Scheduling reports to run on 5th working day--How

[flowersr]

Hi,

We would like our month-end reports to automatically run on the 5th working day of each month. I figure I could create a table with only one column, containing the dates to run the report(s). I'd modify the table contents ahead of the specific dates to run. Then, hopefully use this table to trigger the reports to run just on those dates. A COGNOS instructor I had told me to searched COGNOS knowlegebase for TRIGGER.BAT but I'm still confused on how to get it working.

Don't have their SDK either.

TIA,
Rich

 

[drlex]

'Fraid I've not heard of TRIGGER.BAT and the KB site is down at present.
I have a similar requirement and deal with it in the manner you relate. I have a table with dates, one per month, which indicates the trigger date for previous month reporting.
With a report running against that table, it uses the current date as a prompt to match to the table on MONTH and YEAR and compares DAY and returns a single row, 1 if matched and 0 if not.

I run a CognosScript macro daily using the Cognos scheduler and the first task is to run this trigger report and return the output. If it's 1, then the reports are run; if not, it exits.

You can create a macro and run the compiled form (.MCX) by reference in a .BAT using windows schedule, if you prefer.
Something like:

C:
CD\Progra~1\Cognos\cer4\bin\
runmac32.exe "reports.mcx"

soi la, soi carré

 

[flowersr]

drlex,

Quick response!! I will have to give that method a try. I'm not yet familiar with macros so I will definitely check into it.

Thanks a lot,
Rich

 

[almeids]

I think "trigger.bat" is probably the sample script Cognos provides demonstrating how to externally trigger reports (i.e. event-based triggering - you don't need the SDK to do this). Assuming you have a way to trigger THAT script according to your scheduling requirements, you can pass it the name of an event which will cause ReportNet to immediately queue any reports (or their report views) which have that string in the Event Name property on their Run Options tab.