Is there a reliable way to identify if content is being used?
I have about 19,500 reports in my environment. I can't believe that all of that is useful. I thought I had identified all content that had not been used in a very long time. I wrote a query against the audit database that looked for...
- reports, report views, and dashboards that had been used interactively or on a schedule
- reports that are a dependency for a report view that had been used interactively or on a schedule
- reports that are a dependency for a history (output) that had been viewed
...that had not been used in a very long time.
Then I started deleting unused reports.
Apparently, I was wrong.
I can see in the "past usage" part of Cognos Administration that some reports on my list are scheduled. I know from talking to folks in the business units that the outputs of these scheduled reports have definitely been viewed recently.
COGIPF_RUNREPORT and COGIPF_VIEWREPORT together don't cover all of these cases. In fact, using COGIPF_ACTION and using some magic spells I learned from a level 18 mage doesn't appear to accurately depict all usage of report outputs (static versions stored in Cognos as PDF, Excel, etc.).
Is there a reliable way to identify if a report has been used directly, as a report view, on a schedule, or its saved output has been accessed?
Most of my logging is set to "Basic". Audit logging level for query service is "Request".
Most folks tell me I'm doing too much logging. I think I have been misled.
As a workaround, I created a query that tells me when a schedule is scheduled and attributed each scheduled time as a usage to the associated report or report view.
Determine the usage counts for the reports, dashboards, and report views.
For schedules, assume 1 run (based on the schedule, not an actual, logged run) = 1 usage
Attribute schedule "usage" to the report or report view.
Attribute report view usage to the report.
Now I think I have what I need. Interesting SQL exercise, but frustrating that I can't get this directly from the audit system.