Saw people having issues with configuring SSO for CX a few times already, so it’s probably worth puting this quick tip up here.

If you followed the mighty document called “IBM Cognos Proven Practices: Enabling Kerberos SSO in IBM Cognos Express on Windows Server 2008” and Single SignOn still doesn’t work, think about how much you need Kerberos authetification. If you, as well as myself, don’t really care about enhanced security that Kerberos provides so much, you can probably use something called NTLM or REMOTE_USER for authetification. It’s less secure, but you don’t need to set up Kerberos delegation (which is a lot of tedious work & troubleshooting sometimes). Most of Cognos BI sites I know use it, cause it’s easier to set up.

How to do it? Cognos Express is basicall BI + TM1 in one integrated box, so we just need to follow the REMOTE_USER setup instructions just for BI part:

1. Navigate to your CX installation folder/configuration
2. run cogcofig.bat file, your familiar Cognos BI Configuration will launch
3. Apply changes from link above for Active directory namespace, namely add singleSignOn=IdentityMapping option and input binding credentials (any domain user will do)
4. Just save the configuration and !!!Important!!! don’t start the Cognos BI service, just close the Cognos configuration utility.

Restart your Express service and everything should work.

If you start the Cognos BI service in step 4), you’ll end up with a newly registered and not working cognos bi service that you can safely remove later.