In anticipation of some upcoming articles, I needed to set up an email provider. Because it’s so ubiquitous, and because I’m lazy, I’m going to use GMail as my SMTP server. Here’s what to do.

First, make sure you enable IMAP in the GMail settings. Click on the gear icon, settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, Enable IMAP, and Save Changes.

Now on GMail settings screen there a configuration instructions links for your applications, but for some reason Cognos isn’t listed. So here they are, in Cognos Configuration, open the Notification settings and set the following:

SMTP mail server: smpt.gmail.com:465
Account and password: Google account credentials
Default Sender: your own email
SSL Encryption: True

Restart Cognos.

Now let’s set up a quick report to test the email.

And run it…

Fingers crossed…

Obviously this shouldn’t be used for a production environment. There are also a few Google set limitations, the biggest of which is a 99 email limit per day – so no crazy burst jobs. This is really good for a quick and dirty example.

If I find the time this year (no promises), I’ll be writing about setting up dynamic email subject lines, and different report outputs in a single email. Another article I’m planning is a combination of the data entry method and bursting.