The person in charge of deploying MotioCI Inventory and Reduction has to answer the following questions:

• How many reports in total are there in the Cognos content store?
• How many reports are still valid and will run?
• Which reports can be deleted and thus removed from the scope of the migration?
• How many reports were used when for the last time?
• How complex are the reports (JavaScripts, HTML, SQL)?
• Which reports are really just copies (1:1 or very similar) of other reports?

The first benefit of Motio CI Inventory and Reduction is to be able to develop an optimal migration strategy. By analyzing the content store to be migrated, first the overall scope can be sized up and then it is possible to estimate how long the upgrade will probably take. After that comes the qualitative evaluation of the migration scope. Here, reports that should be migrated – or not migrated can be identified quickly. The departments responsible for the migration have the
opportunity to define evaluation criteria (for example, the complexity of the reports) by themselves. Reports that should not be migrated disappear “in bulk” from the Cognos system with MotioCI Inventory and Reduction, regardless of the report folder in which they are located. The underlying versioning enables you to reactivate the reports at any time, even at a later point.

The focus with regard to tests and redesigns of reports is then only on the reports that migrate to the new Cognos environment. By cleaning up the content store, you achieve two things: companies reduce the scope of the IBM Cognos Analytics content store, they can create an optimized migration plan, and save a lot of time during the upgrade. Furthermore, their content store is tidied, which stabilizes the performance of their IBM Cognos Analytics environment for the long term.

The benefits of testing are:

• Significant reduction of the work and thus the costs in the development time of a report. The earlier the report is tested, the less work there is for the entire development process. Motio sets up the tests so that they are conducted continuously and thus errors are identified and eliminated early on, which eliminates additional work.
• Fully automated testing
• Increased report quality and user satisfaction
• Test of system components
• Many different test cases (depending on focus)

What are the benefits of this?
By creating test scenarios and saving them for later tests, you reduce the work required as much as possible. Test scenarios created once can be used for frequent upgrades or report inspection. This is something manual tests can’t do.

How does it work?
There are basically two options for automated testing:

1. Testing in the context of two virtual Cognos environments (sandboxes).
   This procedure is particularly suitable for migration projects.
2. Testing between productive and development environments
   This procedure is suitable for permanent and regular testing of new reports.

These two procedures are described in detail in our white paper.

By creating a history of each change, MotioCI Visioning makes available the following functions and benefits in IBM Cognos Analytics:

Automation

• Versioning is done automatically for each change of object in the content store. Therefore, no more report copies have to be created and the content store remains lean.

Transparency

• Changes to reports and objects can be traced in time, and with regard to their type and
  scope.
• There is a comment function. Thus, the traceability of changes becomes transparent
  and the people in charge can record the “who, what, and when” automatically
• Since the back-up copies cease to exist, the content store only includes objects for use and a load due to “quick back-ups” is eliminated.

Audit security

• The versioning of the various adjustments in the release states enables access to the various (automatically saved) versions at any time.

Control and security

• Roll-back to previous versions or restoration of deleted objects is possible at any time.
• Two versions of an asset can now be compared in detail at any time (also for troubleshooting).
• The time required for restoring accidentally deleted content is reduced greatly. EVERY previous version of a BI asset, including deleted content, can be restored.

Teamwork

• Collaborative work on objects is possible. Checking the objects in and out backs up and coordinates adjustments and changes.
• Thanks to the integrated comment function, communication among team members improves. Changes to BI assets are thus traceable for anyone with the appropriate authorizations.

With MotioCI Deployment, it is possible to connect several environments (for example, the two sandboxes during the upgrade) with one another and to exchange content between them purposefully. The report developer can thus assign a completed report to a release (label), which an administrator can transfer to another environment with a few clicks.
It is possible to provide several releases simultaneously, which makes continuous delivery possible in the course of a release plan. The report developer then assigns his completed report to the relevant release.

Since each deployment is audited, there is transparency about the state of the report portfolio at time X. This means that a deployment can also be rolled back (partially) if necessary. This can be advisable if reports do not work in production as they did in development.

MotioCI performs all the individual steps required for a deployment. Access to individual server (directories) – as with classic Cognos export/import provision methods – is not required, which reduces the time required for a transfer between two Cognos environments significantly.

The benefits of MotioCI Deployment are:

• Deployment either ad hoc, on-demand with a click or automatically according to a schedule
• Deployment – in contrast to classic Cognos tools – is possible per report
• The simplified deployment process speeds up the release cycle, which means that new developments and enhancement can be made available to end users faster
• Reduced admin activity and increased transparency: “What happened when”
• Roll-back function