IBM Cognos (Business Intelligence)

Cognos is a web-based suite of tools from IBM that offers a full range of business intelligence capabilities including reports, dashboards, and self-service queries. Standard Cognos reports are available for various functional areas such as research (TARA), financial accounting, payroll accounting, budget construction, and procurement and payments. These on-demand standard reports have built-in filters and groupings that allow you to easily run them by entering specific report parameters on the prompt page.

Features

  • Managed reports designed for enterprise-wide consumption, such as the Account Summary Report (ASR) and Labor Distribution Reports
  • Self-service reports (available for financial accounting), which are created on-demand by users to serve their individual needs
  • Ability to schedule automated delivery of reports
  • A modern user interface (UI) that is searchable by partial or full codes and/or names
  • Ability to export reports in multiple formats such as PDF, Excel, or comma separated values (CSV)
  • Personalized profile for every Cognos customer to save and organize reports and queries
  • For select reports, parameters can be changed on-demand within the report interface
  • Ability to create custom reports using a drag-and-drop interface for decision support (self-service reporting only)
  • Account data security including, account level security (ALS), Organization Level Security (OLS) and payroll region level security (RLS) as well as flexible data, report and folder-level security

Eligibility

USC faculty and staff are eligible to use Cognos, subject to approval. For more information, see the Access Request User Guide [PDF].

Getting Started

To access Cognos, log in at www.usc.edu/bi using your USC NetID username and password. You may also access Cognos from the Kuali portal by clicking the Business Intelligence button located in the upper right-hand corner of the portal.

Technical Requirements

USC supports accessing Cognos using the following browsers:

  • Internet Explorer
  • Firefox
  • Safari

USC supports exporting Cognos data in the following formats:

  • PDF (9, X)
  • Excel (2002-2010)
  • Comma Separated Values (CSV)
  • Extensible Markup Language (XML)
  • HTML

Support

If you would like to make a service-related request, search the knowledge base for self-service support, or report an issue with Cognos, log into the ITS service portal at www.usc.edu/itsserviceportal.

Pricing

There is no fee to access Cognos.

System Availability

Cognos is typically available daily from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm. If Cognos is unavailable during these hours, please consult the following resources for additional information:

  • Outage notifications and alerts are posted at the top of the ITS website.
  • Scheduled maintenance notices are posted in the left column of the ITS website in the Scheduled Maintenance section. Scheduled maintenance notices are also available on a separate page.