hide icon links in the Cognos portal?

1. Stop the Cognos service.



2. Open the installation_location/templates/ps/portal/system.xml file in an XML or text editor.



3. Use the following syntax in the element to hide a user interface element:




For example, the following XML code hides the entire Cognos Connection header and the
New Job button in the toolbar:







4. Restart the Cognos service.

Cognos Server Load Distribution -Tips

Estimating Load Distribution on Cognos Server



In Cognos 8, load is generated by two main factors. They are 1.) User navigation and processing requests, such as requests to run or view reports, and 2.) Requests made through automated or event-driven processes, including scheduled and burst reports. By determining when users are most likely to be using Cognos 8 and submitting processing requests, you can then decide when to schedule automated processes. This allows you to distribute the processing load evenly over time, so that you make the best use of your system resources to maintain optimal performance.



The key to doing this is estimating the number of concurrent users that will be applying load to your Cognos 8 system at any time. Some of the main factors to consider are business hours, business practices, and the geographic distribution of users. These factors can determine how the concurrency rate changes over time, and how you choose to ensure adequate capacity.



A Business Intelligence application in which requests are spread evenly throughout the day has a lower peak concurrency ratio than an application in which the majority of requests are limited to a specific time of day. For example, if users are concentrated in one time zone, there will likely be heavy demand during business hours, followed by a period of low demand after hours. In this situation, you may be able to manage peak and non-peak time periods by sharing hardware resources between interactive and non-interactive processes. You would schedule automated activity to run in non-peak times to produce content for retrieval by interactive users in peak times.



On the other hand, if your user population is distributed across several time zones, user load on the system tends to be spread out over more hours, and there are fewer available non-peak hours for scheduled activities. In this situation, you may choose to dedicate separate hardware resources for interactive and non-interactive use.



Source: Cognos Architecture and Planning Guide 8.1

Auditing your Cognos user activity

When managing a PRODUCTION environment you may be required to log or audit user activity. Cognos 8 comes with a sample model and series of reports that can you help you achieve this goal. Ironically enough, the Framework Manager package is called Audit and can be found at …c8_location/webcontent/samples/Models/Audit/Audit.cpf.



This sample Framework Manager package will give you a glimpse of some of the items that you can capture during a user session. Accompanying the Audit model is an Audit deployment package which has 10-12 reports. Some examples of the reports are:



Execute reports by user -- Lists the reports that were run, by user and by package. It also includes the timestamp and execution time (in milliseconds) for each report. You can select a date and time range, one or more users, one or more packages, and one or more reports.
Execution history by user -- Lists the reports that were run alphabetically, along with the package and timestamp, by user, since the logging
database was created. It includes the total number of times each user ran each report and the total number of reports each user ran

altogether. It also includes the total number of reports run by all users. You can select one or more users for the report. After you run the audit report, you can choose to view the statistics for a particular report or for all reports.

Logon operations by time stamp -- Shows logon and logoff timestamps and operations, by user. It also includes the total number of logons for each user and the total number of logons altogether. You can select the time period and one or more users for the report.
Logon operations by user name -- Shows logon and logoff timestamp by user, along with the type of logoff operation that occurred. It also includes the total number of logons for each user and the total number of logons altogether. You can select one or more users for the report.


You can also refer to Chapter 16 of the Administration and Security Guide for more details on how to implement and modify the Audit package and the Audit reports.

Add your corporate logo to Cognos Connection

You can customize the Cognos Connection interface for Cognos 8 to resemble your corporate branding. In order to do this you must modify the system.xml file and place your logo within your Cognos install path location.



Start off by placing the image in …Cognos 8 install path/c8\webcontent\skins\companyXYZ\branding\
Back up the system.xml file! Open the file using Notepad or an XML editor.
Find the element tag “”.
Uncomment the xml element tag and then add the following section:




















5. Restart the Cognos 8 service for these changes to take affect.

DWH-BI-COGNOS/Report Studio -- use HTML item to get current user

This is an example of using a javascript function in a Cognos Report Studio report to get the current user.
Create a new report in Cognos Report Studio
Create a new prompt page and add a HTML item control to the page.
Add the following .js code to the HTML item
When the form loads you should see an alert box with the current logged in username