There are several options for exposing  metrics (metrics studio, watchlist, diagrams, …) through the QueryVision Cognos Components Web Part.

The first step is to set up a portal page/portlet in Cognos Connection, the second is to expose it in SharePoint via the QueryVision Cognos Components Web Part.

In Cognos connection, use an existing portal page or create a new one and add one of the following metrics portlets:

Or to use metrics studio bookmarks, either one of the Bookmarks Viewer or HTML Viewer:

Note that you have the option of connecting (which is the default) portlets together. This will result in actions in a Metrics List portlet changing the diagram shown in an Impact Diagram portlet (assuming both are in the same portal page).

Settings for borders, editing, etc. should also be set in the Cognos Connection portal page (e.g. turn off borders, disable editing).

Now add a QueryVision Cognos Component Web Part to the page. In all cases, use the “Portal Page (Tab))” option.

• Select “Modify Web Part” on the Cognos Component Web Part
• Set the “Selected Cognos Component to View”  drop down to Portal Page (Tab)
• Either cut and past the Cognos SearchPath into the “Cognos Component Path” text box or browse to the portal page, by clicking on the button beside the text box. You must be logged into Cognos to use the browse feature.

An example of a search path is: /content/folder[@name='Custom Pages (Pagelets)']/pagelet[@name='Metrics Watch List']

The example above shows a portal page with a Metrics WatchList.

Cognos Metrics with QueryVision Web Parts

One of the hidden gems of the QueryVision Report Viewer Web Part is that it has the ability to receive parameters and prompts that in turn drive filters in your Cognos Reports.  This enables you to quickly setup a Cognos Dashboard directly within SharePoint using Cognos content as well as other data sources.

This is accomplished using Filter Provider Web Parts that are part of SharePoint and configuring them to send filter values to the QueryVision Report Viewer. Once this is done prompts or parameters will be sent to your Cognos Report when users choose values from your Filter Provider Web Part. What end users will see is a simple page with a prompt and a Cognos Report directly within SharePoint.

This might sound complicated but it is very simple to setup. All of this is accomplished without any coding, and entirely done within a browser.

Before we get to the “how to” part of this article, it might be worthwhile explaining a little about SharePoint’s Filter Provider Web Parts. Since SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft has shipped a number of out of the box filter web parts.

The purpose of these web parts is to provide filter or search criteria to other web parts in order to filter data. This is accomplished by “connecting” web parts together. Filter web parts can provide a user interface to allow users to pick items or dates for instance, but they can also be hidden and run in the background on a page.

Some simple examples are the Date Filter, which provides a very common Calendar interface for users to pick a date, or the Choice Filter which allows a user to select an item (e.g. a Country, or Product) from a list. When a user selects an item from the filter web part the selection is sent to the connected web part which in turn filters its data. You can connect Filter Web Parts to SharePoint Lists, Excel Reports, or some 3^rd Party Web parts (such as ours).

Hopefully you get the idea… so enough of the boring preamble let’s get started and connect a Filter web part and drive those parameters into our Cognos Report without leaving SharePoint.

STEP 1 – Setup up the Report Viewer Web Part:

Create a new web part page or select and existing one, click Edit Page from the ribbon. Now click on Add a Web Part and select the QueryVision Report Viewer Web Part and then Click Add. A new Report Viewer Web Part should now be visible on your page. Now Edit the properties of the web part and click in the “Report Path” text window and select the […] button to browse for a Cognos Report. Make sure to choose a report that has a Prompt or Parameter. The report should run and come back with a prompt directly from Cognos.

STEP 2 – Add a Choice Filter Web Part
Now while you still have the page in edit mode, add another web part. Browse to the category “Filter” and select the “Choice Filter” and add it to the page by hitting the Add button.

STEP 3 – Setup Up the Choice Filter Web Part

We need to configure the choice filter to have selection values for the user to pick. Remember that not all filter web parts require this. Some can be dynamic and get their values from a database or another list. This particular web part requires an author to enter in a set of choices for the user to pick from.

