Have you ever stepped away from your computer for just a few minutes, and come back to Cognos proudly stating that you’re already logged in? That very useful message preventing you from saving the report that you’ve worked for hours and hours on.

Can you guess what happened to me this morning?

Well, after a few moments of panicking I realized that the reports are still there in the browser. I’m not sure which reports are saved (all of them, right? because I always save when I should), but at least the XML is there waiting for me.

Fortunately, the application JavaScript we need is not obfuscated. So this will work:

for(var i=0;i<frames.length;++i){
if(!frames[i].Application.GlassView) continue;
var gv = frames[i].Application.GlassView
  , saved = gv.isDirty()?'Not Saved':'Saved'
  , name = gv.getTitle()
  , cmProp = gv.cmProperties;

console.log(name + ' is ' + saved)
if(gv.isDirty()&&cmProp){
console.log('In order to save ' + name + ' , type in frames['+i+'].Application.Save() or you can get the report XML by typing frames['+i+'].Application.Document.GetReportXML()')
}
else if(gv.isDirty()&&!cmProp){
console.log('This is an unsaved report so a simple save action will not work. You can retrieve the report xml by typing frames['+i+'].Application.Document.GetReportXML()')
}
}

Run that from the top frame in the console and follow the instructions for each report.

Now a colleague did mention that sometimes pressing the back button will resolve it, but it doesn’t always work for me and I’m super paranoid about losing work.