Windchill Business Reporting Post Installation Instructions
Manual post-installation steps are required if:
• you are updating an existing Windchill installation to include Windchill Business Reporting. For more information, see the section Update Existing Installation.
• your Windchill Business Reporting and Windchill installations use different PTC HTTP Servers. For more information see the Reverse Proxy Configuration for Separate PTC HTTP Servers section.
The following sections include verifications you can run to confirm that Windchill Business Reporting installed properly, and optional manual post-installation steps that you may choose to perform if applicable for your site.
These verifications include:
• Log in to Windchill Business Reporting
• Confirm Presence of Out-of-The-Box Reports
• Accessing Cognos Configuration Tool
These optional steps include:
• Configuring Windchill Business Reporting Access Control
• Configuring Windchill Business Reporting with HTTPS
• Adding an Enterprise LDAP for Authentication
• Updating the Model and Loading Reports
Verifications
Log In to Windchill Business Reporting
To confirm that Windchill Business Reporting was successfully installed, navigate to the following URL:
<machine>:<port>/Cognos
Where <machine> is the machine on which Windchill Business Reporting was installed, and <port> is the Windchill Business Reporting gateway machine's web server port (if you accepted the default port value of 80, then you do not need to specify the port in the URL).
Log in using the credentials you specified for either the Windchill administrative user (wcadmin, by default), or the Windchill Business Reporting administrative user specified during installation (wbradmin, by default). Initially, all users residing in the Administrative LDAP repository can log into Windchill Business Reporting. If you want to log in as a user from an Enterprise repository, or if you configured the Windchill Business Reporting administrative user to reside in an Enterprise repository, see the Adding an Enterprise LDAP for Authentication section.
Confirm Presence of Out-Of-The-Box Reports
|
|
This verification step applies only to Windchill PDMLink, Windchill ProjectLink, integral Windchill PDMLink and Windchill ProjectLink, and integral Arbortext Content Manager and Windchill ProjectLink installations.
|
Once you have logged into Windchill Business Reporting, a Windchill folder should be present, containing the out-of-the-box reports loaded for your Windchill solution. If Windchill Requirements Management, Windchill Aerospace and Defense, or Windchill MPMLink are installed with your Windchill solution, a folder for each product’s out-of-the-box reports will be present within the Windchill folder.
These reports are also available from within your Windchill solution, on the Reports pages.
Accessing Cognos Configuration Tool
If the verifications are unsuccessful, or if there is additional configuration you would like to perform within Cognos, use the Cognos Configuration tool. If shortcuts were created during your installation, you can also access the tool by selecting the Cognos Configuration shortcut. Otherwise, access the Cognos Configuration tool at the following location:
• for Windows 32 bit systems: <WBR_Home>\bin\cogconfigw.exe
• for Windows 64 bit systems: <WBR_Home>\bin64\cogconfigw.exe
• for UNIX: <WBR_Home>/bin64/cogconfig.sh
Where <WBR_Home> is the machine on which Windchill Business Reporting was installed. For further information, refer to the documentation available from the Cognos Configuration tool.
Configuring Windchill Business Reporting Access Control
Out-of-the-box, Windchill Business Reporting makes all Windchill site administrators (members of the Administrators group) members of the System Administrators group within Cognos, giving them complete access to all Windchill Business Reporting data and functionality. If your site has the optional Windchill Business Reporting modules, then users must be added to the appropriate Windchill groups to be able to access the additional Windchill Business Reporting functionality:
• Windchill Business Report Author optional module—users must be members of the Business Report Author group to access the Report Studio tool.
• Windchill Business Report Monitor optional module—users must be members of the Business Report Monitor group to access the Report Monitor tool.
Initially the Windchill administrative user (wcadmin, by default) and the Windchill Business Reporting administrative user (wbradmin, by default) created during installation are the only members of these groups. Additional users can be added to these groups using the Participant Administration utility, available from > .
For more information on how to configure access control, see the Cognos Administration and Security Guide, available from the Windchill Business Reporting documentation page. This page can be accessed from the following location on the machine on which Windchill Business Reporting (host component or gateway server) was installed:
<WBR_Home>\webcontent\documentation
where <WBR_Home> is the installed location of Windchill Business Reporting.
Configuring Windchill Business Reporting with HTTPS
You can configure Windchill Business Reporting to work with the SSL protocol so that communication happens using HTTPS rather than HTTP, using the following general steps:
2. Configure Windchill Business Reporting to use SSL, following the directions in the Secure Deployment Guide available from the documentation page, as described in the previous section.
