Do you find yourself spending exorbitant amounts of time sending multiple reports to multiple people? Maybe you have a report that you have to manually slice to get to the right people? Do you want that time back to spend analyzing and providing real value to your organization? Bursting reports in Cognos BI may be a great time savings option for you!

The first step in setting up bursting in either version 10 or 11, is to make sure that you have burst receipts available. You can do this by setting them up in a data warehouse table or through creating a calculated field that contains the info you need. You will need an email address, name and some sort of ID field that is used in your reports.

Now that we have the burst tables or fields created, it is time to build your report. Keep in mind that your report will need the data points for the burst table. In the example above, we are building a report based on product line code and the associated recipient. To save time, we will only build 1 report with all of the data that can be sliced on the product line code and distributed to the associated email address. With your report built, it is time set up bursting. Please check out the instructions below associated with the version of Cognos BI you are utilizing.

With the “Burst Options” open, you need to supply the query that contains the burst groups and the recipient. Identify the data item and the type of burst receipt. You will also need to drag the data item that represents the burst id to the group field. Lastly, if the report contains two nested data containers, you will need to set up the master detail relationship. You can find more data on master detail relationships at the IBM Knowledge Center site.

With the report set up to burst, we now need to enable bursting and set the output. Find the location of your saved report and click the more icon and then the “Run as” option.

Enable run in the background, choose the format of the report and then click into the advanced area. In this area, ensure that you have selected burst the report and then set the delivery method as seen below.

If you want to send by email, you can choose how it is delivered and write a message in the email body. You can also have the report printed or save it to a specific spot on the system. Now that you have set up bursting, you can schedule this to be automatically sent whenever you want. For more on scheduling BI reports, check out our blog HERE.  Furthermore, you can read more about bursting reports HERE.

From Cognos Connection, find your burst enabled report and click the more button. Next, click run with options. In the options area, select the format of report you want to burst and the type of delivery. In order to have the burst option you will need to choose something other than “view the report now”. Once selected, click on advanced options. You should be here:

The next step is to ensure you have the correct format of the report and will need to click the “burst the report” box. Next choose the deliver option(s) and then any options within that delivery type and you are all set to burst. To fully automate it, click on the schedule icon in Cognos connections and schedule your report to automatically run on the days and times you choose. You can read more about scheduling reports HERE.

By taking the time to build your reports correctly and use options like bursting, you can save numerous hours per week or per month. As a result, you will be utilizing that time to analyze data and provide more value to your organization.

*If you are current on your IBM Cognos support, then you already own Cognos Analytics (Cognos 11), Release 4.  For more information on Cognos Analytics, check out last week’s blog HERE!