How to configure reporting

After you install or upgrade your reporting packages, you must configure your reporting installation.

For its reporting feature, Unica integrates with IBM Cognos®, a third-party business intelligence application. Reporting relies on the following components:

  • An installation of IBM Cognos®
  • A set of Unica components that integrate HCL Enterprise applications with the IBM Cognos® installation
  • For several Unica applications, reporting schemas that enable you to build reporting views in the HCL system tables for the application
  • The example reports for the Unica application, which are built with IBM Cognos® Report Studio

When you install Unica applications, each application registers itself with Unica Platform. During that registration process, the application adds an entry for itself to the Analytics menu item.

After the report package for the application is configured:

  • The Analytics menu item for the application provides access to its cross-object reports.
  • The single object reports appear on the Analysis tabs of the appropriate objects.
  • The dashboard reports for the application can be enabled and used in dashboards.

Typically, the reports packages for the Unica products are installed when the Unica applications are installed. Not all of the reports packages contain reporting schemas, but they all contain the following IBM® Cognos® BI components:

  • A customizable IBM Cognos® reporting metadata model for the Unica application reports
  • Customizable Unica application reports built with IBM Cognos® BI Report Studio
  • Reference documentation that describes the reporting data model and the reports

The IBM Cognos® model references the reporting views in the Unica application database. This makes the data available to the IBM Cognos® reports that are delivered in Unica Reports Packages.

Immediately after installation, the reports are in their default state and can be considered example reports. Many Unica applications have a set of objects, attributes, or metrics that can be added or customized. For example, Unica Campaign allows you to add response types, custom campaign attributes, and additional audience levels. After the data design of your system is implemented, you can revisit reporting to customize the example reports and create new reports.

How you configure the reports after the data design phase of your implementation depends on which Unica applications are included in your Unica suite.

  • For Unica Campaign and Unica Interact, you customize the reporting schemas and then update the views or reporting tables that were created during installation. At that point, you synchronize the Cognos® data model with the newly updated reporting views and publish the revised model to the Cognos® content store. Now, the new custom attributes are available in Report Studio and you can add them to the sample reports or create new reports that display the attributes.
  • For the Unica applications that do not provide reporting schemas and for Unica Deliver (which provides schemas that cannot be customized), you configure the IBM Cognos® reports only.