Packaging Cognos Planning Contributor Web Client
Web Client Deployment made easy
Overview
Many businesses implementing Cognos Planning Contributor will not provide their end users with Local Administrator privileges, but its also likely that a majority of these companies will not have on-site I. T. expertise or may have a sparse user population making the installation of hundreds of web clients difficult. Fortunately Cognos provides us with an installation package for the Contributor Web client that can be used with software packaging and distribution products such as Microsoft SMS, Installshield and others.
Contributor ActiveX (web) client deployment
Whilst the Contributor web client is designed to be easily deployed via the Contributor web site, this will not always be possible as the installation requires that the installing user be a member of the Local Administrators group on their Windows client machine. In these cases we can elect to visit each of our users and complete the installation process for them with administrative rights or we could temporarily grant each of these users the local administrator rights to complete the installation themselves.
Neither option may suit. In these cases you may want to consider remote deployment using a packaging and deployment tool. When using MSI packages, you can also deploy via Active Directory.
Unfortunately there are too many variations on the process and too many different software applications to manage this to go into specific details on how we package the web client files, however as these processes are commonly known we will only cover what you need to know to get your package created for the Cognos application.
Application packaging information
- Obtain the "full installer" for the Web Client from the Cognos Contributor software installation CD. The installer is found inside the folder "Contributor Web Client Software" in the root of the CD.
- The installer is a simple "next, next, next" type of process. Not as complex as some other Cognos products.
When these steps are completed the application package can be completed and then testing is able to take place of the deployment of the package.
Conclusion
Obviously it would be difficult to go into the exact details of packaging as there are many software products available to provide this functionality and it is for this reason that many Consultancy firms will not provide direct support for packaging, though as the theory of installing Analyst is the same in most cases we can ensure that the packager understands the installation methodology of the product before beginning the process.
Whilst the packaging of the Cognos Contributor Web Client is not directly supported, many companies are successfully packaging their Contributor Web Client installations each week.