Cognos, Reporting Hierarchy based on divisions/Departments

[J-Kap]

Hello,

Does anyone know how to set up a reporting hierarchy based on company departments/divisions. The idea is to prevent e.g. the Car department from seeing data on the Boat Department.

Our company is already using BI managers where the manager will only see data of their direct reports but we need to take a step further by restricting managers seeing data from other departments.

Does any one have experience on this? Could you please advise how I would achieve this?

Many thanks

J-Kap

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@J-Kap This is a good question. If you look in your site under Feature Hierarchies, you will notice the Reporting hierarchy says "Do Not Change (Contact Concur Support)". The reason for this is that if the hierarchy isn't set up correctly, it can make things difficult and there are instances where the hierarchy, once saved cannot be fully removed. 

You may not know this, but only those with assigned Cognos roles would be able to see data from other departments. So, BI Managers and those designated as Expense Approvers can only see data for those that are assigned to them. Using your example, unless someone in the Car department submits their expense reports to someone in the Boat department the manager of the Boat department will not see data from employees in the Car department. Based on the BI Manager permission and the Expense Approver role, the system recognizes and "knows" what data a manager can see. A Reporting Hierarchy really isn't needed unless you are going to want to restrict those with assigned Cognos roles and what data they can see. 

Let me know if you have any questions about this.

[J-Kap]

Thanks Kevin, this does make a lot of sense. I don't think the hierarchy would be necessary.

Thank you