Cognos Office Connection is a managed-code application that takes advantage of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Cognos Office Connection functions like an Office plug-in, but is installed, configured, and deployed as a managed-code application. For Excel 2003 which provides full support for managed-code applications, no Cognos software is installed on the Client machine.
For older versions of Office, an .msi is provided that creates a COM wrapper that enables the .NET software to run. Cognos Office Connection is installed on the Cognos 8 server. To configure and deploy Cognos Office Connection for your Microsoft Office users, you must ensure that the .NET Framework is installed on the Client machines and that the .NET Run-time security policy has been configured to trust the Cognos Office Connection managed-code that resides on the Cognos 8 server. The .NET Framework and the run-time security policy is a Client requirement. .NET is not required on your Cognos 8 server, and you can install and run Cognos Office Connection on any supported Cognos 8 server platform.
Configuring Cognos Office Connection consists of setting a property in an Excel or PowerPoint template that points to the Cognos 8 server. Deploying Cognos Office Connection can be as simple as emailing this configured template to your Microsoft users who have the required .NET pre-requisites on their Client machines. After the template is saved and opened on a Client machine with the .NET pre-requisites, Cognos Office Connection establishes a connection to the Cognos 8 server using .NET and the code is loaded at run-time on the Client machine. Users are authenticated using their Cognos 8 authentication and can then browse, run, import, or refresh reports that they have access to in their Cognos Connection folders. From Office Connection, they can also publish saved Office documents to Cognos Connection to share them with other users.
For information about configuring this trust, see the
Installation and Configuration Guide.In addition to the client computers, Microsoft .NET Framework must be installed on the Cognos 8 Web server computer and the Cognos 8 application server computer. You do not need to configure trust on the Cognos 8 application server computers unless you want to run Cognos Office Connection on them.
