Do we need to have a local installation for using Cognos for Office? How do we access it? Is it a tool like FM that we open locally or lis report studio that we open from the portal
It is an addin for Word, Excel and PowerPoint on an end-user's local machine. It provides access to content from the Cognos server from within these office components on the user's machine.
Here is a link to a white paper detailing the key features:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/for-microsoft-office/features-and-benefits.html?S_CMP=wspace
Hope that helps,
MF.