I was creating a report in Cognos 8.3 Report Studio when suddenly i realized i needed some backup copies of my reports.. you know, in case of some virus attacks or an accidental server crash happens. We don’t know what could happen right? All reports in cognos 8 are saved in the server, that is by default. But did you know that it is possible to open and save reports in Cognos 8.3 locally? Yes this is doable. What you need is to do is tweak and modify some configuration changes to the default behavior of Cognos ReportNet on your server and local machines.

Try to follow these steps as this may come in handy for both Cognos 8.1- Cognos 8.3 ReportNet. I’ve tried this and this should work for you too.

Steps:

1. Search for the ReportNet bin directory situated on your server and copy a .DLL called LFA.dll (LFA stands for Local File Access) to your client machines that should be able to save reports locally. This file is installed as part of the Gateway component and needs to be registered on your client machines. If you dont have lfa.dll file, ask your cognos administrator to do that for you. Or you could download this here.

2. To register the .DLL in your local machine, type regsvr32 LFA.dll in a command line (for windows->click start->run->cmd) on the client machines and then press <Enter>. After that, just click on the confirmation box. This would configure your registry settings.

3. In a browser session, from the Tools menu click select Internet options. Click the Security tab, select Trusted sites and click the Sites button. In the Add this Web Site to the zone: section type http://localhost/ and click the Add button. Once again, in the Add this Web Site to the zone: section type http://%3cservername/> and click the Add button.

Note: If the ReportNet server is not on the same computer as the browser, then the computer name must be used instead of localhost.

Click OK. Click OK again.

4. For changes to take effect as expected, close all the the current browser session you have. Start a new browser session and go into your Reportnet studio

5. Click the Report Studio link in Cognos Connection and select your Report package.

6. Click Create a new report, select List and click OK.

7. From the File menu, the Open, Save and Save As, options are available.

8. Click Tools and select Options. Check the Allow local file access checkbox and click OK. Now, the File menu lists Local Open, and Local Save As for menu item options.

9. To open a local .XML file as a report, select Local Open and click yes “Allow interaction” and browse to the location where the .XML file is located.

There you have it. I hope you make some back up copies of your reports locally.

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