If you clicked on this blog, I know there's a good chance that you're just as hooked on extensions as I am. The things that our customers and partners are able to accomplish with them never ceases to amaze me. In Cognos Analytics 12.0.0, we wanted to make sure that can accomplish more than ever using extensions. so we have added to important new features.
Experience our natural language interface, advanced caching and more at the June 8 launch event!
Limiting extensions to specific roles and groups
You don't always want all your extensions to be available to all your users. With 12.0.0 we have added a new property in extensions to control this. Check out this spec.json file of a simple extension:
{
"name":"hamburgerCustomGroupRoles",
"schemaVersion": "1.0",
"extensions": [
{
"perspective": "common",
"comment": "There is a special meta perspective called COMMON. Adding contributions to this perspective will cause the extension to be applied to All perspectives.",
"features": [{
"id": "Environment_Modeler sample.common.menuitem.openFolder",
"toolItems": [
{
"comment": "This code adds a menu item to the hamburger menu to directly open a specific folder.",
"id": "Modeler_Environment sample.folder.opener",
"containerId": "Modeler com.ibm.bi.glass.common.navmenu",
"label": "Modeler menu item",
"type": "MenuItem",
"icon": "images/folder.svg",
"weight": 15,
"comment": "The higher the weight, the earlier it appears in the container.",
"push": "true",
"actionController": "bi/glass/api/FolderOpener",
"options": {"path": ".public_folders/Samples/By feature/Extensions"},
"environment": {
"groupsAndRoles": [ ":Analytics Users" ]
}
}
]
}]
}]}
The magic happens at the very end:
"groupsAndRoles": [ ":Analytics Users" ]
groupsAndRoles is a brand new property that you can use. You simply pass in an array of group and/or roles to match against, and only users that are members of one of those will have the extension enabled for them.
This will enable tremendous flexibility for the personalizing of Cognos, based on their access.
Customer content navigation tab extensions
Cognos gives you lots of choice about where you can add extensions in our UI. In 11.2 we allow you to add custom tabs to the Home page. Now in 12.0.0, you can also add custom tabs in our Content page. Here is how:
{
"name": "customContent",
"schemaVersion": "1.0",
"version": "1.0.0",
"extensions": [{
"perspective": "customPage",
"inherits": "content",
"features": [{
"id": "com.ibm.bi.content.navigator.customContent",
"environment": {
"roles": ["author"]
},
"collectionItems": [{
"containerId": "com.ibm.bi.content.navigator",
"id": "com.ibm.bi.content.navigator.Announcement",
"name": "Announcement",
"label": "Announcement",
"stateId": "customContentView",
"weight": 100,
"properties": {
"path": ".public_folders/MyTeamFolder",
"toolbar": [
"filter",
"sort",
"addFolder",
"addLink",
"refresh",
"settings"
],
"listOptions": true
}
}]
}]
}]
}
The critical piece here is the newly supported container ID com.ibm.bi.content.navigator. This is the container for custom content tabs.
"containerId": "com.ibm.bi.content.navigator",
If you combine this with the new ability to assign extensions to certain groups and roles, this will allow you to have different custom content tabs for different roles and groups. And just like on the home page, these custom tabs can be folder contents, or your own Javascript content. The possibilities are limitless!