Rewriting fiscal years structure, copy of a cube and other questions

[simontanguay]

Hi,

Our company is moving to a new fiscal calendar. In a nutshell, the fiscal year used to begin in April and now it will begin in February (with a few more caveats). I'm replacing someone on this job and wasn't supposed to have to deal with Cognos so I have the learn the software pretty much from scratch.

Our datasource are csv files, from which the cube are built once a week. The strategy adopted, for a lack of a better one, is to rewrite the period and trimester in the files using a script and reload the cube.

I managed to create a cube of the production cube and publish it with a new pack name so I can do my tests in this test cube. So I have both the production cube and the test cube in Cognos Connection, with the test cube showing the new fiscal calendar.

My biggest concern is that I don't have the reports, query and analysis in the test cube. If I copy them in my new cube using the copy function in Cognos Connection, I have to edit manually to pack associated with each reports. Then, I have to edit manually every fields of the report the use fields in the test cube. It's just too much work for  creating a test environment. Is there another way to import the reports, query and analysis without having to edit everything manually?

If not, then it means many of the test will have to be carried out in the production environment. If I understand correctly, I can simply keep a backup of the data directories on the server (Cube, Deploy, as they are named) and put them back if something goes wrong. Still, it means the environment will be unavailable for users for a little while, which is a problem.

Users also would like that we create a parallel structure to the fiscal one, to represent the calendar years. From what I read, it's possible to have more than one "Date" structure in the same cube but I find the documentation thin on the matter.

I have "ghost" elements left in the structure after I rebuilt it. For instance, My fiscal year 2015 has 13 periods, with the period P1 showing two times in the dimension explorer in Report Studio. Hopefully, when I put 2015 on a report, only 12 periods are shown (there is no double), but it's still troubling. Did anyone ever experienced that issue?

If I find the operation too risky, we will probably hire a contractor, but it's still important that I master the process well and I plan for any possible issues.