4. Restart Windchill Business Reporting.
Adding an Enterprise LDAP for Authentication
Adding an LDAP Authentication Namespace
Access the Cognos Configuration tool as described in the Verifications section. Following the instructions found in the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide, add a new namespace resource with a type of LDAP or Active Directory, as appropriate, that corresponds to your Enterprise LDAP. You must also specify values for the following fields:
• Namespace ID
• Host and Port
• Base Distinguished Name
When logging into
Windchill Business Reporting, users are presented with a drop-down list of the available namespaces to choose from, including the original Administrative LDAP configured by the PSI, and the new Enterprise LDAP. To have the log-in default to the Enterprise LDAP, see
Set the Default Namespace (Optional). You can later choose to remove the default namespace and revert to the drop-down list.
Configure your Web Server
Next, configure your Web server so that the Enterprise LDAP is recognized when authenticating Windchill Business Reporting requests. See the previous chapters in this guide for more information on the Web server installed at your site. The following sections include specific information helpful for each Web server.
For specific information on supported software versions, see the Software Support Matrix (available from
https://www.ptc.com/en/support/refdoc).
PTC HTTP Server on Windows
To configure PTC HTTP Server to recognize the Enterprise LDAP for authenticating Windchill Business Reporting requests use the following procedure:
1. From within a Windchill shell, navigate to the directory where PTC HTTP Server is installed.
2. Run the following on the command line:
ant -f webAppConfig.xml addCognosAuthProvider
-DappName=<COGNOS_WEBAPP_NAME>
-DproviderName=<ENTERPRISE_LDAP_NAME>
-DldapUrl=<ENTERPRISE_LDAP_URL>
-DdocBase=<WBR_HOME>
where
◦ <COGNOS_WEBAPP_NAME> is the name of the Cognos Web application, which is Cognos by default.
◦ <ENTERPRISE_LDAP_NAME> is the unique name of the Enterprise LDAP. This value must match the EnterpriseLDAP Node value in the Cognos Configuration tool.
◦ <ENTERPRISE_LDAP_URL> is the full URL for the Enterprise LDAP, including the base distinguished name. For example:
ldap://mymachine.mycompany.com:389/cn=EnterpriseLdap,cn=Windchill_10.0,o=myorg
◦ <WBR_HOME> is the installed location of Windchill Business Reporting.
You can optionally include -DbindDn and -DbindPwd elements if necessary.
| If there is a space or an equal sign ( = ) anywhere in one of the arguments, you must enclose the entire argument with double quotes ( " ). |
3. Restart PTC HTTP Server.
Internet Information Services (IIS)
IIS can only use a single LDAP for authenticating of
Windchill Business Reporting requests. As noted in the
Configuring IIS and Tomcat chapter, PTC recommends that you initially configure your system using the bundled
PTC HTTP Server, before switching to IIS.
1. Follow the steps in the PTC HTTP Server on Windows section, and ensure that the configuration is working correctly.
2. Following the instructions contained in the Cognos Installation and Configuration Guide to configure IIS for Windchill Business Reporting.
3. Shut down PTC HTTP Server, and start IIS. As they are not running concurrently, both PTC HTTP Server and IIS can use the same port.
Configure Cognos Namespace Selection Behavior on Log In (Optional)
You can choose to configure the Cognos namespace selection behavior when logging in to Windchill Business Reporting by choosing one of the following options.
or
Only one of these options can be configured at a time. If neither option is configured, then when logging into Windchill Business Reporting, users are presented with a drop-down list of the available namespaces to choose from.
Set the Default Namespace
To authenticate users with the Enterprise LDAP by default, set the Windchill Business Reporting gateway namespace using the following procedure. This gateway namespace is the default namespace used by Windchill Business Reporting for authentication, which means that only the specified namespace is used for authentication.
1. Access the Cognos Configuration tool as described in the Verifications section.
2. Select the Environment node of the Explorer tree.
3. In the
Properties panel, specify the
Gateway namespace property with the same value you entered for the Namespace ID of the new Enterprise LDAP namespace resource created in
Adding an LDAP Authentication Namespace.
| If you set the Enterprise LDAP as the gateway namespace, then only users from the Enterprise LDAP can log into Windchill Business Reporting. This means that users from the Administrative LDAP, such as wcadmin or wbradmin, cannot log into Windchill Business Reporting, but users from the Enterprise LDAP who have similar permissions can log in. You can later remove this gateway namespace, and return to the drop-down list of namespaces presented to users when the log into Windchill Business Reporting. |
Enable Windchill to Pass User’s Cognos Namespace
To enable Windchill to explicitly pass the user’s Cognos namespace, set the following properties in the wt.properties file using the xconf manager:
• wt.cognos.explicitNamespace.enabled - When this property is set to TRUE, Windchill attempts to determine the Cognos namespace of the current user, and explicitly pass that namespace as a URL parameter when a Windchill Business Reporting report is executed from within Windchill. If the namespace cannot be determined, then the standard namespace drop-down list is presented, as described above. Setting this property to FALSE (the default) reverts to the drop-down list behavior.
