Northwestern University
Business Intelligence Solutions
Cognos 8 Best Practices
Volume 1
Report Properties and Default Filters
Report Properties
General
Properties
Report Name
and
Description
Report Archive
Source
Package
General Properties
Owner should be
set to either the
report developer,
or a user with
credentials to run
a report.
Contact should be report developer or
user in charge of handling
communication about the report. This
can be either a user in the new LDAP or
just an email in the current environment.
Report Name and Description
Name should be robust
enough to let the user
know what the report
is. A good rule of
thumb is to use the title
in the report.
Description allows for the most
verbose text that describes
exactly what the object is and
does without having to run the
report or open it in report studio.
Screen tip gives a more descriptive pop-up when mouse is hovered over object icon.
Report Archive
You can set how many archive copies of a report to keep. The multiple page
icon in the actions will take you to the archive list.
The list will display up to the
maximum amount of archives
as set in the properties page.
Archives can be set based on
number of versions or length
of time.
Report Run Properties
Report
Run
Defaults
Prompt
Values
Run as
Owner
Report Run Defaults
Select the action when clicking on the report
name. Whether the report will be run, the last
archive will be shown (if exists), or the report
will be opened in Report Studio.
Select the Default run options if different
than the standard HTML.
Default Rendering type, whether PDF,
HTML, Excel, XML, and CSV.
Set the paper orientation and
paper orientation for the render of
PDF or HTML.
Prompt Values and Run as Owner
This section allows you to setup default run options. These options will be used
when the report name is clicked on directly and will be the default values when
Run with Options is clicked on in the Action bar.
If you click on edit, it will bring up the
prompt screens and save the settings.
Leave this unchecked to use default prompts for default run actions.
This setting determines what credentials to run the report
under. This can be set to run as the owner if they have
access to a set of data that the standard report user doesn’t.
This way they can still access certain reports without getting
access to the whole data set. This can’t be overridden by the
user.
Report Permissions
The final tab is where permissions are set for the report object. Let’s go
over what each setting allows or denies.
Groups
Granted/Denied Permissions for Group
Report Permission Settings
Read Grant allows the user to read archived versions.
Write Grant allows the user to write reports into the archive.
Execute Grant allows the user to run the report.
Set Policy should not be granted to a user. It allows to
change the report settings.
Traverse allows the user to move through the object if it
is used by other reports they have execute access to.
Deny explicitly takes away these rights even if the user is in another group
that allows the grant. Good if you have a report group for a larger department
but want to exclude office personnel from seeing sensitive report in that set.