4 Common Cognos Version Control Scenarios

MotioCI proactively versions all modifications in a Cognos environment. This includes changes made in the authoring studios and administration settings.

Today we’ll walk through some of the basic concepts of MotioCI version control by making a few changes to a sample Report.First, let’s examine the history of the Actual vs. Target Sales Report in MotioCI’s  Revision History screen. This screen provides us a complete history of the object, showing us each time its been modified, by whom, and allowing us to view the changes which were applied.

We can see from the screenshot above, that there are 7 revisions of the Actual vs. Target Sales Report. Each time a user changes this object in Report Studio, a new revision will appear in MotioCI.

Here is an explanation of each of the columns above :

     Type – the type of revision, e.g. modified, added, deleted or reverted
     Rev – revision number
     Client Ver. – a client editable version number
     Major – a flag for tracking “major” vs. “minor” revisions
     Date – the exact date and time revision occurred
     Author – who made the change
     Comment – information about what changed in the revision
     Labels – indicates what label the revision belongs to
     Actions – available actions for the revision (revert, promote, view, run, etc)

Now that we’ve covered the basics of revision history, let’s look at how MotioCI proactively versions changes to our example Report in these four common scenarios :

1. A Property change (e.g. name, screentip, etc)

2. A Permissions change

3. A Deletion

4. An Edit in Report Studio  

Property changes

A property change refers to altering a Cognos report’s properties such as, the language, owner, screen tip, etc. Click on the properties icon to bring up the following page:

Suppose in this example, Adam modifies the Screen tip property of our sample Report:

As soon as Adam clicks “OK” the property changes will be saved to Cognos. MotioCI will immediately notice this event, and will create a new revision to capture the changes. MotioCI inspects the differences between the previous revision and the new revision, and automatically adds the comment of “Changed Properties”. It also captures the fact that Adam instigated this change.

Modifying an object’s permissions is another common scenario in Cognos Analytics. In the same property editor page from our previous example,  Adam now clicks on the Permissions tab.

Adam then proceeds to make changes to the permissions for our sample report.

Again, as soon as Adam clicks “OK” his permissions changes are saved to Cognos. MotioCI immediately notices the change to the permissions and creates a revision. The comment of “Changed Properties” is automatically added and Adam is referenced as the author who made the change.

Using MotioCI’s “diff” action to compare revision 10 to revision 11 will provide a detailed comparison of the “before” and “after” permissions.

Content Deletion

Another important version control scenario is capturing the act of content deletion. In keeping with our previous example, suppose Adam checks the checkbox for Actual vs. Target Sales, then clicks the delete button (upper right).

Normally, when you delete an object it is gone forever.

With MotioCI’s Active Versioning you have the comfort of knowing that just because the report was deleted it does not mean it has been lost forever. Just like any other modification to an object, a deletion is versioned by MotioCI.

Notice that all the other revisions for this Cognos report are still accessible. If you wish to undo the deletion operation you can simply highlight a previous revision and click the “revert” button (this puts the revision back into Cognos).

Edits in Report Studio

Perhaps the most common scenario for editing Report objects is from within Report Studio. For the details on how MotioCI versions studio edits, please see our previous entry on Version Control in Cognos Report Studio.

Summary

As you can see, MotioCI provides 360 degree coverage when it comes to versioning Congnos content. In today’s example, we examined four common scenarios for editing a Report. MotioCI’s Active Versioning provides a convenient and effective way of tracking all changes that occur in a Cognos environment. With MotioCI monitoring your Cognos environments, you’ll always know who made a change, when they made it and what they changed.

Scroll to Top
As the BI space evolves, organizations must take into account the bottom line of amassing analytics assets.
The more assets you have, the greater the cost to your business. There are the hard costs of keeping redundant assets, i.e., cloud or server capacity. Accumulating multiple versions of the same visualization not only takes up space, but BI vendors are moving to capacity pricing. Companies now pay more if you have more dashboards, apps, and reports. Earlier, we spoke about dependencies. Keeping redundant assets increases the number of dependencies and therefore the complexity. This comes with a price tag.
The implications of asset failures differ, and the business’s repercussions can be minimal or drastic.
Different industries have distinct regulatory requirements to meet. The impact may be minimal if a report for an end-of-year close has a mislabeled column that the sales or marketing department uses, On the other hand, if a healthcare or financial report does not meet the needs of a HIPPA or SOX compliance report, the company and its C-level suite may face severe penalties and reputational damage. Another example is a report that is shared externally. During an update of the report specs, the low-level security was incorrectly applied, which caused people to have access to personal information.
The complexity of assets influences their likelihood of encountering issues.
The last thing a business wants is for a report or app to fail at a crucial moment. If you know the report is complex and has a lot of dependencies, then the probability of failure caused by IT changes is high. That means a change request should be taken into account. Dependency graphs become important. If it is a straightforward sales report that tells notes by salesperson by account, any changes made do not have the same impact on the report, even if it fails. BI operations should treat these reports differently during change.
Not all reports and dashboards fail the same; some reports may lag, definitions might change, or data accuracy and relevance could wane. Understanding these variations aids in better risk anticipation.

Marketing uses several reports for its campaigns – standard analytic assets often delivered through marketing tools. Finance has very complex reports converted from Excel to BI tools while incorporating different consolidation rules. The marketing reports have a different failure mode than the financial reports. They, therefore, need to be managed differently.

It’s time for the company’s monthly business review. The marketing department proceeds to report on leads acquired per salesperson. Unfortunately, half the team has left the organization, and the data fails to load accurately. While this is an inconvenience for the marketing group, it isn’t detrimental to the business. However, a failure in financial reporting for a human resource consulting firm with 1000s contractors that contains critical and complex calculations about sickness, fees, hours, etc, has major implications and needs to be managed differently.

Acknowledging that assets transition through distinct phases allows for effective management decisions at each stage. As new visualizations are released, the information leads to broad use and adoption.
Think back to the start of the pandemic. COVID dashboards were quickly put together and released to the business, showing pertinent information: how the virus spreads, demographics affected the business and risks, etc. At the time, it was relevant and served its purpose. As we moved past the pandemic, COVID-specific information became obsolete, and reporting is integrated into regular HR reporting.
Reports and dashboards are crafted to deliver valuable insights for stakeholders. Over time, though, the worth of assets changes.
When a company opens its first store in a certain area, there are many elements it needs to understand – other stores in the area, traffic patterns, pricing of products, what products to sell, etc. Once the store is operational for some time, specifics are not as important, and it can adopt the standard reporting. The tailor-made analytic assets become irrelevant and no longer add value to the store manager.