay Entry API, we have elected not to give it a separate schema, but it may be enabled via the UsePayEntryAPI connection property.

Please be aware that when setting UsePayEntryAPI to true, you may only use the CreatePayEntryImportBatch & MergePayEntryImportBatchgtable stored procedures, the InputTimeEntry table, and the OAuth stored procedures. Attempts to use other features of the product will result in an error. You must also store your OAuthAccessToken separately, which often means setting a different OAuthSettingsLocation when using this connection property. 👁 Create the ODBC DSN connection.

When configuring the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Design a Report in SAP Crystal Reports

Follow the procedure below to use the SAP Crystal Reports tool to create the Paylocity connection and Design a Report.

1. File -> New -> Standard Report. 👁 Create a standard report.
   
2. Expand the ODBC (RDO) node under Create New Connection and double-click on "Make a New Connection". Select CData Paylocity Sys or any other source to prepare the report. Click on NEXT and FINISH. 👁 Data Source Selection
   
3. Configure the data source by selecting the tables needed in the report and clicking NEXT. 👁 Add the table.
   
4. You can also link tables from the Paylocity data in SAP Crystal Reports. Click on NEXT after adding the links between tables. 👁 Add multiple tables.
   👁 Link the tables.
   
5. After the tables are selected, select the fields you want displayed in the report from the selected table, followed by NEXT. 👁 Add the fields to display.
   
6. Select the "Group By" field to group the information on the report. 👁 Add the Group By field.
   
7. Sort the groups based on summarised totals and click on NEXT. 👁 Group Sorting
   

Create a Chart

After selecting a column to group by, the Standard Report Creation Wizard presents the option to create a chart. Follow the steps below to create a chart aggregating the FirstName column's values.

1. In the Standard Report Creation Wizard, select the Bar Chart option and select the column you grouped by in the "On change of" menu.
2. In the Show Summary menu, select the summary you created.
3. Select filters and a template, as needed, to finish the wizard. 👁 Select a chart type.
   

Select a template for the report to preview the finished report and view the chart populated with your data.

👁 Select a template type.

The Final Report

You can now see that the report contains all the fields specified.

👁 The final report.

Working with Remote Data

To ensure that you see updates to data, click File and clear the "Save Data with Report" option. As you interact with the report, for example, drilling down to hidden details, Crystal Reports executes SQL queries to retrieve the data needed to display the report. To reload data you have already retrieved, refresh or rerun the report.

You can offload processing onto the driver by hiding details elements and enabling server-side grouping. To do this, you need to select a column to group by in the report creation wizard.

1. Click File -> Report Options and select the "Perform Grouping On Server" option. 👁 Perform Grouping On Server option.
   
2. Click Report -> Section Expert and select the Details section of your report. Select the "Hide (Drill-Down OK)" option. 👁 Hide (Drill-Down OK) option.
   

When you preview your report with the hidden details, Crystal Reports executes a GROUP BY query. When you double-click a column in the chart to drill down to details, Crystal Reports executes a SELECT WHERE query that decreases load times by retrieving only the data needed.

At this point, you have created a SAP Crystal report built on top of live Paylocity data using SAP Crystal Reports and CData ODBC driver. Learn more about the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity and download a free trial from the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.