Upfront v7.0 loss of functionality from v6.0 1

[donafran]

Hello !
We are in the process of upgrading our entire Cognos suite of products from v6.x to v7.0 as an interim step of going to series 7 version 2 (or v7.1).

In Access Manager, we have about 50 user classes and all of our users are assigned to one of these classes.
There are several cubes that I need to allow GROUPS of users (based on their user class membership) to have access to, but don't want the rest of my user to know about these cubes.

In the current version 6.0 of Upfront, I was able to control this by creating a folder (or newsbox) within the generic, public "NewsIndex". Then I was able to apply security against this folder so that only one or two user classes had access to the items in this folder. I did not need to apply security against the individual items as long as I located them in the secured folder. This has worked GREAT for the past 2.5 years.

In v7.0 and also v7.1 we are noticing that ALL USERS can open this folder and also open all the items in the folder.

If you go into the properties of the folder, it looks like it is set OK, with only 2 user classes having any access at all. All other User classes have NONE of the access icons.

Cognos Tech Support told me to try manually applying the security to the folder to allow access, then manually changing it to REMOVE the access from the other user classes. I tried this exercise with 2 user classes. NO CHANGE in behavior of the folder allowing access. Then Tech Support told me the only way to limit access to these folders, was to apply security to the "NEWSINDEX". This is NOT an option. We have about 4 different folders under here that different users have access to depending on their user classes. We also publish are "Base" daily report cubes here that the users then manipulate and save to their own newsbox if they want to.

This stucture eliminates publishing the cubes to hundreds of different individual newsboxes every day. Add a new user to a user class, and he has instant access to all the "base" reports he needs.

Any ideas why this does not work in V7 or v7.1 ??
Thanks
-Dona

 

[drlex]

Dona,
I hope I haven't misunderstood your problem, but on your selected folder in NewsIndex, did you select "this newsbox and all items currently within this newsbox" from the drop down list under "apply access privileges to" in the security tab?
I have a similar situation (7v1/MR2)whereby I wish to hide newsboxes & folders from the base users, whilst enabling them for the top level ones and this seems to work fine once the newsbox or folder is loaded with reports and or cubes.
lex

 

[donafran]

Thanks for your reply -- but we have tried ALL OF THE settings, and we still can log on as users of other user classes and both see and access the folder and the reports.

Another option was to control the user access in Transformer by limiting the Users Classes associated to the cube, but then the users who can still see the folder, go into it and try to open the reports and get a message about access denied....it is better if they can't even see it to begin with.

This worked FINE in v6.0. I can't believe they would disable this feature in the new version.

 

[flex13]

Question, until you designate a NewsIndex Administrator the Upfront admin tool, NO security will be applied in Upfront. YOu can set this by going to Tools - Security - NewsIndex security.

Trust me, NO functionality has been lost when it comes to security in v7.0 or 7.1. In fact, quite the opposite, there have been a lot of improvements.

flex

 

[donafran]

THANK YOU !! THANK YOU !! THANK YOU !!
I followed your instructions.
It worked like a charm !!

We didn't see anything in the Upgrade documentation that indicated this as a required step. Nor did Cognos Tech Support seem to know the answer.

 

[BruceReed]

Nice tip Flex

Bruce

 

[flex13]

You wouldn't have seen this in the Upgrade docs as it was included in the original Series 7 docs and I guess they expected everybody to remember this little tidbit a couple of years later.

Glad it helped and by the way, coming from Cognos Support, it's safe to assume that we knew the answer but you just weren't talking to the right person.

flex