COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 4: Deploy Cubes and Reports
Web Reports
Test a Connection
Publish to Upfront
PowerPlay Enterprise Server provides several ways to make your data available to authorized
users on the Web. Report authors can publish their findings from a PowerPlay client application
directly to Upfront. As an administrator, you can bulk publish or update reports and cubes to
Upfront or Cognos Connection using PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration or the
ppadmtool command-line interface. In addition to the portal, cubes and reports that you add are,
by default, included in a PowerPlay Web table of contents.
Web reports are rendered in HTML or PDF format. These industry standard formats allow for a
level of customization to be applied as the reports are generated. You use the Display settings for
cubes and reports to customize the output to the Web.
You can connect to a cube or report to ensure that it is accessible from the Web and properly
configured.
PowerPlay Enterprise server starts the Web browser and connects to the cube or report. For
protected cubes, you must provide authentication information, such as a user ID or password,
before the Web page appears in the browser.
If you can't connect, you may be able to determine the cause of the error from logged auditing
information.
Steps
1. In PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, select a cube or report.
2. From the Tools menu, click Open with Browser.
3. If authentication properties are defined for this cube, enter the required information and click
Log On.
Notes
• The Open with Browser command is not available for cubes set for Windows access only.
You can publish cubes and reports as Upfront NewsItems to provide Web users with single click
access to the data in PowerPlay Web Explorer and PowerPlay Web Viewer. If you publish a folder,
all the cubes and reports in the folder are published to an Upfront NewsBox. In order to publish
cubes and reports from PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration to Upfront, Access Manager
security (p. 24) must be set.
Both the NewsBox to be published to and the Upfront server group are folder object properties
and must be set before attempting to publish. The PowerPlay Enterprise Server Administration
must be secured against the same namespace as the NewsIndex before attempting to publish. If the
server is not secured, you are prompted to secure it when you click Publish to Portal. Also, the
Default Portal property (p. 84) must be set to Upfront.
You cannot publish to Upfront any PowerPlay Portable Report files (.ppx) that have local cube
references, only those with remote cube references. PowerPlay Portable Report files are published
from PowerPlay client applications and can be added to the PowerPlay Enterprise Server (p. 41).
You can update all .ppx files that have local cube references to have remote cube references
instead. For more information, see "Update Reports to Reference Remote Cubes" (p. 42).
Users can connect to Upfront from their Web browsers using the following URL:
http://server name/cognos/
Steps
1. In PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, select a cube, report, or folder.
Note: Do not publish content located in the imported_reports folder.
2. From the Tools menu, click Publish to Portal.
Enterprise Server Guide 49