Click on the “open the tool pane” link to edit the filter.

In my example I am dealing with Retailer Countries as the prompt coming back from Cognos. So I have entered in country names as my values. You will likely have something else. Simply choose a few values that Cognos was prompting you with and enter them in on a separate line in the text box. You can also name the Title whatever you would like the user to see as the caption of the prompt. After you are finished, just click on OK to save our properties.

STEP 4 – Connect Our Web Parts Together

Finally, we want to connect our web parts together so that the selection that a user picks in the choice filter will be passed to the QueryVision Report Viewer web part (and of course on to the Cognos Report).

Now click on the ChoiceFilter Web Part arrow (in the top right corner) to bring up its menu. From the Connections menu select “Send Filter Values To” and then select “QueryVision Report Viewer Webpart”.

This will bring up a Connection Settings dialog box. Simply choose the parameter that is listed in the drop down box (you may have more than one in the report), and then click on Finish.

The Finished Product…

Now you can flip your page back to normal mode by clicking the “Stop Editing” button in the ribbon, and you are done!

When a user now browses to the page they can select a country from the Filter and the report will run with that filter value.

Other Options:

You may also want to configure the default value for the Choice Filter to force a default value for the report amongst other options.

You can also play with the Force Parameter Level on the Report Viewer Web Part properties. This allows you to force a user to pick a prompt value before the report runs. In other words, you can make sure no prompts come back natively from Cognos if they are not filled in yet.

Remember that this is just an example. This type of functionality allows you to connect multiple Cognos reports on a page to the same prompt. Furthermore, you can connect your prompts to mixed content (i.e. a Cognos Report as well as a filter for a SharePoint List) simultaneously.

How To Setup Cognos Dashboard with Shared Prompts in SharePoint

The Challenge

Administering and testing Cognos applications typically requires creating and changing administration and test user accounts, permissions and group/role memberships:

• Create Test users and assign group/role memberships to match each of the different Application users including groups or role assignments.
• Grant temporary Administrative accounts or privileges for Cognos Developers for one time or infrequent update tasks
• Provide Administrative accounts unique to Cognos which can be changed at any time to allow 3rd party Cognos Application Administration.

Where Cognos and/or the Authentication Provider for Cognos (e.g. Active Directory, LDAP, Netminder, …) are managed by central groups or services, these tasks can require service charges for each change, lengthy approval or implementation delays or even be refused due to one or more service policies.

The Solution

Have a dedicated Cognos Authentication Provider for Test and Admin

Cognos’ allows multiple Authentication Providers to be configured for a Cognos installation. Users, groups and roles from each provider can be independently mapped into Cognos namespace Groups and Roles. This allows a separate Authentication Provider to be used for Test/Admin users independently of users authenticated by central Active Director, LDAP or Netminder providers, but still under Cognos Administrator control, while fully supporting the Cognos Security model.

There are some key advantages to this approach:

• Adding, changing or removing test or admin accounts and their group/role memberships within the Test/Admin namespace can be achieved independently by the Application development team.
• The Corporate Authentication provider service is relieved of creating or managing Cognos specific user accounts and groups.
• [Central] Cognos Administrators can pre-configure limited Cognos Groups and Roles for users and groups from the Test/Admin namespace, giving Application Administrators and Developers the control they need without granting Cognos Server or System Administrative privileges.

While separate Active Directory or LDAP Authentication Providers could be set up, configuration and management can be non-trivial, require a dedicated machine (or VM) and require substantial additional license or product costs plus potentially run into corporate policy issues (e.g. restrictions on installing Active Directory within the Corporate domain).

An alternative solution is to add what Cognos refers to as a “Custom Authentication Provider” (CAP). The CAP architecture allows adding of a fully secure and compliant Authentication Provider, but where custom features can be added and where the authentication mechanism and data source can be customized.

