danieljarolim/Updating Cognos User Preferences Using a Hyperlink.md

## Updating Cognos User Preferences Using a Hyperlink.md

      
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              Updating Cognos User Preferences Using a Hyperlink.md
            
          
    Updating Cognos User Preferences Using a Hyperlink

I had a need to bulk update user profiles in Cognos and didn’t have immediate access to a bulk update tool like Motio Pro from http://www.motio.com or the time to try and learn the API.
Googling I found this discussion http://www.cognoise.com/index.php?topic=22530.0 , where some resourceful people managed to dissect the user preference form and translate it from a POST to a GET request, but unfortunately missed a step so it doesn’t quite work (see last post).
I did more desperate digging. Here is the working version. Take any of the three following URLs — depending on the configuration of your Cognos environment — and only append settings that need to be updated.
PS. The CAF firewall needs to be disabled for this to work (disable through cogconfig.bat).
Going through the gateway:
http://cognos/BI/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/submit.xts&ifrmcmd=save&m_return=&m_class=account&m_obj=~

Going through the gateway for Cognos Express:
http://cognos/IBMCognosExpress/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/submit.xts&ifrmcmd=save&m_return=&m_class=account&m_obj=~

Without using the gateway:
http://cognos:19300/p2pd/servlet/dispatch?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/submit.xts&ifrmcmd=save&m_return=&m_class=account&m_obj=~

The List Of Settings:
&m_po_linesPerPage=
&m_po_listViewSeparator=background
&p_style_back=
&m_po_skin=storeID%28%22iEB596A9B9B9C43F29FFE406822858B61%22%29
&m_po_showHiddenObjects=true
&m_p_format=HTML
&m_po_showWelcomePage=true
&m_po_showOptionSummary=true
&runoptions=true
&m_go_accessibilityFeatures=false
&m_po_displayMode=list
&m_select_productLocale=default
&changed_m_p_productLocale=0
&m_p_productLocale=
&m_select_contentLocale=default
&changed_m_p_contentLocale=0
&m_p_contentLocale=
&m_select_timeZoneID=default
&changed_m_p_timeZoneID=0
&m_p_timeZoneID=AET
&m_bidi_biDirectionalFeaturesEnabled=false
&encoding=UTF-8
&backURL=


Look at the source of the user preference page to get a list of valid values for any of the options.
the backURL should take the user back to the provided page. Normally it shows where the user came from and it can be found and copied from almost any Cognos URL.
The m_po_skin StoreID can be found on the administration page / configuration / styles / properties or view source of the user preference page.

As an example, I wanted to change the skin for all existing users to a customised Business skin, change lines per page to 999 because some get confused when reports are hidden on page 2 or 3, and I didn’t want them landing on the welcome page when redirected from http://cognos/IBMCognosExpress. So I configured IIS to temporarily redirect http://cognos/ to the following URL for a couple of weeks, then changed it back to /IBMCognosExpress
http://congnos/IBMCognosExpress/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=xts.run&m=portal/submit.xts&ifrmcmd=save&m_return=&m_class=account&m_obj=~&m_po_linesPerPage=999&m_po_skin=storeID%28%22iB44E2C8C4614455A9895F6111DB2392B%22%29&m_po_showWelcomePage=false