Cognos Report Net (CRN)

Cognos Connection

What is CRN Cognos Connection?

Cognos Connection is the portal to for users to access Cognos ReportNet. The
portal provides a single point to all information available within Cognos
ReportNet. You can use the portal for all of your reporting needs.

Administrators use the Cognos Connection Portal to administer the servers,

optimize performance, and set access permissions based on security
requirements. They also use the portal for scheduling and distributing reports.

Administrators also have the ability to apply one of the four available skins to
change the appearance of the portal’s interface.

This workshop will cover the general use of Cognos Connection. It will review the
general layout, and throughout the exercise, we will modify the look and feel with
the use of its predefined skins and changing the Language that the product uses
for displaying content.
Getting Started

1. On the Start page, double-click the CRN Cognos Connection icon

2. Once the application is finished resetting, CRN Cognos Connection will

launch

3. When prompted to logon, the User ID is: Administrator, there is no

password and click OK

General Layout of Cognos Connection:

• This will display the Welcome page as shown:

• From the Welcome page, you will see a number of links

• On the top left area of the screen are Public Folders and My Folders
tabs
• These two tabs are where your reports and packages reside

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1. Select Public Folders link

• Notice the two entries listed - these are called Packages ( )

• Any previously created reports will reside within one of the

packages in this list

2. Go back to the main screen by clicking on the Welcome link near the top
left of the screen

• On the top right area of the screen there a number of other links,
including Preferences

• Preferences is a summary of your logon information for the current

session. For example, in Preferences you are able to change the
language used in ReportNet

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3. Click the Preferences link near the upper right corner

• In the list of available settings, under the Regional Options

heading, you will see settings labeled: Product Language and
Content Language

4. Under the Product language heading, check the radio button for Use the
following language, and now in the Product language drop-down
menu, change the language to French

5. Under the Content language heading, check the radio button for Use the
following language, and then from the Content language drop-down
menu, also change the language to French

6. Click OK at the bottom of the page to return to the Welcome page

• You will notice that the User Interface is now using French

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To change this back to English:

7. Click the Préférences link in the top-right area of the screen – Note that
this is labeled: Préférences (in French).

8. From the drop-down menu, under Langue du produit, change the

language back to English, by clicking anglais

9. From the drop-down menu, under Langue du contenu, change the

language back to English, by clicking anglais

10. Click OK

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Skins

The look of Cognos Connection can be changed quickly by using one of the four
predefined Skins that are included in the product.

Let’s take a look at changing the default Skin, to manipulate the look and feel of
the Portal.

1. Right-click the Windows Start button and select Explore

2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\cognos\crn\webcontent\skins

As you can see, when skins is expanded, this folder contains the four predefined
skins that you can quickly apply to Cognos Connection

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These four predefined Skins come in the form of four folders:
• skin_contrast
• skin_contemporary
• skin_classic
• current

To apply a different Skin to Cognos Connection, you simply rename the folder
containing the new skin to: current

Before doing this, it is good practice to make a copy of each skin folder in case
you need to revert back to them at a later date

3. To change the current skin that Cognos Connection is using, rename the
folder named current to current_original

4. Now rename the folder named skin_classic to current

• Cognos Connect will always read from the skin named current

5. Now, bring up the browser that has Cognos Connection open (if it is not
still open, then go to http://localhost/crn in the browser)

6. From the Internet Explorer menu bar, select Tools, and select Internet
Options

7. On the General tab, click Delete Files… located under Temporary

Internet Files

8. Place a checkmark in the checkbox next to Delete all offline content,

and click OK

• This will clear the browser cache so that no previous versions of

the Portal will be loaded from memory and we ensure that the one
we have selected will be the one displayed

9. Click OK once again

10. Select the View menu, and click Refresh to refresh the browser

• Now Cognos Connection is using the Classic skin

The same process can be used to change the User Interface to any of the four
skins.

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Security

As mentioned in the beginning of this workshop, Cognos Connection is the Portal

to Cognos ReportNet. One of the primary uses of Cognos Connection is to
Administrate ReportNet. A few examples of Administrating ReportNet can
include: setting up Access Privileges to Packages, Folders or Reports, Schedule
Reports or locking down tools

Cognos Configuration has an internal namespace that can be used as a

container for the users that reside in your Authentication Source.

Note that ReportNet can use a number of different Authentication sources, such
as LDAP Servers, Series7 Namespaces and Active Directory Server, just to
name a few.

