Automatic creation of detail reports based on master report results

[hespora]

Hi there,


(sorry, this is probably not the entirely correct board for this question, but I don't know which would be correct)

So I have a report, let's call it "master", which will run once a month and which will return a list of values for [Data item] for which a certain set of criteria measured in that master report is true for that month.

What I want to automate is to then create a single "detail" report for each value for [data item], which could be passed as a prompt into that detail report.

Can something like this be done in Cognos?


Thanks,
hespora.

[AnalyticsWithJay]

I'm not sure your question is entirely clear.

Why do you need a report for each value? Does each value contain a completely different report layout and completely different set of rules for the detail?

[hespora]

What I'm doing is this: The master report compares customers' sales values for past month against the 12 months before that. Results are filtered for customers that are underperforming below expectation.

For these customers I then want to run a detail report (as the master is aggregated to not include product lines or alike) to send to the sales rep relevant to that customer. Since that recipient is potentially different for each detail report, I need a single report for each value returned by the master.

[AnalyticsWithJay]

Are you familiar with Drill Throughs in Cognos? What you're looking to accomplish is very common. You can create a drill through where you pass the customer ID to the detail report. The detail report will have a mandatory prompt filter on customer ID. You can also pass other parameters if you wish, such as dates, etc.

As for the e-mailing part, this is also common functionality in Cognos known as Bursting. You create a master-detail relationship in your detail report, where you specify the relationship between Customer and Sales Rep. You can choose to have the report run and automatically e-mail or save the report in the sales rep's folder.

You don't want to maintain more than one report -- that is a support/maintenance nightmare and a very costly one every time a change is necessary. You can also create Report Views if you want to have some pre-defined prompts, etc.

[hespora]

oooooooooh, now I get where we're speaking about different things.

You are right, I do *not* want to maintain multiple reports. I want to maintain one master report and one detail report, with the detail report having prompts that I was looking to fill dynamically from the master report.

I will have to look into bursting then, I guess. I've never used it due to the simple fact that if a burst report fails, you always have to re-do everything. Drill through is really not an option, as the master report is not supposed to be accessible for the report recipients.

[AnalyticsWithJay]

Drill through is really not an option, as the master report is not supposed to be accessible for the report recipients.
...
I've never used [bursting] due to the simple fact that if a burst report fails, you always have to re-do everything.

We're slowly getting on the same page :). You could still create drill throughs from the master report in case anyone who has access can simply browse to the details without having to re-run another set of report and prompts.

As for the detail report, bursting is what you're looking for. I'm not sure what you mean that if the burst fails you have to re-do everything. Once bursting is setup, you don't have to re-do anything. If one of the recipient mail deliveries fail for some reason, you can always re-schedule for one recipient by running the detail report. The rest of the recipients will still receive their report.