Does a user have the ability in C8 to create a report output that puts the result onto a network drive or desktop folder?
Our users schedule reports and would like to have the result stored on their network or PC environment.
Yes.
From Cognos Support KB Article:
Bursting to a file system
When Cognos 8 is installed, a capability to save bursted reports as files in the server’s local file system is not enable. In order to enable this, follow these instructions from the Cognos support article #1029333.1
1. Log into Cognos Connection as a user with administrative privileges.
2. In the Tools menu, click Server Administration.
3. Enable the Services option, and then click Content Manager Service in the drop down list immediately below.
4. Click the Set Properties icon for the Content Manager service to be changed.
5. Click the Settings tab.
6. Click Edit... under the Value column for Advanced Properties.
7. Enable Override the settings acquired from the parent entry.
8. In the first Parameter column, place the value CM.OUTPUTLOCATION. In the associated value column, type the name of the disk space that you would like to write the report outputs to. This value can be either local to the server, or can be a network location -- either UNIX network drives such as mounted drives or NAS drives or can also be set to use Windows network space.
9. Click OK.
10. Start Cognos Configuration for the installation that the above changes were made for.
11. In the Data Access section, select Content Manager.
12. In the Content Manager - Component Properties pane, set the value of the Save report outputs to a file system to True.
13. Save the configuration and restart.
also do note that the reports saved to file will not have meaning full names, in order to have meaning full names please refer to this thread.
http://www.cognoise.com/community/index.php?topic=2918.0