One of the most exciting new features on Crystal Reports XI is dynamic parameter fields. With previous versions of Crystal Reports you could browse your data source for a list of values to select from, but this was only available at design time. When you viewed the report again, the same list of values saved with the report would be displayed. This worked out well for "static" values (like a list of states, for example) but for more dynamic values, this was problematic.

With the release of Crystal Reports XI, you can now have "dynamic" parameter fields that connect to your data source when you view the report to retrieve the most current set of values. This feature is easy to implement and use and in this tutorial, you'll learn how to add dynamic parameters to your own reports.

To start, you will need a copy of Crystal Reports XI, which you can download from here if you don't already have a copy. Next, we need a report to work with-for this example, we are going to create a new report from the Xtreme sample database that ships with every copy of Crystal Reports.

To create a report that uses dynamic parameters, follow these steps: