Hello, i have a question about data loading in contributor model.
We have our own Cognos Analyst and contributor and contributor model for our bosses in different area. We havn’t any rights to this model, so the process looks like copy/paste from excel to contributor.
There are about 50 different templates, so the process is unpleasant as you see.
May be there is a more pleasant way for loading this data?
Have you considered system links? These are links that can be used by contributors in the web grid.
The model is situated on another server, and we have only end planner’s rights and nobody will open another rights for us.
My idea is to make the same application on my server and try to export-import txt files. May be there is better way?
Hello
A system link sounds as if it could be a solution for you. Although it has to be setup by the model administrator, it can be executed/used by a contributor/user in the contributor web grid (Internet Explorer). Once a system link is activated, (the one you want is called Get Data), it appears on the tool bar when you open a node in IE. But this will mean you would need to get the administrator to set this up in the first instance. You would not need to be given further access other than planner, but you may have an issue with having the Get Data extension activated?
This post provides a little more info, http://www.cognoise.com/community/index.php?topic=4645.0
Creating export/import files. In order to load files into the model it will need the administrator of the model to do it. Judging from your post, would they do it?
Regards
Stuart
You can fill the data to the identical cube in Analyst. After that you can export the data to txt file and import into live Contributor. Analyst is more flexible in this terms: you can load data manually or from text file via file maps. Also exporting is also better in Analyst since you can select dimensions and suppress zeros, which will make your export file much smaller.
As Fisherman said either ask you admin for allowing the Get Data extension to use links in your model. But there is not need of designing system links. You can use the 'local link' function to build own links to their sheets. Anyway you will always be limited to load in data to the amount of elist elements that you can open up simultaneously.
You can think of the 'Contributor Excel Addin' as well which has the same restruction of editing a limited amount of elist items or use Analyst to populate all elist items at once (if allowed).
Anyway the way you use Contributor is not as it is meant to be used. It shouldn't be just another frontend to paste in data from Excel but should be your working tool ;)
if you can collect/enter data in excel templates generated from contributor than you can use Quick Load (Get data; i know its not enabled for you).
This is very user friendly and famous among users.
I'd recommend exporting to csv and loading by either Get Data or Import data in CAC (you just send text files to those admins and they load them). Or you can create local links, mapping those csv to Contributor forms, but this you'll have to repeat this process for every elist.
Thank you for your help.
Office gave permission to sent txt files.