Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

December Cognos Office Hours

will be canceled due to winter break

VM migrations

Cognos servers need to move to new VM

Cognos DEV - is done

Cognos QA - will need a downtime

Cognos Prod - should be transparent, supported by enough servers that we can move one at and time and still have Cognos Prod available

Winter Break

Cognos will be available.

Cognos migration into Cognos Prod will be frozen during the break.

If Cognos Prod becomes unavailable, open a ticket with ITS and they will page the BIA team.

If Cognos QA/DEV become unavailable, open at ticket with ITS and it will be addresses as soon as Winter break.

January 2025 Topic

Data Dictionary package > How to use and add to reports

On BAH, how do I know if data is live (Oracle) or from the day before (FINAH)?

BAH won’t tell you unless the report developer adds it to the details.

Clicking on the link will tell you. Check the URL for oraclecloud (live) or tableau (FINAH) or bianalytics (FINAH in Cognos).

If you see odd report behavior?

1. Ask a teammate if they see the same thing?

2. Try a different browser or try clearing your browser cache.

3. Contact the team that built the report via bah.ucsd.edu > Business Area > Ask question / report issue? link

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

November 2025 Topic

Data Dictionary package > How to use and add to reports

Question

How do I show a null row for a given value?

1. Best option - adjust your join to use multiple fields so you see values when you want and null (b/c it was excluded by the join) when you don’t.

2. Best option - create a new join field concatenating multiple code fields, which becomes the single value you join on.

3. Create another query to bring in all your display fields. Create if/then/else (or CASE Statement) to display when MATCH and null when No Match.

Reminder: If you are doing a filter AFTER doing an outer join any null values you introduce will be excluded by the filter. Tip: move the filter to the first place the data gets added to the report.

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

https://tritongpt.ucsd.edu/chat

Explore Assistants > Data Dictionary Assistant

Can we used to look up field named.

Points at Activity Hub Field list data + Quick Start Guides + Blink + Collab

October 2025 Topic

Data Dictionary package > available for

User Acceptance Testing

Report Development UAT > Should happen in Cognos QA using Hana Prod data.

Activity Hub UAT > Should happen in Cognos DEV using Hana QA data.

Query Performance

Query Settings

Cognos TrainingPreview > Hana Codes

Cognos Optimization TipsPreview

Cognos PerformancePreview

Difference Between Hana and Cognos

Cognos - Business Intelligence web tool that pulls data onto the Cognos server so it can be displayed in a report.

Hana - Physical server that the Activity Hubs are built on. Cognos pulls Activity Hub data from Hana.

Cognos DEV → User selects data from Hana Prod (data source production data), Hana QA (enhancement testing) or Hana Dev (only when BIA directed).

Cognos QA → Automatically pulls from Hana Prod. Can be set up to offer a choice between Hana Prod and Hana QA. Email busintel@ucsd.edu for details.

Cognos Prod → Automatically pulls from Hana Prod.

Difference between Cognos and Tableau

https://blink.ucsd.edu/technology/bi/tools/index.html

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

Q&A: SAH Current Address Start and End date. Are those available?

Student current address and current email are as up to date as the student provides.

Start dates and end dates from ISIS have not yet been added to SAH but can be requested.

Email busintel@ucsd.edu to request the fields.

Q&A: When is data loaded into SAH?

Every night all Activity Hubs load data from the previous day.

Data is as recent as yesterday 11:59:59.999 pm.

See when data loads complete at AH Data Load Status Report.

Q&A: Course planning, pre-requisites, academic plans

Maybe SAH-ClassComponentSchedule-View.

Content from https://educationalinnovation.ucsd.edu/curricular-analytics/

Where is the data coming from? If the data is not in ISIS then it is not in SAH.

List of data sources to be added to SAH (eventually): https://ucsdcollab.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SAH/pages/18350895

Cognos performance / training / help.

Cognos TrainingPreview

Cognos PerformancePreview

New: add flags at lower level for comparison calculations

New: add notes to yourself in customer calculations or filters using

Blink > Tritongpt

Blink > TritonGPT

Use TritonGPT over any other chat so that your question and answer stay within UCSD firewalls.

TritonGPT starts with UCSD information then information from the internet.

Ask questions with specifics like ‘Cognos’ or ‘sql’ or ‘code’.

DO NOT upload UCSD spreadsheets to TritonGPT and ask it to analyze that. Keep UCSD data safe.

Double check your answers, you may need to ask a different way.

Use the Cognos code from TritonGPT with https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_HANA_PLATFORM/4fe29514fd584807ac9f2a04f6754767/20db6dd475191014aa7b978452f92bbd.html .

Provide feedback and vote in TritonGPT to make TritonGPT better.

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

Additional info added to Blink

https://blink.ucsd.edu/technology/bi/tools/cognos/index.html#getting-started-requesting-access

Can we add the ‘how to schedule’ to Blink?

Yes, we will work on that.

Will scheduled reports work in Cognos DEV?

BIA policy is that schedules should not exist in Cognos DEV and are therefore disabled on a regular basis.

You can schedule a report in Cognos DEV, it will work but please disable it immediately after your testing or add an end date to your schedule.

Do the schedule settings move to Prod?

No. You will need to do the scheduled again.