QueryVision’s Test/Admin Authentication Provider

QueryVision out-of-the-box Relational Authentication Provider uses any standard JDBC connectable database (including SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, SQL Server Express, MySQL, …) as the Authentication authority and data source which contains User accounts (including IDs and Passwords), Groups and Roles. These can be freely assigned either directly to Cognos permissions and capabilities or via Cognos namespace groups and roles. This solution also provides for encrypting authentication database access and configurable encryption of user passwords (default is SHA-1 one way encryption).

This solution provides the ability to add, change or remove users and user/group/role assignments for Test/Admin purposes which only impact the secured authentication relational database vs. requiring Cognos Admin or central Authentication Manager intervention.

QueryVision is currently exploring a low cost, limited version of its Relational Provider for Administration and Test Users. Contact us sales@QueryVision.com for details.

Managing Cognos Administration and Test Users with a Relational Authentication Provider

Techniques for Bursting Cognos Reports:

For Cognos, bursting and multi-dimensional data sources (OLAP sources or multi-dimensional models built with Framework Manger) need to leverage some additional techniques. This includes master/detail reports that involve multi-dimensional data sources, whether purely multi-dimensional or a combination of multi-dimesional and relational sources.

One key issue is linking the burst key data item a [master] multi-dimensional query to a burst recipients table [detail] which can only be defined in a relational query subject.

For details, see Creating Burst Reports using Dimensional Data Sources and Link Members for Two Data Sources in the Report Studio Users Guide.

 A master/detail link is essentially a report join (vs. query join) where the master query and detailed query are matched on a data item which contains the same value.

The problem is matching multi-dimensional members to relational “values”. Running a multi-dimensional query results in Member Unique Names (MUNs), not their captions. For example:

 [Sales].[Retailers].[Retailers].[Retailer country]

When executed in a query, this expression produces a Country for each member:

MUN: [Sales].[Retailers].[Retailers].[Retailer country]->[Retailers].[710].[90001]

Caption: United States

If a master/detail link link is built by dragging a multi-dimensional data item and a relational data item into the link expression, the master/detail engine is comparing a MUN with a relational value, which will fail:

Retailer Country (multi-dimensional level) = Retailer Country (relational column)

Results in the following comparison:

[Sales].[Retailers].[Retailers].[Retailer country]->[Retailers].[710].[90001] = United States

If the master and detail data sources are different multi-dimensional sources which have different MUNs for the same caption (e.g. United States) then the link will also fail.

The solution is to use the caption vs. the MUN for master/detail links. This is achieved with a simple Cognos query function – caption().

caption(<Multi-dimensional expression>)

Example: caption([Retailer Country])

Assume this data item is named “Retailer Country Caption”.

Now the master detail expression is:

Retailer Country Caption = Retailer Country

results in:

United States = United States

In summary:

• When mixing multi-dimensional and relational sources in a master/detail relationship, including linking a multi-dimensional source with a relational burst table, use the caption() function for the multi-dimensional expression.
• When queries from two different multi-dimensional data sources are used in a master/detail report, then both must have a caption() data item which generates the same caption.
  
• When queries from two different relational sources are used in a master detail, it may be required to manipulate the values of the relational columns used in the master/detail link to ensure that their values will match.
  

Bursting for Multi-Dimensional & mixed Multi-D/Relational Reports

 Other blogs in this series:

• Overview
• Save Individual Report Outputs to the File System

What Cognos refers to as the “Save a Copy of Report Output inside IBM Cognos” is actually the ability to save all report outputs to both the Content Manager and to a file system location. This includes burst report outputs. As Cognos’ documentation states – the intent is to support full archiving of reports outside of Cognos. Note that this option (and its configuration parameters) are entirely independent of those for the Save Individual Report Outputs option.

Configuration

In Cognos Configuration in the Explorer tree Data Access -> Content Manager node and set the “Save report outputs to a file system?” option to true:

Set parameters in Cognos Connection Administration. Select Status -> System:

Set the location to set CM.OUTPUTLOCATION (shown here for Cognos 10, this is different for Cognos 8.X

The specific location for setting up the CM.OUTPUTLOCATION properties in CC Administration is different for the various versions of Cognos 8.X and 10.X. The Administration interface will quite a happily let you set the properties in the incorrect location without error. Read the Admin and Security manual carefully as to the steps.

