Product:
Cognos Controller 10.1
Windows 2008 Server

Problem:
How do I list all the members that are part of a Microsoft Active Directory group ?

Solution:
Log on to a Microsoft Windows 2008 server in the domain.
Start a CMD prompt
Create a temp folder
Go to the temp folder
Enter following command to get a list of users in a AD group:

dsquery group -domain EU -samid citrix_app_cognoscontroller | dsget group -members > cognoscontrollerusers.txt

Replace above EU with your domain name
Replace above citrix_app_cognoscontroller with the AD group you want to list
Replace above cognoscontrollerusers.txt with the name of the text file you want created.

The file is crated in the temp folder, you are standing inside.

To find out if a group exist in your domain you can enter:
dsquery group -samid citrix_app_cognoscontroller

If the group exist in the domain you are, it will print the CN string in AD for that group.

To find out what groups a user are member of you can enter:
dsquery user -samid roger | dsget user -memberof -expand

This will list all Active Domain groups the user “roger” is part of.
Replace above roger with the username you want to check.

Product:
Cognos Controller 10
Windows 2008 R2 server

Problem:
How do i add a new user to a local group on the server from the command line ?

Cause:
Can be needed in testing purpose on a new installation of Cognos software, to see if the issue is because of the windows profiles temp files. Test with a new user can be good.

Solution:
Start CMD as administrator on the Server ( or client computer).

Enter ; to create user mike
NET USER /ADD MIKE

Enter ; to set his password to password
NET USER MIKE PASSWORD

Enter ; to add mike to the local administrator group
NET LOCALGROUP ADMINISTRATORS MIKE /ADD

Enter ; to list users in the local group
NET LOCALGROUP ADMINISTRATORS

Enter ; to start a remote desktop session
MSTSC /v:127.0.0.1 /w:1024 /h:768

/v enter the name of the server or IP
/w set the width of the window
/h set the height of the window

More Information:
http://ss64.com/nt/net_useradmin.html
http://ss64.com/nt/mstsc.html

Product:
Cognos Controller 10.1.1
Windows 2008 server

Symptom:
Can not send mail from inside Cognos Controller client.

Error message:
Email server reported an error, some or all messages could not be sent. Please check with your local administrator that the email server is operational and that the system configuration is correct (connection details can be found in details and or log file).

java.lang.NullPointerException
com.ibm.cognos.ccr.configproperty.EmailSettings.fromURI(EmailSettings.java:70)
…

Cause:
The value for General Configuration – Server Preferences are not filled in for
variable name: C4_EMAIL_SERVER
variable value: mailrelay.domain.se:25

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/cfpm/v10r1m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.ctrl_ug.10.1.1.doc%2Fc_syparlist.html

Solution:
Start Cognos Controller client
Log in as administrator
Go to Maintain – General Configuration – Server Preferences
Add new variable name C4_EMAIL_SERVER
Add new variable value to your mail server name (FQDN) and include the port number (:25)
Click Save.
All users need to log off Cognos controller to make the change take affect.

Above is for the new dialog boxes in Cognos controller like Group – Command Center.
Where after you have listed the status for a group/company’s on the right side have a icon to send notification email.
To get this to work, the user you logged in with to Cognos Controller must have a valid email address added to its user account information in Cognos controller.

To add email address to user in Cognos Controller client, go to
Maintain – Rights – Users dialog
Click on the user in the list on left side, and add a email address on the right side for the user.
The email address must be allowed by the company email server to send email, often a address that exist inside the company.

If the sending users email address is wrong, you get a error message like this:
Unable to proceed, please address errors listed below.
Cannot send without email address for sender (ADM). Please check system configuration.
…

The mail setting inside Maintain – Configuration – General Configuration
tab general 3 is for all the old mail functions in old controller dialogs.
Here you should also specify the mail server at SMTP server line:
mailrelay.company.se
and select the email format you want to use, recommend CSV.

To test this you can go to Transfer – Export Structures.
Mark E-mail and enter an email address to receive the mail on the line at the right.
Mark what to send, for example Country Structure.
Click RUN icon.
Click CLOSE on message that temp file is created.
Enter the message text and click OK to send the email.

You need to logout from Cognos Controller client, to make any changes take affect from the General Configuration dialog.

Product:
Cognos Controller 10.1.1
Windows 2008 R2 server

Symptom:
Limit memory on Cognos Controller server, how do I tune Cognos Controller system to use less RAM ?

Possible Solution:
The Cognos Controller standard reports use the old CQM report engine, so you can turn off the new DQM report engine in the new Cognos BI that is shipped with Cognos Controller.
This will save you one JAVA session.

Go to Cognos Configuration on your Controller Application server.
Go to Environment
Go to IBM Cognos services
Under Component Properties – set “Query Service Enabled?” to false.
Save settings and restart the Cognos BI services.

In windows task manager you should now only see one JAVA.EXE*32 process instead of two that you had before.
Will save around 343 Mb of RAM from the Controller application server.

Product:

Cognos Controller 10.1.x

Windows 2008 R2 Server

Citrix Xenapps

Symptom:

When user run the a standard report in Cognos controller the application seem to hang.

Can be for reports like group – reconcile – Between Accounts/Opening Balances.

 

Error message in preview of report:

please wait, loading the report.

 

Cause:

You  must have Adobe Reader installed on the Citrix server where you have the Cognos Controller client installed.

When you run a standard report in Cognos Controller – it will in the background start Adobe Reader to prepare to show the report in PDF format, and not only HTML format.

Solution:

Install Adobe Reader on Citrix server.

Also ensure that:

Internet explorer enhanced security settings are turned off  (IE ESC)

That the cognos controller web server is in the local intranet zone in Internet explorer

That internet explorer is the default web browser on the Citrix server.

