Analyze Microsoft Exchange Data in Cognos Analytics

IBM Watson®-powered Cognos Analytics lets you clean and connect your data and build visualizations. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, real-time connectivity between your cloud data and Cognos Analytics for data management, visualization, analytics, and more. This article shows how to connect to Microsoft Exchange in CData Connect Cloud and then analyze Microsoft Exchange data in Cognos Analytics.

NOTE: These instructions require Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 or higher

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Microsoft Exchange, allowing you to analyze live Microsoft Exchange data in Cognos — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Microsoft Exchange, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Microsoft Exchange data.

Connect to Microsoft Exchange in Connect Cloud

CData Connect Cloud uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Microsoft Exchange" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Microsoft Exchange.

   Specify the User and Password to connect to Exchange. Additionally, specify the address of the Exchange server you are connecting to and the Platform associated with the server.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Microsoft Exchange Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Microsoft Exchange data from Cognos Analytics.

Connect to Microsoft Exchange in Cognos Analytics

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Cognos Analytics to analyze live Microsoft Exchange data.

Download the CData Connect Cloud JDBC Driver

1. Download and install the CData Connect Cloud JDBC Driver: https://www.cdata.com/cloud/clients/download.aspx#jdbc.
2. Copy the JAR file (cdata.jdbc.connect.jar) from the installation directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\CData\JDBC Driver for CData Connect\lib) to the "drivers" folder in your Cognos Analytics installation directory.

Configure the Connection to CData Connect Cloud

1. Open IBM Cognos and navigate to Manage > Data server connections.
2. Click the icon to add a data server.
3. Select CData Connect Cloud.
4. Set JDBC URL to the appropriate connection string. For example: jdbc:connect://AuthScheme=Basic;
5. Set Driver class name to "cdata.jdbc.connect.ConnectDriver"
6. Create and store authenticate credentials by selecting an authentication method
   • Set Username to your CData Connect Cloud username (e.g., user@mydomain.com)
   • Set Password to the PAT you previously generated.
7. Click Test connection to confirm that the connection succeeds.

At this point, you are ready to analyze and visualize Microsoft Exchange data in Cognos Analytics. For more information about using Cognos Analytics, please refer to the Cognos Analytics documentation.

Live Access to Microsoft Exchange Data for Analytics

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Microsoft Exchange data from Cognos Analytics. You can create new visualizations, build reports, and more — without replicating Microsoft Exchange data.

Try CData Connect Cloud and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.