In the “Scorecard” section of the Status/System UI, select the “All servers ” drop down and navigate to Services -> Content Manger:

For the Active Content Manager Service, select the drop down and select “Set Properties”

Select Settings – Environment->Advanced Settings – > Edit:

Here, set the CM.OutputLocation, CM.OutputScript and CM.OutputByBurstKey. Upper case works, but mixed case may work as well. The format for CM.OutputLocation is critical and it uses the following format:

• On the Cognos server <drive>:\folder\subfolder
• Windows UNC format – \\server\share\folder – as shown in the screen capture above. Note that for Unix/Linux, this requires Windows UNC support.

Saving Report Outputs

Report outputs are saved to the CM.OUTPUTLOCATION root folder location regardless of other options, including the Save Individual Report options.

All files are put in the [root] folder, with the exception of burst reports. The CM.OutputByBurstKey feature will put individual burst files in a sub-folder using the burst column value (e.g. Atlantic – where the region.display value for the grouped column used for bursting).

The CM.OutputScript property provides the location and name of a shell script, such as a .bat or .sh file, that runs after a report output is saved to the target directory. The full file names of the output file and descriptor are passed to the script.

The file naming convention is an arbitrary naming convention which guarantees unique values, which includes the date/time as part of the file name. Metadata about the file are included in a companion _desc.XXX file which contains information about the originating file, plus output format, etc. An example for the following pdf output and descriptor file are shown below. Note that in this example the output is from a burst report (one of multiple files generated by the burst).

Save Cognos Reports to the File System – Save All Report Outputs

 Other blogs in this series:

• Overview
• Save All Report Outputs to the File System

What Cognos refers to as the “Save a Copy of Report Output Outside of IBM Cognos Software” is actually the ability to save individual report outputs or burst report outputs selectively to the file system.

Notes:

• This option (and its configuration parameters) are entirely independent of those for the Save All Report Outputs to File System option.
• It is highly recommended to read the related blogs “Overview” and “Save All Report Outputs to the File System” to understand all the options and which configuraiton steps work with which feature.

Configuration

In Cognos Configuration use the Menu item Actions -> Edit Global Configuration – > [Tab] General -> [Property] Archive Location File System Root:

Do not be confused by the wording used here. “Archive Location File System” is NOT referring to the setting for archiving/save all report outputs to the file system.  This is the setting ONLY for the feature to save report outputs as part of the Save options in the run with options or schedule.

 The format for the file root is one of the following

• On the Cognos server file://<drive>:\folder\subfolder
• Windows UNC format – file://\\server\share\folder – as shown in the screen capture above. Note that for Unix/Linux, this requires Windows UNC support.

Once the root folder is set, go to Cognos Connection Administration – > Configuration -> Dispatchers and Services -> Define File System Locations:

It is possible to specify multiple sub-folders… one is defined as shown below (WinFolder2)

You need to specify a name as will appear in the drop down for the user to select when specifying “save to file location” in the advanced run options and the name of the sub-folder (which can also be a sub-sub folder) in the file system.

As with any other Cognos object, the permissions to use these “sub-folders” can be controlled for Cognos users, groups and roles. Note that the permissions for the sub-folder in the operating system will also need to be set (for who can read or write).

Saving Report Outputs

When a user goes to run or schedule a report and the select “save report output” and then select advanced options they will now see a save to the File system option:

The options available are:

Notes:

• Multiple report output types can be specified
• Burst report outputs are also supported
• This capability is enabled for all users. There is no mechanism to selectively allow users to save to the file system.

In this mode, file names are constructed using the report name (or specified filename as listed above), plus the conflict resolution options, plus the language of the selected locale, plus the output extension.

Examples:

• Individual file – UseDisplayProd_NoParams-en-ca.pdf
• Burst File – BurstSample-en-us-Anders Nilsson.pdf
  Note that this includes the burst key/label (Anders Nilsson)

Saving Cognos Reports to the File System – Individual Report Outputs

While researching some upcoming Cognos/SharePoint and general Cognos products and features, we needed to get an in-depth understanding of the Cognos implementation of bursting and what options there are for saving individual and burst report outputs to the file system as part of the run report options vs. selecting to save a Report to the users local computer from the Report Viewer.

