COGNOS Business Intelligence Series 7

Chapter 5: Provide Drill-through Access
Note: This creates the drill through filter expressions that you will need for creating the
Cognos ReportNet target report.
4. Click the Drill Through button on the toolbar.
The Assist Drill Through page appears. The PowerPlay cube metadata section lists the items
available for drill through, and the filter expressions section lists the parameterized equivalent
that you will build into the target report.
5. Copy the first item you require from the filter expression section to the clipboard, using
CTRL+C.
6. Leave the Assist Drill Through page open as you create the target report.
Create the Target Report
In Cognos Report Studio, you create the target report to which this cube will drill through.
Steps
1. Open Cognos Report Studio and click New.
2. Create a new report by adding query items and any other objects.
3. From the Data menu, click Filters.
4. Click the Add button, and in the Tabular Model Filter dialog box, create the parameterized
filter in the Expression Definition box.
Tip: Use CTRL+V to paste the filter expression you copied to the clipboard when you selected
filters for the target report. Return to the Assist Drill Through page and copy the
corresponding Parameter values entry.
For example, if the value of the filter expression in the Assist Drill Through page is
[Country]=?Country? and the corresponding Parameter values entry is United States, you will
copy and paste the values into the Expression Definition box to get [Country]=?United States?
5. Click OK.
6. In the Usage box, click Optional.
Tip: If you do not make the filter optional, a prompt page will appear each time a user drills
through to the report. You may find it useful to leave the usage set to Required permanently,
to ensure that users do not retrieve large datasets, or to Disabled temporarily, during the
development of the report.
7. Click Save to save the report.
Note: The report name and case format (uppercase, lowercase or mixed case) must match the
target report name that you built into your model in Transformer (or in PowerPlay Connect
for other OLAP servers). For more information, see "Set Up Drill-through Targets in
Transformer" (p. 62).
For more information about creating reports and filters, see the Cognos Report Studio User
Guide.
Disable Cognos ReportNet or Cognos 8 Drill Through Assistance
After you have created your target reports, tested the drill through functionality, and before
deployment to production users, you will need to disable the Assist Drill Through page. By
disabling the Assist Drill Through page, users drill through directly to the target reports.
Steps
1. In PowerPlay Enterprise - Server Administration, click the cube.
2. From the Edit menu, click Properties.
3. In the Settings tab, expand the Drill Through folder.
4. In the Cognos ReportNet/Cognos 8 Assistance box, click Disabled.
5. Click OK.
70 Cognos PowerPlay (R)