Scheduled daily report does not run on Saturdays and Sundays

[25456378]

Dear COGNOS Experts,

I have report scheduled to run on a daily basis at 23:59, generating a report from the data collected during the day. It is running perfectly except for two problems.

1. It is not generating reports on Saturday and Sunday.
2. It is overwriting the previous report since it is using always the same file name.

Anyone can suggest a solution please?

Regards,
Ian

 

[drlex]

What Cognos product are you using?
How is the report scheduled?
Have you tried running the report manually on either Saturday or Sunday to see whether data is being returned?

soi là, soi carré

 

[25456378]

Thanks for your reply DRLEX.

I am using version 7.5.
The report is scheduled using the COGNOS scheduler. The settings are as follows:
Timetable: Frequency - Daily
Daily Every 1 day
Run at 23.59
Effective date 28/10/2013

Yes if I run the report on a saturday it works fine. Havent tried Sunday because I try to get some rest during the week ;-) .

Thanks,
Ian

 

[drlex]

Ian,
You're welcome. By asking "which product", I was hoping to learn whether it was ReportNet, Impromptu, PowerPlay, Visualizer, etc.

Working on the basis that it is either Impromptu or PowerPlay, and assuming that 7.5 is not greatly different to the 7.4 that I last used, I'd suggest that the way to overcome the limitation of the fixed file name is either to run a scheduled batch job to rename the file after creation, or consider using Scheduler to run a Cognos macro which runs the report and saves with a dynamic file name. The Cognos macroscript is almost identical to Visual Basic; there are pdfs in the standard installation under the 'documentation' sub-folder.

short example - macro to open an Impromptu report and save it in Excel format with a name which includes the current date:

Sub Main()
   'objects
   Dim objImpApp As object
   Dim objImpRep As Object 
   Dim strdate as string
   '
   strdate = Format(DATE,"yyyy-mm-dd") 
   Set objImpApp = CreateObject("CognosImpromptu.Application")
   objImpApp.OpenCatalog "E:\catalogues\My_catalog.cat","Creator",,,,1
         Set objImpRep = objImpApp.OpenReport ("E:\Reports\Open Accounts.imr")
         Set objImpRep = objImpApp.ActiveDocument    
         objImpRep.RetrieveAll
         objImpRep.ExportExcelWithFormat  "E:\Excel\Open_Accounts_" + strdate + ".xls"
         objImpRep.CloseReport
      Set objImpRep = Nothing   
   objImpApp.Quit
   set objImpApp = Nothing
   '
End Sub

lex

soi là, soi carré

 

[25456378]

Thanks for your reply. I will test the routine you provided later on today.

Would you have any idea as to why it is not running the report on Saturdays and Sundays. It is very strange!! I will try to shift the start time to 23:45 rather than 23:59 and see if it makes any difference.

Thanks once again,
Ian

 

[drlex]

Ian,
I'd want to be checking that the machine is running at the time that the job has been scheduled; can you be certain that there's not a weekend restart job that co-incides? Event log on the machine is a place to start, but your plan of a time-change is sound. Scheduler itself may be getting stopped, or not running securely - (e.g. if authentication method is directory server, is it available?)
lex

soi là, soi carré

 

[25456378]

Yes in fact I was going to check with our IT admin because I suspect that there might be some sort of maintenance routine being performed on the servers.

Thanks once again for your prompt and valuable help.

Ian