How to Create a list report in Cognos8-Beginners Guide-Tutorial-1

After searching for a cognos tutorial on the internet(WWW) for 1 week i found no good websites on Cognos. So, i have decided to give you people a website with complete tutorials from my side. Read them, learn Cognos and Master it.

Tutorial on How to create a list report in Cognos8 is given below for the level of a beginner and hobby learner. Please go through this and enjoy learning Cognos8.

1. Select a package to create a list report by right clicking in the navigation window on the left side of the report studio. In this Tutorial, I have taken the package “Go Sales” that is available as a sample package with Cognos.
2. Now, after selecting the package, the report is provided with some data items. You can browse through them in the navigation window under the package tree.

3. As seen in the below image click on the toolbox and select list.

4. Drag the list from the navigator window to the report window. This enables you to create a List Report.
Note: If you want to create a crosstab or a chart or a table, drag the respective tool from the toolbox.
5. Now drag a data item to the report window within the list that is recently created.
Note:While dragging the data item, you will notice a line as shown in the below image. If the line is not seen, the data item cannot be placed into the list.

6. Now drag the items that you want to place in the list as shown below. You can drag any number of data items at a time by using CTRL + clik on the data item for multiple data items. While the above note point regarding the line is to be checked each time you add an item.
7. Now the list is ready. All you have to do is run the report and check using the run as options in the tool bar on the top of the report window.

You can run in many formats such as: HTML, PDF, Excel 2007, Excel 2002, Excel 2000 single sheet, Delimited Text(CSV), XML as seen above.

Alternative method: (Older Versions of Cognos like Cognos Report Net)
You can create a list faster by adding the data items directly to the query explorer and auto populate them. Steps for this process are as below.
1. Go to the query explorer by clicking on the query explorer tab in the center.
2. Add a query by clicking on the query tool present in the left side pane (insertable objects pane).

3. Now, double clicking on the query that is newly added. You will go to a query items window.

4. Now, drag the necessary data items and add them to the Fact column of the query explorer.
5. Now go to the Page Explorer and add a list from the toolbox window on the left side.
Now it will prompt to assign a query to the list you have added.It can be either exisiting one or a new query.Since you have already created a new query in step 2 into which data items are added , you can use the same( in this case it is Query 1). Note : make sure that Auto populate option is checked.

6. This inturn works only with the Cognos older versions like Cognos Report Net and the final layout will look like the below image.

I will try to update as many tutorials i can, provided i have all the support from you people. Thank you.
~Urs Krishan~