Open & save reports on your local computer

Sanjeev Datta, Senior Consultant for PerformanceG2

I have used a report studio feature at a few client sites and have found it to be greatly appreciated by report authors as well as business analysts.

By default, the reports you create are stored on the Cognos 8 server. You
can, however, open and save reports on your computer. This is useful if you
want to send a report to a report author that is working in a different
environment, or you want to save the report to a source code controlled
directory on a local network or drive.

Steps
1. Obtain the LFA.dll from your Cognos 8 administrator
The DLL is located in the bin directory where Cognos 8 is installed
2. Open a command prompt window
3. Register the LFA.dll file by typing regsvr32 LFA.dll
4. In Internet Explorer, set your computer and the Cognos 8 server as
trusted sites:
• From the Tools menu, click Internet Options
• On the Security tab, click Trusted sites
• Click the Sites button
• In the Add this Web site to the zone box, type http://localhost and click
Add.
Tip: If the Cognos 8 server is not on the same computer as the browser, type
http:// instead.
• Repeat the above step for http://
• Clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this
zone check
box
• Click OK twice
5. In Report Studio, from the Tools menu, click Options
6. Select the Allow local file access check box and click OK
The menu items (Local) Open and (Local) Save As appear in the File menu
7. Close and restart Report Studio

You can now open and save reports on your computer. The first time you try
to open or save a report locally, Internet Explorer asks you whether you
want to allow an ActiveX control.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Tips and tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.