Requirements
- Cognos Powerplay Web version 6 or higher
- Cognos Powerplay Web secured or unsecured cube.
- Microsoft Excel
eRetrieve Configuration
eRetrieve.ini
[Main]
Deliminator=<deliminator character>
Autoretrieve=<0 or 1>
Autoclear=<0 or 1>
Deliminator: By setting the Deliminator parameter, eRetrieve will use this character to split columns of the Powerplay Web CSV. Default values are ; or ,
Autoretrieve: By setting the Autoretrieve parameter to 0, eRetrieve will display a messagebox asking to Retrieve data.
Autoclear: By setting the Autoclear parameter to 1, eRetrieve will clear the right cells of the worksheet starting at the destination cell.
Microsoft Excel
1. Register the addin eRetrieve.xla
2. Rename one Microsoft Excel Worksheet to "Settings"
3. Create a bookmark of your Cognos Powerplay Web analysis.
4. Configure the "Settings" Worksheet
5. Use the retrieve button to import the Cognos Powerplay Web CSV data or data direct from a database.
How can you access secured cubes?
Secured cubes can be accessed by putting the following URL in front of your bookmark:
http://<machine_name>/cognos/cgi-bin/login.cgi?action=login&signon=<userid>&password=<password>&return_url=<bookmark>
Replace <machine_name> with your machine name or fully qualified site name.
Replace <userid> with the userid being user to login with.
Replace <password> with the password for the userid above.
Replace <bookmark> with the bookmark.
This feature can be used with Cognos Upfront version 6.0 or higher.
How can you change the separated list delimiter to a semi-column instead of comma?
For releases before 7.1 MR2 the delimiter for the PPES CSV export is always a comma unless the decimal character is a comma. Whether or not a comma is used is determined by the locale.tab file in the cer3/bin.
For releases after 7.1 MR2 add "&LO=de-de" to the bookmark.
e.g. http://<machine_name>/cognos/cgi-bin/login.cgi?action=login&signon=<userid>&password=<password>&return_url=http://<machine_name>/cognos/cgi-bin/ppdscgi.exe?LO=de-de&TARGET=<newsitem>&FORMAT=HTML&FILTER=<filter>