Cognos Finance Tips & Techniques

Part I

Aimee Sousa

Cognos

CF Security

• Master Password – C8 security– Access Manager security

• V7.4 MR1 integrated with Cognos8– Add groups, roles, users to CF– http://server_name/cognos8/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi– No backward capability

Dimension Attributes

• All dimensions can have user-defined attributes

• Can sometimes replace a component dimension• Can be used in Account calculations -

@IN(DIMNAME.ATTRNAME “ID1” “ID2”)– replaces CT and CLASS in account calcs

• Can provide greater flexibility and information in reports

@IN Calculation

Reporting on Attributes

• Attributes can be used in reporting for analysis with the use of system defined filter functions:

• @ATEXT

• @LIST

• @GROUP

• @TOTLIST

• @TOTAL

Item Selection

• Exchange

• Attributes

• Dependencies

• Libraries– Loaded/Embedded– Static/Dynamic

Dependencies

• Increases the efficiency of maintaining reports

• Updates reports automatically when new items added to database

• CF remembers item relationships better than the report author remembers

Saving Libraries

• Done on any Item selection screen– Saves selections and calculations– Can be loaded on any item selection screen that

allows multiple selections

• Done from Select Option– Row libraries– Column libraries– Saves selections, calculations and formatting

Loading Libraries

Embedding Libraries

• Retrieve the current version of the library selections each time the report is loaded

• Only valid for row, column, and page libraries

Static v. Dynamic

• Static – does not change – Items loaded once– Selections remain as they were when loaded until

manual intervention

• Dynamic – changes– library contents, and therefore selected items, can

change based on changes in Define Items (hierarchy or attributes)

Load v. Embed

• Reading/Retrieving library– Load = Define / create

• Can be dynamic– Dependencies

– Embed = Runtime• Can be dynamic

– Dependencies

– Links

Linked

• References the name of a library– Allocation table– Extract module

• Interpreted at runtime (dynamic)

Allocation Libraries

Cognos Finance, moving forward.

Q & A