The features are somewhat different for each version of Cognos. Cognos 10.1 FP1 is described here.

 Other blogs in this series:

• Save Individual Report Outputs to the File System
• Save All Report Outputs to the File System

Individual Report Output Files and Burst Report Outputs can be saved to the file system with two independent techniques.

• Save Individual Report Outputs – on demand saving of report output when run with options or when scheduled. Cognos refers to this as “Save a Copy of Report Output Outside of IBM Cognos Software”
• Save All Report Output – all report outputs are saved to the Content Manager and the file system. Cognos refers to this as “Save a Copy of Report Output in IBM Cognos Software”

Saving Individual Reports/On Demand requires setting up a root file folder in Cognos Configuration and setting sub-folders of the root for users to select in Cognos Connection Administration. When users run or schedule a report (including a burst report), if they select to save one or more report outputs, the option to save to the file system will be available in the advanced options, where the name, sub-folder and duplicate name conflict resolution options can be selected.

Saving All Report Outputs is advertised by Cognos as focused on archiving and requires setting up a “Save report outputs to a file system” property in Cognos Configuration, plus setting up the properties CM.OUTPUTLOCATION (for the root folder) and optional CM.OUTPUTSCRIPT and CM.OUTPUTBYBURSTKEY for Content Manager in Cognos Connection Administration. The feature does save all Report Outputs to the file system, all in the root folder defined by CM.OUTPUTLOCATION. If Save Individual and Save All features are enabled, report output is saved to Conent Manager, and to the Save All root folder and (if selected by the user) to the Save Individual location.

For both techniques, the ability of the Cognos BI Server to write to a folder is dependent on the account which is used to run the Cognos Services. For Windows, the default is to run under the Local System account, which provides access to folders on the Cognos Server, but no network access. To access other servers requires running as a Network Account, or as a domain account, which may be required for other reasons. Our recommendation? On Windows, use a Domain Account.

One key point we’d like to make about both of the available techniques – they appear to have been defined assuming a single “tenant” for a Cognos installation and that they have a free hand to ask Cognos Administrators to change and configure the options to their requirements. For internal Cloud/SaaS type installations with multiple “tenants” (which are becoming increasingly common), “Save to the File System” may be a feature that the Cognos Cloud Service Administrators may not want to enable. Certainly the current implementation doesn’t give the level of control desirable for a multi-tenant installation.

Interaction, similarities and differences

• Settings Interaction
  • Independent - Both can be active at the same time. Configuration properties for each option in Cognos Configuration and/or Cognos Connection Administration do not interact. Some posts on the web state that the “Save to file system” property in Cognos Configuration affects both options. It only affects the Save All Reports feature.
  • Different Root Folders – Each of the techniques can have a different root folder – either on the Cognos Server or to any share location in the same domain as the Cognos server. Each uses a different mechanism to set the root folder.
• External File/Folder Management Required – Neither performs file or folder management other than overwrite and unique naming options/techniques.
• Different Root Folder formats – Each of the techniques specifies the root folder in slightly different formats.
• Error notifications differ – If an attempt to save to the file system with the Save Individual feature fails, an error will appear for the report execution results (e.g. access denied). No errors will be generated in most cases if the Save All feature fails.
• File Naming differs – Each uses a different file naming convention.
• Companion description file – Files output with either technique include a companion description file <name>_desc.xml which uses the same structure, but slightly different content.
• When changes become active – In both cases a change to Cognos Configuration requires a Cognos application restart, changes in Cognos Connection Administration do not.
• Cognos version differences – The specific location for setting up the CM.OUTPUTLOCATION properties in CC Administration is different for the various versions of Cognos 8.X and 10.X. The Administration interface will quite a happily let you set the properties in the incorrect location without error. Read the Admin and Security manual carefully as to the steps.
• Unix/Linux considerations – Saving to Linux/Unix requires support of the Windows UNC naming convention.
• File/Folder permissions – the machine or domain account that Cognos servers will impact where you can define a root folder.

