On behalf of everyone at Software Forces and the .rpt Inspector Online team we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Holiday season 
and a joyful 
New Year! Read on for a 2017 recap and features planned for 2018.
2017 has been an amazing year for .rpt Inspector Online. We are grateful for all the interest and support you’ve shown us and we are excited for the tools and features coming in 2018. Together we’ll continue to evolve and improve the tools and look forward to your continued support, ideas, comments, bugs, and feedback.
2017 Recap
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After more than 2 years in development (and a lot of going back to the drawing board moments
) and private testing with select customers on June 27th we announced and opened .rpt Inspector Online for public beta. Launching initially with tools focused on Crystal Reports documentation and analysis (database / field impact, used / unused fields, used / unused formulas, used / unused parameters). We are committed to bringing you feature parity (where possible) with our desktop tools and of course adding new tools that never made it in to our desktop tools. -
With a large user base of our .rpt Inspector Professional Suite and .rpt Inspector Enterprise Suite desktop products (which are in End-Of-Life status) we sent out notifications to folks who signed up, starting on June 28th (with hundreds of thousands in signs up, it took a little while to get out
). -
One of the most popular feature of our desktop tools has been the Change Data Source / Database conversion and migration wizard and especially the change data source feature using ODBC. We took all your feedback and worked to make it simple and powerful but we needed a little more time so it didn’t make it in to the initial release but we did quickly follow with the Change Data Source via ODBC DSN preview on July 18th.
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The Change Data Source via ODBC DSN tool launched to all users on July 20th.
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We continue to evolve the experience based on your ideas and feedback with every update. On September 13th we grouped some of them in to an announcement affecting the main portal reports list and Change Data Source tool.
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Another popular tool in our desktop products has been the Formula Editor. Taking all your feedback in, we reimagined and introduced the Formula Editor and formula standardize tool on December 18th.
2018 Plans
With 2017 almost behind us, and what an exciting and busy 2017 has been, we’d like to share our plans of what we’d like to bring you in 2018. The list below is in no particular order except where noted and is subject to change.
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Currently in development and up next is the Parameter Editor. Based on the desktop tools Parameter Editor. - Currently in development is the Object Editor, starting with the Text Object. Based on the desktop tools Objects Editor.
- Additional objects for the Object Editor, including Box, Fields, Line, Map, etc.
- Improvements to the documentation
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Export as PDF
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Export as Text
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Export as Word
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Export in a friendly format for doing compare / difference in other tools.
- Impact Analysis tool to include Formulas and Parameters
- We would love your input and feedback on how we can make it more useful to you!
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- Bring in more of the desktop tools editors, Sections Editor, SQL Expression Editor, Running Tools Editor, Alerts Editor
- Add support opening Crystal Reports from Crystal Reports Server, BusinessObjects BI Platform, Business Objects Enterprise like .rpt Inspector Enterprise Suite supports
- Improvements to the Change Data Source tool
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Add OLE DB support
- Add field mapping
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Add convert database driver
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Add verify database
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- Improvements to the Formula Editor
- Spell checker
- Field lookup
- Formula validation check prior to saving
- Formula compare / difference tool
- Global spell checker
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Report compare / difference tool
- Improve adding reports
- Shortcuts
- UNC paths
- Selection
- Tag added reports which can then be used for grouping or filtering to work with in batches
- A few surprises along the way.
As you can see, 2018 is going to be a very busy year as we strive to bring these features to .rpt Inspector Online. We would love to hear your comments, ideas, and feature requests in these forums about the above features (as well as any others that help you).