Emailing Reports to non Cognos users

[Ellie]

Hello Folks,

Please help me with below issue:

We are  trying to integrate cognos with another application(Java Based).Application will create reports in  HTML format.Same report will be created in PDF  format using cognos.

User want to access PDF reports from application portal only.As per requirement reports are  not be stored on cognos connection or scheduled.

I have read about parametrized url,so thinking of creating the same for accessing cognos reports from portal by passing a hard coded prompt.

Prompt will be an ID of the report and in  cognos tables all attributes in report will have relation with report ID.

So,I am hoping that this solution is feasible and there will be no need to save pdf reports on cognos connection?

Now,second part is to deliver these reports to recipients.

Since.Since this system will be operational so user can anytime create report on java application.Will hit the url and obtain PDF report.

Now,requirement is to send an email to this particular user with report as an attachment.

Also,these users will not be cognos users.I have searched about passing email as an parameter in url but no luck.

Thought about bursting the report and sending emails,but as system is operational ,mail needs to be sent to particular recipient only when he logs on application and create report.

So bursting and scheduling does not seem  relevant here as report can be created anytime.

Please let me know if there is any other approach which could be followed for mailing?

[Lynn]

You can use a parameterized URL to run a report and have it open in the Cognos Viewer as a PDF, but the user must be a Cognos user in order to execute the request defined by the URL.

There is no way for a non-user to run a Cognos report. This makes no sense if you think about it. Why would anyone ever pay for a licence if they could run a report without one?

Reports may be run to an external file share location and accessed from there, but those outputs would likely need to be scheduled and run by authorized Cognos users since non-users wouldn't be allowed to execute the report on the fly, as we've already discussed.

I would also caution that Cognos licencing can be a complicated topic. Your best bet is to consult your IBM representative and ensure that whatever solution is employed complies with your license agreement.

[hespora]

I cannot for the life of me find it right now, but I believe I read a post on Paul's blog once about such a concept... security would be handled on the front end application, and based on the security level of the actual user, a particular dummy user would be employed by the application to access cognos and grab the reports.

[Ellie]

Thank you very much for responding.

For accessing report from url, a generic id and password will be created which will have access to cognos. The same login credentials will be passed in the url.

I think this way we can at least access the reports?

Is it possible to burst the reports to non cognos users?

[hespora]

Can definitely do that, yea.

[Lynn]

I will repeat my earlier caution about understanding your licensing agreement. If your license specifies named users then using a generic account for authentication is violating your license.

[Lynn]

And this post makes some points about embedding credentials in a URL.

http://www.cognoise.com/index.php?topic=27150.0

[MFGF]

For accessing report from url, a generic id and password will be created which will have access to cognos. The same login credentials will be passed in the url.

You need to be very careful here. If you are using a named-user licensing model (as opposed to a PVU based model) then generic users are explicitly disallowed - this is stated in the license documentation. If you adopt this approach and IBM subsequently run a Software License Review, you'd be liable for some big penalties, I suspect.

Is it possible to burst the reports to non cognos users?

Not without a license. Reports using bursting necessitate a license for *all* receiving users - typically an Information Distribution license. Again, if you implement this to non-licensed users and subsequently get selected for SLR, you'd pay big penalties for breach of license.

Heed Lynn's advice here and talk to your IBM account manager to make sure you understand what you can and can't do within your current license terms.

Cheers!

MF.