The onboarding process

Onboarding is the process of setting access to an IBM service for your organization.

After an IBM support team completes the provisioning of your Cognos® Analytics on Cloud Hosted environment, you receive a welcome email from IBM with the Welcome portal URL.

Log on to the portal with your IBMid, and complete the onboarding steps.

Note: If you don't have IBMid, you are prompted to create one.

The following sections refer to the onboarding steps that you must complete in the Welcome portal. The steps do not need to be completed in sequence. You can go back to a previously completed step when you reach the review page at the end of the process. You can also omit some steps.

If you decide to change any of the configured settings later, you must SRE ticket.

If you have problems with the onboarding process, send an email to the cognosonboarding@ca.ibm.com address.

Step 1: Accept or modify your URLs

On the Get started page of the Welcome portal, view the URLs that are assigned for your production and nonproduction environments.

The URLs use the following naming convention:

product_domain.ca.analytics.ibm.com/bi/

For example, the URLs can be specified in the following way:

my_ca_prod.ca.analytics.ibm.com/bi/

my_ca_test.ca.analytics.ibm.com/bi/

my_ca_dev.ca.analytics.ibm.com/bi/

Review the URLs carefully, and click Get started.

If the URLs are correct, select Yes, and click Next to proceed to the next step.

If the URLs are not correct, select No, and change the URL as needed. Only the product_domain part of the URL can be changed.

Step 2: Configure the server time zone

Select the time zone that is appropriate for your geographic location. The default is the browser time zone.

Step 3: Email notification

This email address is used to distribute theCognos Analytics content, such as reports or dashboards, to users. The default email address is notifications@ibm.com. You can use this address, or change it to an email account on your domain. Ensure that the specified account is monitored.

Step 4: Integration with Planning Analytics

If you know that you can enable integration with IBM Planning Analytics, select Yes, and enter the production and nonproduction URLs that are configured for the Planning Analytics on Cloud service.

If you are not sure whether to enable this integration, select No. This setting can be changed later by submitting a support ticket.

Step 5: Valid domain list

Specify the domains that the Cognos Analytics on Cloud environment needs to access. The access is needed to link to documents or websites.

For example, to allow access to the IBM website, enter the ibm.com domain. If you want to add a domain later, you need to submit a support ticket.

Step 6: SFTP

The SSH file transfer protocol (SFTP) is used to transfer content, such as images, logos, deployment archives, and so on, between different Cognos Analytics environments. For example, use SFTP to transfer files between the Cloud production and nonproduction environments.

To configure SFTP, the SSH public and private keys must already be generated. For more information, see Generating SSH keys on Windows or Generating SSH keys on Linux and Mac.

If the SSH keys are available, click Upload the public key file, and upload the public key (.pub) file. This file will be included with your onboarding case, and IBM will use it to configure the SFTP uploads. If you upload and invalid file type, the Next button will not work, and you will not be able to proceed to the next step.

If the SSH keys are not available, you can still click Next to proceed to the next step. SFTP can be set up later by submitting an SRE ticket.

For more information, see Configuring SFTP and uploading content.

Step 7: Authentication

Set up one of the supported authentication providers for logging in to Cognos Analytics on Cloud Hosted. The default is IBMid.

Step 8: Data sources

Identify the on-premises data sources that Cognos Analytics needs to connect to by using a VPN. If Cognos Analytics connects only to on-cloud databases, select No.

Step 9: Configure VPN

To connect to on-premises databases, a VPN tunnel needs to be set up. This task requires collaboration between the IBM SRE team and the customer (security administrator). To prepare, the customer needs to schedule a call with the IBM SRE team, and submit a completed Excel template with VPN configurations.

Step 10: Schedule a call (optional)

If needed, schedule a call with your IBM Cloud onboarding team.

Step 11: Call preparation (optional)

Prepare for the call by providing the requested information.

Step 11: Review and submit

Review the configuration settings that you specified, and click Submit.