Cognos Changes Affecting UCSD

Cognos alternates casting null date fields as integers and varchar. The report developer can tell Cognos to set this field null values to a null date by using cast (NULL, date).

Two Issues Resolved

Thank you to all who have provided us with feedback on unexpected behavior in Cognos DEV.  Please continue to let us know if you are experiencing anything unexpected.

DUO Push From Scheduled Reports

We have found an issue related to multiple DUO pushes occurring from Schedule Reports. When the scheduled report begins running a DUO push is initiated and the scheduled run will not continue until the DUO push is acknowledged.  This is a major concern and requires resolution prior to moving forward with the upgrade.  

DUO Push During Navigation

We have found an issue related to multiple DUO pushes occurring when users are navigating between the My Content are and Team Content area. 

We are currently researching the cause and resolution of these issues with the goal of continuing our Cognos upgrade on schedule.

Help us Investigate

Please continue to email busintel@ucsd.edu when you encounter something unexpected.  If you can provide the additional information seen below in your initial email that will help use investigate:

• What browsers have you tried?

• What version of browsers are you on?

• What happened when you cleared your cache and restarted your browser?

• Are you on a Mac or PC?

• What time did it occur? How frequently?

• What exactly were you doing?

The latest Cognos Analytics (11.2.4) upgrade has been released!  You can find information on what’s new in this upgrade here: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cognos-analytics/11.2.0?topic=whats-new

You can also watch a YouTube video of new features: Cognos Analytics 11.2 New Features .

Cognos developer report testing at the beginning of the upgrade is critical to a timely and successful upgrade.

High Level Plan

We will follow our standard upgrade procedures listed below. 

All upgrades for Cognos Analytics occur in place. High level, the strategy for all upgrades is:

1. ITS-BIA will review the upgrade in our sandbox prior to planning an upgrade of DEV

2. Perform upgrades of the DEV environment on the weekend before the 3rd week of a month as this is generally the quietest period of the month for most teams.

3. Allow two weeks for review of the upgrade in the DEV environment.

   1. At the end of the week a GO/ROLLBACK determination will be made.

   2. GO – the upgrade is applied to QA over the weekend following the DEV upgrade. (Upgrade is NOT applied to PROD.)

   3. ROLLBACK – the upgrade is rolled back from DEV

   4. During the two week period where DEV has been upgraded and QA / PROD have not, all teams will be in a “code freeze” in that no migrations from DEV can occur.

4. Allow one week for review of the upgrade in the QA environment.

   1. At the end of the week a GO/ROLLBACK determination will be made.

   2. GO – the upgrade is applied to PROD over the weekend following the QA upgrade.

   3. ROLLBACK – the upgrade is rolled back from DEV and QA.

   4. During the one week period where DEV and QA have been upgraded and PROD has not, all teams will be in a “code freeze” in that no migrations to PROD can occur. Migrations from DEV to QA may be conducted.

5. Upgrade the PROD environment.

   1. Based on GO determination from both Cognos QA and Cognos DEV environments based directly on your feedback.

Upgrade Process

Given that strategy, the plan for the upgrade from 11.1.7 (current) to 11.2.4 is as follows:

Calendar layout at bottom of email.

1. Now thru 5:00 PM, Friday, August 4:  ITS-BIA will review the upgrade in our sandbox prior to planning an upgrade of DEV.  The 11.2.4 upgrade has already been installed on our sandbox.

   1. BONUS: Monday, February 6 thru 5:00 PM, Friday, February 10: Cognos Developers will be allowed into the Cognos Sandbox for a preview

2. 5:00 PM on Friday, August 4: 

   1. A backup of the DEV content store will be conducted.  This will be insurance against any unforeseen issue during the upgrade process.

   2. The admin team will perform the upgrade of the DEV environment.

3. Post DEV upgrade Friday, August 4 thru 5:00 PM Thursday, August 17:

   1. All development teams to review content in Cognos DEV and test for issues related to the upgrade.

   2. Any issues are to be reported by sending an email to busintel@ucsd.edu

   3. If an issue is deemed critical, a rollback of DEV to 11.1.7 will be scheduled as soon as possible.

   4. NO MIGRATIONS TO QA/PROD can occur as the content from the upgraded environment will not work in environments on an earlier version.

4. Friday, August 18

   1. GO/ROLLBACK determination for QA upgrade will be made.

   2. GO – the upgrade is applied to QA only over the weekend following the DEV upgrade. 

      1. This will be the determination if no new issue(s) are found in the upgraded version or if any new issue noted is deemed insignificant enough to move forward.

   3. ROLLBACK – the upgrade is rolled back from DEV

      1. This will be the determination only if new issues are found in the upgraded version and those issues are deemed significant.

5. 5:00 PM on Friday, August 18 (based on GO determination in previous step):

   1. A backup of the QA content store will be conducted.  This will be insurance against any unforeseen issue during the upgrade process.

   2. The admin team will perform the upgrade of the QA environment.

6. Post QA upgrade Friday, August 18 thru 5:00 PM Thursday, August 24:

   1. All development teams to review content in Cognos QA and work with end users to test for issues related to the upgrade.

   2. Any issues are to be reported by sending an email to busintel@ucsd.edu

   3. If an issue is deemed critical, a rollback of QA and DEV to 11.1.7 will be scheduled as soon as possible.

   4. NO MIGRATIONS TO PROD can occur as the content from the upgraded environment will not work in environments on an earlier version.  Content may be migrated from DEV to QA.

7. Friday, August 25

   1. GO/ROLLBACK determination for PROD upgrade will be made.

   2. GO – the upgrade is applied to PROD over the weekend following the QA upgrade. 

      1. This will be the determination if no new issue(s) are found in the upgraded version or if any new issue noted is deemed insignificant enough to move forward.

   3. ROLLBACK – the upgrade is rolled back from DEV and QA. 

      1. This will be the determination only if new issues are found in the upgraded version and those issues are deemed significant.

8. 5:00 PM on Friday, August 25 (based on GO determination in previous step):

   1. A backup of the PROD content store will be conducted.  This will be insurance against any unforeseen issue during the upgrade process.

   2. The admin team will perform the upgrade of the PROD environment.

Please take note of the 3 week period from Friday, August 4 through Friday, August 25 where content may not be migrated to PROD.  Please be sure all required content is migrated from DEV to PROD prior to the DEV upgrade at 5:00 PM on Friday, August 4.  Please be sure all required content is migrated from QA to PROD prior to the QA upgrade at 5:00 PM on Friday, August 25.

Calendar

Sandbox Testing

Currently, only the Cognos provided packages are available to test against.

Team content and Samples have not fully been moved into the Sandbox, please ignore them for now. Not all data sources have been moved into the Sandbox so not all reports will work.

Sign into https://cog-dev01.ucsd.edu/ibmcognos/bi/

Test	Ask Yourself

Test	Ask Yourself
Person menu in the upper right	Can you see your Profile and settings? Can you shut off the Welcome banner? (see settings)
Hamburger menu in the upper left	Can you find the ‘Content’ area? Can you open a ‘New’ report? Can you upload data?
Content area	Can you see your ‘My content’? Can you change from Tiles to List view? Can you open a report from within ‘Get started’?
Report Development area	Can you connect a new report to the “GO data warehouse (query) found in the folder Team content / Samples / Models? Note: there are objects within this package so once you pick the package, just click Open. Open   Can you toggle into and out of edit mode? Can you add a filter? Can you run a report? Can you run a report in a different format? Can you save the report to your My Content