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Hi, I'm Max Chartier from Computing Services.

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This video contains some tips and tricks for working in Cognos.

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The first few have to do with running reports and some settings you can alter.

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The second batch are items within Cognos Workspace Advanced.

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They're in no particular order.

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These are just some things that I've found helpful while using Cognos.

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Let's get right to it.

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A few settings that I like to change...

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When you're in Cognos Connection, the main screen...

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In the upper right-hand corner of the page, there's a little stick figure guy.

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If you hover over it, it says 'My Area Options.

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If I click on that, the third option is 'My Preferences.

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Click on 'My Preferences.

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The first item on the list is 'number of entries in list view.

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That's how many reports are displayed in the list when you're looking at the page.

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By default, it's set to fifteen. I like to change it to fifty.

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Many times there are more than fifteen reports in a folder.

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The second item: 'separators in list view.

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You can choose 'grid lines' or 'alternating backgrounds.

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I'm going to choose 'alternating backgrounds.

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You can also change the style, which changes some of the fonts and colors.

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Click 'OK.

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Go back over to my public folders.

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You can see how these folders have alternating backgrounds.

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Some have white, some have gray.

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This helps if I want to run a report,

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say, 'Advisor by Minor,' I can follow the line all the way to the icons on the right.

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I can do 'run with options.

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If I click 'run with options,' Cognos lets me run the report

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to Excel

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and, instead of viewing it, it can send me the report as an email attachment.

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Click 'run.

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It still has me select my input perimeters.

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Click 'Finish.

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The report runs in the background, and I'll receive it as an email attachment.

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Say you only run reports that are located in the Academic Affairs folder.

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Every time you get into Cognos,

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you land in 'Public Folders' and you have to click on 'Production Data Warehouse'

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and 'Academic Affairs.

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If I want to land in the Academic Affairs folder every time I get into Cognos,

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I can change my home view.

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This little house here has an arrow next to it, I can click that

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and I can set this view as home.

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Every time I log into Cognos, I'll land in the Academic Affairs folder.

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It'll just save me some clicks if I'm always running reports in a specific area.

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Or, say you run one report from the Academic Affairs folder and

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one from the Finance folder, and you don't want to worry about bouncing

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back and forth between those folders.

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What I can do is take the 'Advisor by Minor' report.

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And the fourth icon on the list here is 'Create a Report View of this Report.

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That's essentially creating a shortcut. I click on that.

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At the bottom of this little dialogue here, 'Location', I select 'My Folders.

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Then click 'Finish'.

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If I jump over to My Folders, there's a shortcut to the 'Advisor by Minor' report.

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Like I said, if there are two or three reports that you run on a regular basis,

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you can just put the shortcuts here in My Folders,

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so you can just come to one folder to run all the reports that you need.

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Now I'm going to jump into Cognos Workspace Advanced.

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This is the class roster report that I created in our last video tutorial.

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As I mentioned in that tutorial, Workspace Advanced works best if you

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build a report out of one low-level yellow folder.

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We knew that you were going to want to join Student Academic Information

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with Registration Information.

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Student Academic Information, like the suggestion screen in Banner, with their major.

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So we made a way for you to do that.

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With this class roster report, I get into Student Information, Student Academic Information.

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At the very bottom here there's a filter.

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It says 'Academic Info Term equals Section Term.

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If I double-click that, it applies a filter in the background.

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What that allows me to do,

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is to pull student academic information, like major into the report

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and it will pull the major for that student for the term we're looking at.

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In this case, Fall 2015.

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One last thing I'd like to show you.

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I'm going to create a new report here.

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Don't be afraid to experiment in Cognos.

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What I mean is, explore these fields.

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If you're not sure what is in a field, just create a quick report and add fields into it.

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What's in the 'Academic Status Code and Description' fields?

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If I add these to these report - and right now I'm in preview mode, so

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it's going to run the report and display the information - I can say

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And then 'undo,' and I can look at a different field.

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Let's see what's in 'Class Standing'. 'Class Standing Code and Description.

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Just so you can get an idea of what is available in the Warehouse.

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Let's look at 'Program Codes.

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Experimenting with the data will give you an idea of what you can use

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to build reports.

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If there's anything that you'd like to have covered in future training sessions,

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please let us know.

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Thank you for watching WOU Tech TV.

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