Saving Cognos Reports to the File System – An Overview

A core feature of Cognos has always been the ability to save and print the result of a Report, Query, Analysis or other Cognos BI component. For most of these components the option is either in the run options or in the report viewer with the “view in” drop-down .

Where a print/save option is not available directly (such as Active Reports), there is always the option of using the print capabilities of the browser, Excel or other tool that a BI component can be exported to.

Printing from Business Insight

Out of the box, Business Insight does not provide the option of printing or saving to PDF or other formats. It is possible to save or print any individual “widget”…

Printing from the Browser

Cognos Connection, by default, launches Business Insight in a browser in a mode where toolbars and browser menus (such as file->print) are disabled.

That can be changed …

Cognos Connection invokes report viewing and launching tools like Business Insight using URLs. How Business Insight is launched can be controlled by parameters within the URL. With QueryVision’s SharePoint Web Parts for Cognos, we provide manipulate those options to launch Business Insight in a separate browser window with the full browser display. From there a user can print or use print drivers such as Microsoft’s XPS Document Writer or PDF writers such as CutePDF writer to save the output to the file system.

For Cognos Connection users, this can be achieved by the following in Internet Explorer:

• In Cognos Connection, navigate to the folder with the Business Insight Dashboard.
• For the Dashboard, select Actions->more…->Add to bookmarks…
• In your browser, find the bookmark and open the properties.
• Select and copy the URL field to and editor.

The following is an example of the URL:

http://w23stdcg103:80/ibmcognos/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/main.xts&m_redirect_windowmode=2&m_redirect=%2fibmcognos%2fcgi-bin%2fcognos.cgi%3fb_action%3dxts.run%26m%3dportal%2flaunch.xts%26ui.gateway%3d%252fibmcognos%252fcgi-bin%252fcognos.cgi%26ui.tool%3dDashboardConsole%26ui.action%3dedit%26ui.atompath%3dPublic%252520Folders%252fSamples%252fModels%252fBusiness%252520Insight%252520Samples%252fEmployee%252520Satisfaction%252520Dashboard

Change the entry highlighted in yellow (&m_redirect_windowmode=2) and change the value to =0 (zero) and paste back to the Bookmark URL.

This bookmark will now launch the Business Insight Dashboard in the full browser where you can print or save.

Note: For FireFox and other browsers, the Add to Bookmarks option in Cognos Connection may not be available. Two alternatives:

• Create the bookmark using IE and then transfer the bookmark to the browser of your choice.
• Open the “set properties” action for the Dashboard in Cognos Connection and select “View the search path, ID and URL” in the top right corner, then copy the “Default action URL” and make the same change as listed above and save in a bookmark.

Printing and Saving Business Insight Dashboards

Note:

The focus of this article is for Cognos Administrators that applies whether you are using QueryVision’s Web Parts for Cognos or accessing Cognos BI servers via Cognos Connection.

Many, if not most organizations want Single Sign On (SSO) for Cognos access for their users. While relatively straightforward for NTLM (using REMOTE_USER), Kerberos is more difficult, partly due to the inherent complexity and manual nature of setting up Kerberos in Windows with Active Directory and partly due to some gotcha’s when making changes to Active Directory accounts and properties

Configuration is covered in the following document [link] in detail, but I’ll highlight some of the issues we’ve encountered over the years. This guide applies to II 6, 7 and 7.5 although the exact instructions may differ. These settings were tested with a Windows 2003 server and Windows 2003 native AD domain and IIS 6 with Cognos 10.1 FP1.

