Can we have customized "Date Prompt" in cognos8?

Question

Hi,

I am working with Cognos8 Report Studio. In my report there are two date prompts, (1) START date, (2) END date. Users can select two different dates or two same dates. But the report has valid data only for last business date of each month. For example, if Jan 31 is Sunday, valid data is available only for Jan 29 which is Friday(last business day of the month).

Can I have a customized "Date Prompt" where I can disable all other dates except the last business day of each month? Users should be able to select only month-end dates and no other dates?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly your users can select different dates but each selection can only be the last business day of any month. So it could be start:29-JAN-2008 and end:30-MAR-2008 or same date start:29-JAN-2008 and end:29-JAN-2008.

Why have days at all? Could you model your data to include a month/year field e.g. - "JAN 2008" and present that as a multi-select list box prompt? Are you sure your data source does not have a GL Accounting period field or dictionary that you can use?

If that doesn't work than you'll have to try to calculate the last day of the month but then you may need to include any business holidays in your particular jurisdiction because the last weekday of the month is not neccessarily the last business day of the month.

Answer 2

I don't believe you can customize the standard calendar date prompt in Cognos in the way that you are describing, and quick search of the Cognos knowledgebase didn't uncover any documents. However, it seems that the easiest way to provide a user-friendly prompt would be to just have a simple drop-down value prompt with the month/year combination, since there is only one valid date choice per month.