Best Practices for Scheduling

1. Only schedule in Prod

2. For security reasons, send link to the report, not an attachment

3. Space out your schedule, after 7am. If you don’t need it first thing every morning, then don’t schedule it to run first thing, every morning. Avoid the traffic jam!

4. Schedules are sent out from the email of the person who created the schedule. If you don’t want that email to be yours, then set up an Active Directory service account for your team, add that Service Account to your AD security group and schedule using the Service Account.

   1. The Service Account needs an email address but that can be your team email or a ticking tool email.

Why is the if/than/else not displaying first value?

Troubleshooting, will revisit in next week’s Financial ACoP Office hours.

Can you cover more in depth what a report view can do as well as limitations.

Future Topic

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

When you are ready to move your reports into Team Content?

AH Security FAQs | Q: How do I set up a Team FolderPreview

Email busintel@ucsd.edu to request to know who has access to a specific folder in Cognos

Report Developer Responsibilities

BAH > https://bah.ucsd.edu/ > ‘Get Started’ training

https://blink.ucsd.edu/technology/bi/communities/index.html

Row Level Security

EAH Access for Developers and ConsumersPreview

EAH Access for Developers and Consumers | What is my EAH AccessPreview

Cognos Training

Cognos TrainingPreview

Can a customer save their settings?

https://ucsdcollab.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/11177635/Cognos+for+Consumers#Create-a-Linked-Copy-aka-Report-View

Cognos vs Tableau

https://blink.ucsd.edu/technology/bi/tools/index.html

Financial Questions

Start on BAH > Budget & Finance > Ask Question / Report Issue

https://support.ucsd.edu/finance?id=kb_article_view&sys_kb_id=a45d5773c32ce650f8ee3cf905013120&spa=1

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

Can you do a folder search for a parameter?

BIA has a tool that can look that up for you.

The tool can also be used to see how many reports are using a specific field.

Demo: How to create a crosstab with multiple measures.

See recording

Demo: How to create a report view and schedule.

See recording

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

New Page

https://ucsdcollab.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/2479685772

Cognos DEV

Cognos DEV has been really slow

Heather/Rehan will submit a ticket, BIA will look into the system reports but we were not able to recreate the issue during office hours

Question

Why when you download the report to Excel the logo works and sometimes it it doesn’t?

Short answer = Microsoft doesn’t like Excel.

Long answer = the image sits on the Cognos server and every time you download the report it is downloading the same file. We can try different types of image files but the issues is happening in Excel.

.jpeg vs .png

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

Updating Cognos to 12.0.4 IF2

Due to a critical vulnerability that has been identified in our current version of Cognos we are updating Cognos to 12.0.4 IF2.  This will be a minor update to IF2 but will required down times as we update each environment.  IF2 has been tested on the Cognos sandbox and Cognos DEV where we have not seen any impact to reports, which is expected.

 Cognos QA will be updated tonight, Friday, February 21 from 5pm-8pm.

Cognos Prod will be updated, Monday, March 3 from 5pm-10pm.

Eva - CS2404274

drill-thru issue troubleshooting

If you are setting a field to null you may accidentally be passing a null. Try adding a 2nd version of the field w/out the null in order to pass the raw field.

Try adding the filter values to the target report to see exactly what Cognos is passing.

Ines

How can you force a customer to pick one or the other? - Can have customer pre-select which prompt they are going to use. See DOPE report as example.

How can you force a customer to move the selected value to the right? - Taking recommendations, currently adding a different color text is an option but not a guarantee.

Tamra

How do you add a count?

1. Add a unique field per row (ie. Student PID, Employee ID)

2. Select the unique field

3. From the icon menu, select

Tiffany / Kacy

Uriah

Why is a year not showing?

Cognos won’t show a year that has no values. If your filters remove all values from the

Reminder

Cognos CoP Meetings are Recorded

Cognos 12 Upgrade

https://ucsdcollab.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/1803550816

Feedback can be emailed to busintel@ucsd.edu

Cognos Migrations

Migrations are completed at the folder level

Cognos data connection policy

https://ucsdcollab.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/306348175

In Cognos DEV - Can be set up between your -DEV, -QA and your -Prod servers

In Cognos QA - Can be set up between your -QA our -Prod server, should be -Prod server most of the time

In Cognos PROD - Always set up only for your -Prod server

Cognos COP Questions

CS2368148

1. Where can I find the data for unsubmitted (draft form) UCPath SCTs and Direct Retros? I was hoping there is someplace I can go to see all the SCTs that have been created but not submitted. So far my report only shows the pending ones. = Routing to David Mandell

2. I need help inserting a column with data from an excel into my cognos crosstab. We discussed how to do this during last Cognos COP, but were unable to successfully demo it on the call.

3. I need help with the logic for a join. I want to join a table with data from EAH and FinAH with the pay run code on EAH and original transaction reference on FinAH as the join. I was unsuccessful and wanted to troubleshoot why. = Subtotal/Total fields created by Cognos for the display fields were interfering with the join results b/c they were brought into the joined query.

Best Practice

• Add your subtotal/totals for display last

• Create a subquery of your query so you have two queries for your two different display options

Query Calculation Null

Why can’t you add a null field to a crosstab

Next Time

Add Excel budget to FIN crosstab.

• Add Excel to Cognos

• Add Excel to Data module

• Join Excel w/ Data

• Add Budget field to crosstab