Customising the deployment of IBM Cognos 8.4 Contributor Rich Client to users

The new IBM Cognos Planning Contributor 8.4 Rich Client is a very nice bit of kit bringing several enhancements over the previous ActiveX based client, most of these are user orientated, nice pretty colours and enhanced functionality, but from a technical administrators perspective the most important change is that the "thin client" no longer requires the end-user to have administrator rights on their local machine to install it.

This is achieved through a number of improvements:

• The application now installs to the %userprofile%\Application Data\ folder which all users should have full control over.
• Fewer registry entry changes are made, those which are made are done under HKEY_CURRENT_USER - again, all users should have rights to update this.
• Finally, as the client is java based it registers no DLL files or COM components

The downside of this however is that there have been a number of occasions where it is not desirable to install to the %userprofile% folders.

One such occasion was witnessed at a client who used roaming profiles for their Windows users, because of the use of roaming profiles their accounts were limited to a maximum profile size of 150MB now, with the "thin client" weighing in at a not-so-thin 138MB this cause problems that prevented the newly inflated profile from being saved and so also prevented the user from logging off their workstations.

Another client more recently reported that they had problems with the client not working properly on occasion, possibly caused by some users "cleaning" their user profile directories manually.  The required fix for this was to uninstall and reinstall the client each time they used it.

Changing the installation paths.

What we were asked was this... "How can we manually set the installation path" and "How can we deploy the installer so that its installed automatically for all users to customised path".

The first of these is quite simple.  IBM provide a manual installer for the Web Client.  This is found, most easily, with the Fix Pack installers where it is offered in a stand alone installer via Fix Pack Central.

• FP1: C8_Plan_Client_8_4_Win32_FP001.tar.gz
• FP2: C8_Plan_Client_8_4_Win32_FP002.tar.gz

Once extracted, you are given an IBM Cognos installer wizard which can be run where the files are automatically installed to x:\Program Files\Cognos\c8

This will of course require that Administrator rights are given to the users or that the install is run manually for them as it is writing files to a system area.

The other option is to use the already provided .MSI packages that are used when a user visits the Contributor Web page.  They can be found on the Gateway Server in the following folder:

• x:\Program Files\cognos\c8\webcontent\rcp_installs

CognosRCP.msi must be installed first as this is the Client Framework.
contributor.msi must be installed second, this is the Web Grid etc.

When run manually neither MSI appears to offer any options, they simply run in the background and install to the %userprofile%\Application Data\ folders. However it appears that you can manipulate the install location using the command line, an example of what I managed to get working is below:

• msiexec /i CognosRCP.msi TARGETDIR="C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8" ALLUSERS="Yes"

followed by

• msiexec /i contributor.msi TARGETDIR="C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8" ALLUSERS="Yes"

In my testing this seems to have worked.  Installing to the correct folder under Program Files and also, crucially, working when accessing the Contributor grid.