How to document Cognos active report

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As active report is very complicated, to document active report and even to deign active report is very important. However it could be a very challenge task, because there is no any standard to follow. This article is to share a simple way to document Cognos active report layout with Microsoft organization chart.

In active report development, variables are one major factor to bring all elements together. The good thing is that Cognos provides a variable tab, where we can see very clearly how each variable is initialized and set by what element.  The real difficult thing is layout. Even Cognos provides a page structure view, where we can see how all elements are organized; it is very difficult to have a skeleton of layout. Actually, below are three elements for this Skelton:

1. Deck
2. Data deck
3. Data container including list, crosstab and chart.

All other elements are for decoration, such arrange page, all buttons to setup variables, and etc.

Please see picture below, where each box can have different conventions.

     

Applying this idea, we can see a sample below