Enabling single sign to Cognos BI Servers for Active Directory (PDF)

It covers 3 scenarios for Active Directory/SSO

• [Cognos] Native Active Directory using Kerberos
• [Cognos] Native Active Directory using NTLM/Remote User
• [Cognos] LDAP access for Active Directory using NTLM/Remote User

The single most important issues to watch for are:

SSO in general

• Disable anonymous access in IIS for the Cognos Virtual Directories/URLs and enable Integrated Windows Authentication

• Ensure these security settings propagate to cgi-bin, etc.
• Set the Gateway namespace to the Active Directory namespace.

Kerberos SSO

• Enable Kerberos Delegation for the IIS server and Cognos server service accounts (computer or domain user account used as service account)
• Remove the singleSignOnOption = IdentityMapping for the Active Directory Namespace
• Reboot all machines (see below)

NTLM SSO

• ensure singleSignOnOption = IdentityMapping are added exactly as shown (case sensitive)

It is highly recommended to re-boot the Cognos Server, IIS server and any workstation(s) used for browser testing for SSO – particularly after changes to Active Directory (e.g. change user account or service account “trust for delegation” properties).

These (type of) changes appear to take some time to propagate from the Active Directory Domain Controller to other computers (or VMs) in the domain. Rebooting ensures that the machines re-sync/re-login to Active Directory for up to date properties. The symptoms are that changes to either AD or Cognos Configuration for Kerberos related properties don’t act as expected.

Enabling Single Sign on for Cognos Connection with Active Directory

In Part 1, we talked about use of system.xml files, permissions and the various hide/show options for controlling what individual users and groups see both in Cognos Connection and in QueryVisions’ Web parts.

In Part 2, we  look at controlling access to Portal Tabs, including Public Folders and the users My Folders.

Controlling what Portal Tabs users can see – which includes Public Folders, My Folders and Portal Pages – is dependent on system.xml settings, permissions and administrator actions in the Cognos Connection Administration->Security UI.

Directory Administrators within Cognos Connection can add or remove portal tabs for a user through the Administration->Security interface by clicking on the set properties icon or More… (as shown below) for a user, then selecting “Set Portal Tabs”.

This can also be done for the default profile and published for new users (those who have not yet signed in).

Unless read permissions for a user have been removed (by an Adminstrator) from the users account object for the user, they can add those portal tabs back using the portal tab options icon:

This portal tab option/control can be hidden from one or more users in the system.xml file using the option <CC_VIEW_TABS_OPTIONS/>.

By default, Cognos Connection shows all tabs referenced in the user account preferences regardless of the user’s access permissions for the associated pages. The tabs that a user cannot access are flagged, and a message is displayed when the tab is clicked.

Inaccessible tabs (Portal pages where the user does not have permission) can be hidden using the hideInaccessibleTabs parameter –in the system.xml file.

QueryVision’s Navigation Web Part will honour the Portal Tab settings in the current users Account object, and not show Public Folders or My Folders if the Portal Page settings in the Account object do not include them.

Unlike Cognos Connection, the QueryVision Navigation Web Part does not give users the ability to add Public Folders or My Folders, if they have been removed from their Personal Settings.

The Navigation Web Part provides the option to show or hide Public Folders and/or My Folders. This “overrides” the Cognos Connection settings in the sense that a QueryVision Web Part administrator can hide Public Folders or My Folders in spite of the fact that Cognos Connection settings allow the user to see either or both Public Folders or My Folders. But it cannot show Public Folders or My Folders if they are denied by Cognos Connection permissions or the various hide/show mechanisms described here.

As an alternative, the QueryVision Navagation Web Part can specify a custom folder to show in place of Public Folders and/or My Folders.

Having described how you can change the Portal Tabs initially available to users or to permanently remove their ability to access to Public Folders or My Folders – why would you want to do this?

There are two basic scenarios:

• Hide My Folders – you don’t want users creating either new Reports or other Cognos objects, or their own Report Views or equivalents.
• Hide Public Folders – you want to use a Portal Page as the starting point for users vs. Pubic Folders. That Portal Page typically would include a top level dashboard/multi-aspect report, plus a specific folder (a child/descendent of Public Folders) which constrains what content (sub-folders, reports and other Cognos content) they have access to.

Showing and Hiding Reports – Part 2 – including and excluding tabs