Creating burst reports

Burst reports are a feature of IBM Cognos that enables reports to be mass distributed with a minimal effect on performance. Bursting is the process of running a report once and then dividing the results for distribution to recipients. This provides each recipient of the report with only a subset of the report data that is relevant to them, and limits Cognos to a single server process.

For example, salespeople in different regions each require a report showing the sales target for each country in their region. You could create a regular report that filters sales targets based on the report recipient. Or, you can create a burst report that executes once and divides the results for each individual sales person.

Reports without bursting technology

Without burst technology, these steps would be required to execute a report for 1000 application users, with the results tailored to each user’s security level:

  1. The creation of a single scheduled report task listing all the users as recipients.
  2. The distribution of a single copy of the report to each user.

Although this process works, the system issues 1000 separate requests to the Cognos server to execute the report for each user. This method requires enormous server resources and is inefficient.

Reports with bursting technology

With burst technology, one report task is scheduled. The user groups that include all 1000 users, who require specific results from the report, are specified as a parameter during the scheduling process. The Cognos server receives a single request to generate 1000 report fragments using a burst key, which is specific to each user in the groups. This method consumes fewer server resources and provides a much more efficient way of processing a larger number of reports.

Burst reports in Workforce Management

Workforce Performance combines Cognos' bursting technology, preprocessing tasks in the application, and the WFMBurst package to efficiently generate hundreds of individualized report results. Infor highly recommends using burst reports if your organization must distribute reports to a large number of users, with report results individually tailored and secured for each user.

In the Workforce Management application, burst report outputs can be displayed to users' home page in the application using the Launch Pad framework. The Launch Pad framework is only available with a Workforce Performance Premium license. Burst reports are only available as scheduled reports.