The internal namespace is labeled Cognos and has several different predefined
Roles within it, so that you can place different users into different Roles based on
what you would like to grant them access to or deny them from. By default,
ReportNet places the Everyone Group into the System Administrator’s Role
so that no user is locked down until you explicitly set security

What we are going to do in the next steps is to add a specific user to the
Administrator’s Role and then remove the Everyone Group from being
System Administrators so that we have an explicit Administrative user. We
will then take a look at the capabilities of Administrative Users versus non-
Administrative users within Cognos Connection.

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Adding a user to the System Administrator’s Role:

1. From the upper right area of the Welcome screen, click the Tools link,
and then select Directory to display your Namespaces

• You will see a namespace named Series 7 and another named

Cognos

• The Cognos namespace is the internal namespace that is used as

a container for your users that reside in your Authentication Source.
The user we will add resides in the Series 7 authentication source

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2. To see a list of all the predefined Roles within the namespace, click on the
Cognos namespace

• Each role can have its own set of privileges so that the users that
you place in these roles will inherit the same privileges

3. Next to the System Administrators role, click the More… link, then click
the Set members… link

• This displays the current members that reside in the System

Administrators role and as you can see the Everyone group is
currently a member of this role

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First we will add an explicit user from our Series 7 namespace into this role and
then remove the Everyone group

1. To display the Add Entries screen, click the Add… link

2. From the Navigate tab, click the Series7 namespace, check the checkbox
labeled Show users in the list and finally select the folder labeled Users

• This will display the users that are within our Series 7 namespace

3. Check the checkbox beside the user named Administrator, click the Add
button and then click OK

• You will see that the user named Administrator is now a member
of the System Administrators role

Now that we have explicitly added a user to this role it is safe to remove the
Everyone group

4. Check the checkbox beside the Everyone role and click the Remove link

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We will now be able to use the explicit user named Administrator to use the
administrative capabilities within Cognos Connection

5. To return to the Welcome screen, click OK and then click Return from the
top right area of the screen

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Let’s explore some differences between an Administrative user and a non-
Administrative user

• To see the options available as Administrator, click the Tools link in

the top right area of the screen

• The following tools are available from the tools drop down menu:
• Directory
• Capabilities
• Schedule Management
• Server Administration
• Deployment

Directory
We covered the general use of Directory when we removed the Everyone group
and added a user to the System Administrator role. The tool is used to create
and manage such thi ngs as users/roles, data sources and printers

Capabilities
This allows you to administer the users or roles that will have access to both
Reporting tools and the Administration tool.

Schedule Management
Using this tool allows you to view and manage schedules, view and manage the
Run Activities, and view report outputs. This tool is available for all users.

Server Administration
Used to view and manage dispatchers and services, and to tune performance.

Deployment
Used to export from a source environment, and then import into a target
environment

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Notice that in the top right corner of the screen are links to both reporting tools:
• Query Studio
• Report Studio
You can learn more about using these tools in their corresponding workshops,
but in this workshop it is just important to be aware of them

1. Click the Log Off link and then click Log on again…

2. Log on as Susie, leave the password blank, and click OK

• You will notice that from the Tools menu all you have available is
the Schedule Management tool, and also notice that Query Studio
and Report Studio are still available

Let’s deny Susie access to Report Studio by changing the permissions to this
tool in the Capabilities section:

1. Click the Log Off link and then click Log on again…

2. Log on as Administrator, leave the password blank , and click OK

3. From the Tools menu select Capabilities, and click the Set Properties
icon from the Actions column for Report Studio

• This will open the Set Properties screen for the Report Studio
capability

4. Select the Permissions link, and ensure that the Override the access
permissions acquired from parent entry checkbox is checked, and then
click the Add… link

5. Check the checkbox labeled Show users in the list, then click on the
Series7 namespace

6. Select the Users folder and check the checkbox next to susie and click
Add, and finally click OK

7. Now that Susie is part of the list, check the checkbox next to her name,
check the Deny checkbox next to the Execute, and then click Apply

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 8. Click OK, and then click Log Off

9. Now Log on as Susie by clicking the Log on again… link and enter in
Susie as a username, leave the password blank, and click OK

Once you are logged in you will see that Susie is now only able to use Query
Studio and is no longer able to open Report Studio. We have successfully
denied access to Report Studio for the user named Susie

• Click the Log Off link and Close the browser

• Close all Windows

Congratulations…you have completed this workshop!

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