• wt.cognos.startup.location - Set this property value to the file path location of the cogstartup.xml Cognos configuration file. If your Windchill solution and the WBR Gateway Server are installed on the same machine, then the property value can be set to:
$wt.cognos.home\\configuration\\cogstartup.xml
If your Windchill solution and WBR Gateway Server are installed on different machines, then the file may need to be copied to an accessible location or the directory it is in may need to be shared to make the file available.
Updating the Model and Loading Reports
If the out-of-the-box reports did not load during installation (for example, if you did not load the base data), or if there are updates to the reports that you need to load into Windchill Business Reporting, then the data model must be updated and the reports loaded on the machine where your Windchill solution is installed. To do this, run the following script from a Windchill shell. (Your Windchill solution, Windchill Business Reporting, Web servers, and servlet engines must be running for this script to be successfully run.)
ant -f <wt_home>/installer/wnc/wbr_actions.xml
Update Existing Installation
If you are updating an existing Windchill installation to include Windchill Business Reporting, you should complete the following manual post-installation steps:
• Create a new database application user for Cognos. For more information, see Create a New Cognos Database User section.
• Set properties using the xconfmanager. For more information, see Setting Properties section.
• Run the wbr_actions.xml script as described in the previous section, Updating the Model and Loading Reports section.
Create a New Cognos Database User
A new Cognos database user must be created before installing Cognos on top of
Windchill PDMLink. For more information, see
Configuring a Database Application User, following the instructions appropriate for your database.
Setting Properties
Set the following properties using the xconfmanager, using values appropriate for your installation:
• For wt.properties:
wt.reporting.thirdParty.enabled=true
wt.auth.trustedHosts=<WBR host> <WBR gateway> localhost
• For db.properties:
wt.cognos.namespace=AdministrativeLDAP
wt.cognos.endpointUrl=http://<WBR host>:<WBR port>/p2pd/servlet/dispatch
wt.cognos.home=<WBR host components installation directory on host machine>
wt.cognos.model.dir.location=$(wt.cognos.model.dir)
wt.cognos.admin.uid=<Windchill site administrator user>
wt.cognos.admin.password=<Windchill site administrator password>
wt.cognos.externalUrl=$(wt.webserver.protocol)://$(wt.rmi.server.hostname)
:$(wt.webserver.port)/Cognos/bi/v1/disp
| The value used for the wt.cognos.namespace property must match the Namespace ID value in the Cognos Configuration tool, which by default is AdministrativeLDAP. If you have changed the Namespace ID value, then you must use that new value for the wt.cognos.namespace property. |
| If the operating systems of the machines where the Windchill Business Reporting host and the Windchill Web server are installed differ, then the following property must also be set for db.properties: wt.cognos.model.dir=$(wt.cognos.home)<OS specific separator>
$(wt.cognos.model.name) where <OS specific separator> is a back slash ( \ ) for Windows systems, and a forward slash ( / ) for Unix systems. |
Reverse Proxy Configuration for Separate PTC HTTP Servers
A reverse proxy configuration is required if Windchill Business Reporting and your Windchill solution use different PTC HTTP Servers.
After Windchill Business Reporting and your Windchill solution is successfully installed, you must:
| Both your Windchill solution and Windchill Business Reporting must use the same LDAP. |
Configuring Windchill
Changes must be made to your Windchill solution in the following locations:
• wt.properties file
Modify wt.properties to include the address of the machine where Windchill Business Reporting is installed as a trusted host:
wt.auth.trustedHosts=<machine_ip_addr> <serverhost>
where <machine_ip_addr><serverhost> is the address of the machine where the Windchill Business Reporting is installed. In a distributed installation scenario, this is the machine where the Windchill Business Reporting host components are installed.
• In HTTPSERVER_HOME/conf/conf.d create the file cognosreverseproxy.conf with the following contents:
<IfModule !proxy_http_module>
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
</IfModule>
ProxyPass /Cognos <cognos_url>
ProxyPassReverse /Cognos <cognos_url
where <cognos_url> is the fully qualified URL of the machine where the Windchill Business Reporting host components are installed. For example:
http://server1.mycompany.com/Cognos
• PTC HTTP Serveradditions.conf
> .