Microsoft Excel on the Citrix server is of the latest Service pack.

 

Check supported version of Excel here:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27014433

More about reconcile:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/c8fpm/v8r4m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.swg.im.cognos.ctrl_ug.8.5.0.doc/ctrl_ug_id14462E1K14_2_ReconcilingbetweenAccountsandOpe.html

Product:
Cognos Controller 10
Excel Link
Windows 2003 Server
Citrix Server

Symptom:
When working in Excel with Cognos Controller link you get an error message.

Error message:
Standard Error
Number: 7
Source: mscorlib
Description: Execption of type ‘System.outOfMemoryException’ was thrown.
At System.IO.MemoryStream.set_Capacity(Int32 value)
At System.IO.MemoryStream.EnsureCapacity(Int32 value)
At System.IO.MemoryStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
Xxx

Solution:
The Windows check if there is memory free that the application can use, and at this moment there is not enough memory free on client computer/terminal server, so this error is sent from the Windows Operation system, to not allow the program to access the memory.

In the case of Excel reports, consider to make them smaller with less amount of formulas.
Also ensure the client/citrix server have enough memory.
At least do you need 8 GB of ram on a citrix server, which should handle a few Cognos Controller users.

Run the same excel sheet on a computer/server with a lot of memory and see if the problem is gone.

Product:

IBM Cognos Controller 10.1.1

Excel 2010

Windows 2008 R2 Server

Citrix Server

Symptom:

When you start Microsoft Excel 2010 and open a large xls sheet, you get a error message.

You have changed from Excel 2007 to Excel 2010 recently.

Error message:

Microsoft Excel

Not enough system resources to display completely.

 

Possible Solution:

This strange behavior can be solved sometimes by erase temp files, see below how to do this:

You need to be administrator on the computer, to do many of the steps.

 

Deleted all temp files by:

Go to Start menu

Select Run

Enter %temp% in the box and press Enter

(mostly this is c:\temp)

Delete everything from this folder

 

Cleared Recent Docs List & Lower Number Displaying:

Start Excel 2010

Select File menu

Select Options from menu

Select Advanced

Scroll to Display category

Change number of recent documents.  To clear the list, set this to 0 and save.  Set it to a low value, like 5, to prevent it from happening again.

 

Delete files from the following folders:

Some of the folders may be hidden, so you need to active “show hidden files” in Windows Explorer.

Go to control panel

Select folder options

Select view tab

Mark “show hidden files, folders, or drives.”

Click OK.

Start windows explorer again.

 

Local Service:

%windir%\ServicesProfiles\LocalService\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\Content

%windir%\ServicesProfiles\LocalService\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\MetaData

Network Service:

%windir%\ServicesProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\Content

%windir%\ServicesProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\MetaData

LocalSystem:

%windir%\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\Content

%windir%\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\CryptnetUrlCache\MetaData

Above can solve your problem, if there is still problems, check if Microsoft update 2597166 is installed, and if you remove that – it may work.

 

More information:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/excel/thread/878e2e02-8f0f-4740-9b15-5e718725ea2a

After your changes, you can also repair you Microsoft Office installation

Go to Control Panel

Go to Add/Remove Programs

Select Office 2010

Right click and select Change

Run Repair

Test the XLS file again after you have cleaned the system as shown above.

Product:

IBM Cognos Controller 10.1.1

(RTM controller version 10.1.1306)

(Integrated version 10.1.1294)

on

Microsoft Windows 2008 R2

Symptom:

When user starts local installed Cognos Controller (ccr.exe) they get a error message before the login dialog.

An error occurred while trying to access the server

http://localhost/ibmcognos/controllerbin

The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found.

 

Solution:

Inside Cognos Controller Configuration under Client Distribution Server Configuration

you can see the correct value for WSSurl

http://localhost/ibmcognos/controllerserver

During install of the Controller Client (ccrlocalclient.msi) you may have enter the wrong value for the WSSUrl.

On the client machine, or the citrix server, go to the folder

C:\Program Files (x86)\ibm\IBM Cognos Controller

open the file CCR.exe.config in notepad

change the line;

<add key=”WSSUrl” value=”http://localhost/ibmcognos/controllerbin”/>

to a correct line like this;

<add key=”WSSUrl” value=”http://localhost/ibmcognos/controllerserver”/>

Save the file and start the Controller client again.

You may need to start the client twice to make the effect work.

 

(you need to replace “localhost” with your server name)

Product:

Cognos Controller 10.1.1

Windows 2008 R2 Server

Symptom:

When you surf to http://localhost/ibmcognos you get a error.

On a newly installed Cognos BI / Cognos Controller setup.

Problem:

HTTP Error 404.2 – Not Found

The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the ISAPI and CGI Restriction list settings on the Web server. Detailed Error Information

Module CgiModule

Notification ExecuteRequestHandler

Handler cgi-bin

Error Code 0x800704ec

Requested URL http://localhost:80/ibmcognos/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/main.xts&startwel=yes

Physical Path C:\Program Files (x86)\ibm\cognos\c10\cgi-bin\cognos.cgi

Logon Method Anonymous

Logon User Anonymous

 

Solution:

Go to Internet Information (IIS) Manager

Mark the server in the list to the left

Click on icon for “ISAPI and CGI Restrictions”

Note that there is no line for cognos.cgi

Click ADD from the right panel

Enter the path to the cognos.cgi file in field ISAPI or CGI path:

C:\Program Files (x86)\ibm\cognos\c10\cgi-bin\cognos.cgi

Enter cognos.cgi as Description

mark “Allow extension path to execute”

Click OK

 

Test again to surf to http://localhost/ibmcognos