1. Cognos Finance Tips & Techniques Part I Aimee Sousa Cognos

2. 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.cgihttp://server_name/cognos8/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi –No backward capability

3. 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

4. @IN Calculation

5. Reporting on Attributes Attributes can be used in reporting for analysis with the use of system defined filter functions: @ATEXT @LIST @GROUP @TOTLIST @TOTAL

6. Item Selection Exchange Attributes Dependencies Libraries –Loaded/Embedded –Static/Dynamic

7. 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

8. 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

9. Loading Libraries

10. Embedding Libraries Retrieve the current version of the library selections each time the report is loaded Only valid for row, column, and page libraries

11. 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)

12. Load v. Embed Reading/Retrieving library –Load = Define / create Can be dynamic –Dependencies –Embed = Runtime Can be dynamic –Dependencies –Links

13. Linked References the name of a library –Allocation table –Extract module Interpreted at runtime (dynamic)

14. Allocation Libraries

15. Cognos Finance, moving forward. Q & A