Centralized Management and Web-Based Subscription Services for Interactive Systems of Reports Significantly Extend Cognos` Reporting Offering
Cognos, the leading strategic business intelligence vendor, has announced at The Data Warehouse Institute Conference that Impromptu Web Reports, the managed reporting complement to Cognos` award-winning Impromptu product line, will be available later this month. Impromptu Web Reports is a complete managed reporting solution that addresses the full spectrum of requirements of IT departments and end-users alike.
"Impromptu Web Reports provides us with a complete enterprise reporting solution over the Web," said Kevin McDearis, vice president of business information technology, at CheckFree. "Flexible report scheduling and powerful auditing services will greatly improve our reporting applications, and free our IT department to perform other tasks. Through Impromptu Web Reports` Web-based distribution, we can now deliver reports throughout the organization easily without having to worry about client installation and training. The same report, authored once using Impromptu, can contain very different data, depending on the users` security permissions. With users being able to service themselves, and receive the information they need to help them to do their jobs we conserve valuable IT resources."
For IT, Impromptu Web Reports delivers: centralized, server-based deployment; zero-maintenance clients; auditing, scheduling (calendar and event-based), and queue management. It also leverages reports, catalogs and security defined by Impromptu, the robust report authoring environment, so Web and client/server users can be serviced through the same reporting infrastructure. For report consumers, Impromptu Web Reports delivers an interactive Inbox from which they can view, select prompts and execute, subscribe to, print and schedule reports. With Cognos` complete managed reporting solution, IT requirements and user requirements can be met equally well.
"Cognos designed its managed reporting solution with a focus on the need for consumers to be able to view and print highly formatted reports," said Rob Rose, Cognos` vice president of product marketing. "Reports are rendered as Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format). This allows reports to maintain their design integrity from the desktop authoring environment to the user`s Web browser and finally to printed page. Report consumers can see and print the exact same report, complete with prompts, pick-lists and drill-through, as they would on the client."
Benefits of Impromptu Web Reports
Tight integration with Cognos PowerPlay Server Web Edition allows users to drill through to pre-authored Impromptu reports, to view additional and related detail from a relational source.
Impromptu Web Reports leverages existing Impromptu reporting applications, including highly interactive systems of reports with report-to-report drill through and sub-reports, and with dynamic user prompts within reports.
Powerful reporting features include narrowcasting, which allows one report to meet the different needs of various audiences, based on centrally defined user roles and permissions.
Report consumers can run pre-defined reports themselves, using cascading prompts and picklists to ensure they receive the most up-to-date results.
A familiar Web browser interface ensures ease-of-use and the HTML-based zero-maintenance clients that support many different client environments (PC, MAC, UNIX).
The use of Adobe PDF, (Portable Document Format) for report output means that design integrity of highly formatted reports is maintained from the client authoring environment to the Web browser and to the printer.
Low-cost server-based administration, time and event-based scheduling options, report audit logs and individualized subscription services, meet enterprise reporting needs with a minimum of administrative overhead.
A report audit log which lets IT know who ran what report which assists in ensuring reporting applications are meeting the organization`s needs.
Individualized report subscription provides reduced administrative overhead.
Editors Note
Cognos
Cognos is the leading strategic supplier of enterprise business intelligence tools, allowing users to easily extract critical information through data access, reporting, analysis and forecasting. Cognos products consistently deliver the highest productivity gains to the user, the most manageable solution to the administrator, and the fastest return on investment (ROI) to the enterprise.
Cognos also develops, markets and supports software tools for enterprise application development.
Founded in 1969, Cognos is a publicly traded company with offices around the world. U.S. operations for the company are headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. For more information, visit Cognos` World Wide Web site at http://www.cognos.com.
Share
Editorial contacts