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Status Not under consideration
Workspace Cognos Analytics
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 12, 2015

Capability to Hide/Remove Export to Excel option from Workspace

We are looking to secure option to take report Export in Excel/CSV for all BI tools. This would mean that only selected users those are part of a particular user group will be allowed to run report in Excel/CSV.

We had raised multiple PMRs and explored Administration and Security Guide and the final outcome is that this option can not be secured completely. Below are the places where we have to disable this option permanently by modifying system files-

1. Query Studio
2. Analysis Studio
3. Report Studio
4. Workspace Advanced
5. Cognos Connection (Run with Options)

And as per Administration and security guide, only option which can be secured is available on Cognos Viewer.

However, there are couple of ways through which users can take Excel output -

1. Workspace - As per the response on PMR 11050999744, there is no way to either secure, disable or hide Excel Export option.
2. If a user has report link, he/she can modify that URL and specify parameter run.outputFormat and can get report output in Excel/CSV. This is because we are just hiding Excel/CSV options and not able to disable this functionality completely.


Apart from this, when we will try putting these restrictions on existing Cognos environments, we will face few more challenges -

1. If a drillthrough report is setup with output format defined as Excel/CSV, Even after these restrictions are implemented, users will be able to see output in Excel. Again this is because we can only hide Excel export option and cannot disable it.

2. If default output format for a report is set to Excel/CSV from report properties, even after we implement restrictions, users will be able to run report in Excel/CSV.

Based on these issues enhancement I propose are -

1. There should be a way to secure output formats from all Studios and Cognos Connection. And this security could be through capability

2. Instead of hiding output formats, it would be good if they can be disabled once removed/Commented in system files