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How to Find Permissions on Folders, Packages, etc. in Cognos

We’ve heard from several Cognos users recently who would like to be able to quickly retrieve and view the permissions for more than just Cognos reports. While you can do this in Cognos Connection, it will only allow you to view permissions on each Cognos object one at a time.

Here’s a list of objects in Cognos Connection. In order to view the permissions for a Cognos object you have to click on the “Set Properties” icon (shown below), then select the “Properties” tab, and then choose the “Permissions” tab.

Below you see the all of the permissions for this specific Cognos object. Depending on how many Cognos objects you wanted to view, you would have to repeat this process for each individual object, which could take hours.

MotioPI allows you to streamline this process and review multiple Cognos objects in a list form so you can smoothly switch between each object with a click. MotioPI also allows you to generate an output of a selection of Cognos objects and their permissions.

Here’s an example of how to view the permissions on folders or packages in MotioPI.

1. After selecting the “Content” tab, uncheck “Report” and check the box for “Folder” and/or “Package“. (You can view permissions for packages, folders, reports, schedules, jobs, etc. in Cognos.)

2. Select “Submit”

3.  Highlight a Cognos folder or package you are interested in viewing.

4.  The policies and permissions are displayed here:

You could also filter the results if, for instance, you are looking for every Cognos object that is visible by a particular Role. To use the filter function simply select the “Filter” button, double-click “Property Value,” and then use the drop down menu to choose “Policies“. You can then type in the value you would like to search for and select “Ok“.

If you want to view the resulting list of Cognos objects outside of MotioPI, you can generate an export of all of the resulting folders/packages by choosing “File” and then “Export Output“. Be sure to check the “Show Policies” box. You can then choose to save the output as a csv or an html file. CSV files are more easily manageable with Excel or Google Sheets.

By using the Content panel in MotioPI, you’re able to efficiently view the permissions for dozens of Cognos objects in very little time, rather than individually opening each object in Cognos Connection, closing the object, and starting the process all over again, saving yourself quite a bit of time and energy!

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