Customizing roles

If you are using the roles that are predefined in the Cognos namespace, you can customize themes, home pages, or parameters so that they are unique for each Cognos role.

Note: Only Cognos roles are customizable. You cannot customize a role unless it belongs to the Cognos namespace - as either a predefined Cognos role, or one that you created yourself. For more information, see Creating and managing groups and roles.

You can specify a customized home page, or a particular report or dashboard, to be displayed when a user with a particular Cognos role opens IBM Cognos Analytics. You can remove default user interface features for certain roles, and create customized parameters to use across reports and dashboards. For more information, see Customizing Cognos Analytics across all roles.

If select Properties, the slide-out panel for that role has a Customization tab.

Note: If you want to set customizations across all roles, you use the Managing > Customization slide-out panel. For more information, see Applying themes, extensions, and views.

Opening the Customization tab

To customize individual roles, follow these steps:

  1. Click Manage > People > Accounts.
  2. Click the Cognos namespace.
  3. Find the role you want to customize and then click the More icon More icon beside it.
  4. Click Properties, and then select the Customization tab.

The Customization tab appears:

The Customization side panel in Cognos Analytics.

Setting a default home page

Click the next icon next to Home page. You can now browse for a dashboard or report to be the default home page, or you can select a view in the list of views to be the default home page for all users in this role.

Before setting a customized home page (other than a dashboard or report), you must create and upload the page resources.

Hiding menu options for a feature

You can hide some menu options for a feature from users in specified roles. Click the next icon next to Features. A list of views is displayed. This list includes both the built-in views and any custom views that have been uploaded. Click a view to see a high-level grouping of features for the view. Click the next icon next to a grouping to drill-down to a lower level of features. You can deselect or select any feature in this list, or drill-down to another set of features to choose from. Click Apply to save your changes. You can revert your changes by clicking Reset to defaults.

Important notes:
  1. When you hide a menu item for a feature via customization, you do not change any user's capability to perform or not perform the action of the menu item. In some cases, a user can access the same functionality from a different location in the user interface. In other words, hiding a menu item does not apply security rules to a feature. To apply role-based security, you must assign capabilities. For more information, see User capabilities.
  2. When you deselect an item for a submenu that also appears under several other categories (perspectives), you hide the item for every perspective with the same submenu and item. For more information, see the example topic, Removing an item from a common submenu.

To customize the navigation menu in reporting, expand Reporting > Collections > Report.

For more information, see Examples: Hiding menu options for a feature.

Setting a default theme

Click the next icon next to Theme. You can select a theme in the list of themes to be the default theme for all users in this role.

Before setting a custom theme, you must create and upload the theme resources.

Creating a custom folder

Click the next icon next to Custom folder to set a custom content folder for users who have this role. When a user with this role logs in, the custom folder is displayed on the navigation bar.

Setting the default location for uploaded files

Click the next icon next to Default upload location to specify a folder in Team content as the default location for uploaded files for users who have this role.

Setting the default data source to be used by the Assistant

Click the next icon next to Default source to specify an asset in Team content that the Assistant can use as a default data source for the selected role.

Setting default parameters for roles

Click Settings next to Parameters. A list appears of parameters that you customized. Choose the parameters that you want to configure for the role. Then select the default values that you want to appear for all users in this role. Click Apply then OK when you are done.

For more information, see Using customized parameters.

Governing the behavior of a schedule

Click the next icon next to Background run settings. You can override the default values for the following schedule criteria:

  • the minimum time interval (in minutes or in hours) between daily schedule runs. The default minimum intervals are 1 minute and 1 hour.
  • the set of schedule triggers. You can add additional triggers if you want.
  • whether the email owner is notified when a schedule run results in an error. By default, the email owner is not notified.

For more information, see Scheduling a report.

Resolving conflicts when a user has multiple roles

A user may have multiple roles which can have different default themes or home pages. To resolve this issue, when setting customizations for a role, click Advanced and set a priority for the role ranging from 0 to 10. In the case of a conflict the customizations for the role with the highest priority are used. The System Administrators role has a hard-coded priority of 1000.