Cognos for Microsoft Office

Introduction
IBM® Cognos® for Microsoft Office is an add-in for retrieving content from IBM Cognos reporting products, such as IBM Cognos Analytics and IBM Cognos PowerPlay® Studio, for use with the Microsoft Office system.
Using IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office with other IBM Cognos products
You can use IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office with other products, such as IBM Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Workspace, and IBM Cognos Statistics. The integration of these products makes it possible to share useful data across the organization, connecting the business strategy with business execution.
IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office
IBM Cognos Office provides the framework that leverages the business intelligence architecture, including security, metadata, and content storage. This infrastructure helps you manage your Microsoft Office documents and monitor the financial performance of your organization.
Working with Microsoft Office documents
You can make changes to your reports or explorations by retrieving data and overriding any previous changes, removing data, or converting dynamic data to static data to prevent future updates from the IBM Cognos Analytics server.
Using IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office
Use IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office to access IBM Cognos Analytics content in Microsoft Excel where you can work with existing reports, apply calculations, and use your existing Excel macros. You can also import content into Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word. You can use Cognos Analytics content as the basis for your presentation in PowerPoint, or for briefing books using Word.
Try it yourself exercises
The exercises in this chapter are for those who have some experience with IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office and want to improve their skills in embedding elements of reports in Microsoft Office products. Each topic gives you guidelines on how to create a sample workbook, presentation, or Word document from pre-defined or modified IBM Cognos reports. If you need help, links to more detailed instructions are available.
Best practices and guidelines
IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office provides a wide variety of options. These options can be an area of uncertainty for report consumers who must make numerous decisions when choosing how to lay out a report for consumption and analysis. This section provides guidelines to make these decisions easier, and outlines our recommendations for importing IBM Cognos Analytics reports and authoring custom reports within the Microsoft Office applications.
Automating IBM Cognos Office
Using an application programming interface (API), you can automate the refreshing or publishing of workbook, document, and presentation content. You can use a scheduling tool, such as Scheduled Task, and can process one or more workbooks, documents, or presentations.
Troubleshooting
Use this troubleshooting information as a resource to help you solve specific problems you may encounter during or after the installation of IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office components.
Accessibility features
IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office has accessibility features that help users who have a physical disability, such as restricted mobility or limited vision, to use information technology products successfully.
Sample reports and packages
The IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office products include sample reports and packages that are based on the sample company, The Sample Outdoors Company. After the samples are set up, you can find the samples in Public Folders in IBM Cognos Connection, and in the source tree on the IBM Cognos pane.
Access permissions and credentials
When a content store is initialized, the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence administrator sets the access permissions for your organization's data. He or she specifies which users and groups have access to a specific report or other content in IBM Cognos software. The administrator also specifies the actions users can perform on the content. These permissions can be modified at any time to accommodate changes within the organization.
Rebranding Cognos Office Components
This section is intended for clients and partners who need to rebrand, customize, or localize labels, messages, or other strings in IBM Cognos Office products, such as IBM Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel, IBM Cognos Office, and IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office.