Overview
This article provides an introduction to the University of Oregon's Cognos Analytics tool, and includes some initial steps for new users who need to get started with Cognos as part of their job duties.
IBM Cognos and IDR data
UO has adopted IBM Cognos Analytics BI as its enterprise wide reporting and business intelligence (BI) tool. IBM Cognos is a comprehensive reporting and data analysis tool, combining reporting, modeling, analysis and dashboards, which can be shared across functional teams leveraging their combined skills to promote greater effectiveness throughout the community.
UO data is segmented in three broad categories, namely student, financial and human resources, and further subdivided in core, private and sensitive data.
- Core data spans non-sensitive data for all broad data categories including Finance and HR.
- Sensitive and private finance data are data such as bank and collection agency information, SSNs, tax ID, disbursements, payments and holds, and personal information such as ethnicity, citizenship, visa, veteran status.
- Sensitive and private HR data includes personal data such as benefits, deductions, taxes, degrees, employment history and beneficiaries.
- Finally, sensitive student data includes personal student information, degrees, transcripts, majors, holds, withdrawals and grades.
Additional details regarding these data are available in the Cognos Data Guide.
Important: University of Oregon data is private and sensitive in nature, much of which fall under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other state and federal regulations. Prior to gaining access to data, please be sure to become familiar with university data use policies regarding
student records.
Getting access to Cognos and University of Oregon data
Access to IBM Cognos can be obtained by following the steps outlined in the article How do I get access to the IDR data warehouse and Cognos. Prior to requesting access, it is important to know how you will be using Cognos, whether as someone who will generally run existing reports or if you are expected to write reports as well.
Access to Cognos comes with core data privileges. To access sensitive or private data additional permissions need to be granted. These are managed by data stewards in Business Affairs, Human Resources and the Registrar's Office. Requests for sensitive and private data access are done via request forms (Step 2, Adding optional data to your account).
Data refresh schedule and system availability
IDR data is derived from Banner data, but with transformations to simplify use in reports. This data is updated nightly, so Cognos reports and visualizations reflects end of prior business day, or D-1. The status of data refresh can be verified in the welcome page.
IBM Cognos is off-line during data updates, which occur nightly between 1am and 7am. Regular maintenance is scheduled weekly, on Fridays between 7pm and 9pm, at which point it may also be off-line.
Accessing and logging in to Cognos
IBM Cognos Analytics is an online application. Log into the Shibboleth prompt via your Duck ID username and password.
Need help?
For general questions, please submit a ticket to the IDR Team via the UO Service Portal.