Schedule an Entry

You schedule an entry to run it at a later time or at a recurring date and time. For example, you can schedule a report or an agent.

If you no longer need a schedule, you can delete it. You can also disable it without losing any of the scheduling details. You can then enable the schedule at a later time. For more information, see Activities Management.

You can schedule an entry to run on the last day of each month Example - Schedule an Entry on the Last Day of the Month or as part of a job Use Jobs to Schedule Multiple Entries. You can schedule reports based on trigger occurrences Trigger-based Entry Scheduling.

To use this functionality, you must have the required permissions for the Scheduling secured function in IBM Cognos Administration.

To schedule an entry, you need the permissions that are required to run the entry. For example, to schedule a report or report view, you must have read, write, execute, and traverse permissions for it. To schedule a child report view, you must have execute permissions on the parent report. You also require the following access permissions for any data sources used by the report:

  • dataSource - Execute and Traverse
  • dataSourceConnection - Execute and Traverse

    With only Execute access, you are prompted to log on to the database.

  • dataSourceSignon - Execute

To schedule reports to run in the restricted CVS, PDF, XLS, or XML output formats, you require the generate output capability for the specific format. For more information, see Report formats.

If you want, you can change the current schedule owner by changing the credentials for a scheduled entry. For more information, see Example - Change the Credentials for a Schedule.

Procedure

  1. In IBM Cognos Connection, click the schedule button for the entry you want to schedule Schedule icon.
  2. Set the priority for the scheduled entry.

    Select a lower number for higher priority. The default is 3.

  3. Under Frequency, select how often you want the schedule to run.

    The Frequency section is dynamic and changes with your selection. Wait until the page is updated before selecting the frequency.

    If you specify intraday scheduling in the Frequency section, you can also select a daily frequency for your scheduled entries. To do that, proceed to step 4.

    If you do not specify intraday scheduling, proceed to step 5.

  4. Under Daily frequency, specify the frequency with which a report is run during the day, beginning with the start time selected in step 5. You can choose to schedule an entry either by the minute or by the hour.

    When you specify a daily frequency, you also have the option to select a time period when you want the entry to run during the day, for example, between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm. This way, you can restrict the running of entries to periods during the day when updates are required.

    Tip: When you specify an hourly frequency and a time period, if you select an hourly frequency that divides evenly into the 24-hour clock, your scheduled entry runs at the same times each day. If you select an hourly frequency that does not divide evenly into the 24-hour clock, your scheduled entry runs at different times on subsequent days.
    Table 1. Example of day 1 and day 2 run times for entries that are scheduled hourly within a time period
    Daily frequency Time period specified Time that the entry runs on day 1 Time that the entry runs on day 2

    Every 3 hours

    9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

    9:00 a.m.

    12:00 p.m.

    3:00 p.m.

    6:00 p.m.

    9:00 a.m.

    12:00 p.m.

    3:00 p.m.

    6:00 p.m.

    Every 5 hours

    9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

    9:00 a.m.

    2:00 p.m.

    10:00 a.m.

    3:00 p.m.

  5. Under Start, select the date when you want the schedule to start.
  6. Under End, select when you want the schedule to end.

    If you want to create the schedule but not apply it right away, select the Disable the schedule check box. To later enable the schedule, clear the check box.

  7. If additional options are available on the Schedule page, specify what you want.

    For example, for reports, you can select formats, languages, delivery method (including how to save report output files), and prompt values.

  8. Click OK.

Results

A schedule is created and the report runs at the next scheduled time.