Pre-built descartes report migration: Cognos report converter, freight-spend dashboard scaffolds, customs filing acknowledgment templates, MacroPoint visibility dashboard rebuilds. OTBI for ad-hoc, BIP for pixel-perfect, OAC for executive dashboards.
Every Descartes tenant has a Cognos catalog of 50–200 reports and a hidden long tail of 200–1,300 custom SQL views, scheduled extracts and Excel-feeding jobs that nobody catalogued.
The first descartes report migration conversation in any kickoff sounds the same: logistics ops names 15 dashboards, finance names 10 freight-spend reports, the customs broker names 8 ACE entry reports, the CFO names 3 board-deck slides. Total: about 40 reports. Then somebody runs a query against the Cognos audit log and the Descartes job scheduler and the number jumps to 400. By the time the descartes report migration team also walks the custom SQL views feeding Excel pivots and the embedded GLN dashboards nobody officially uses but everybody secretly opens, it's 1,200. This is the universal pattern.
Syntra ETL's descartes report migration discovery engine pulls the full inventory from Cognos APIs, the Descartes job scheduler, the embedded GLN dashboard catalog and the MacroPoint visibility configuration. Each report is classified by last-run date, distinct-user count and business-criticality flag (customer-facing freight invoices and customs filing acknowledgments rank highest; rarely-opened ad-hoc analyses rank lowest). The output is a ranked descartes report migration backlog: this is what gets rebuilt, this is what gets decommissioned, this is what stays in a sunset extract for 12 months and then dies.
The auto-conversion engine then takes the top-priority Cognos reports and emits OTBI XML scaffolds — joins, columns, filters, aggregations, sort orders translated against Fusion subject areas via pre-built crosswalks. The descartes report migration team finishes the last-mile layout polish in Fusion's report designer rather than building from zero against an unfamiliar data model. Customer-facing freight invoices and BOL prints route to BIP RTF templates with pixel-perfect carrier-branded layouts. Executive freight-spend KPI dashboards route to OAC for cross-subject-area joins against the descartes data archive.
The descartes report migration decision tree by report type, audience and complexity. Six universal categories cover the full report population.
Logistics-ops daily dashboards — open shipments by status, customs filing aging, exception queues. Rebuild as OTBI analyses against Fusion SCM/TMS subject areas. Most of these auto-convert from Cognos with minor polish.
Carrier-by-lane spend trending, mode-mix analysis, accessorial-charge breakdowns. Rebuild as OTBI dashboards against Fusion TMS rate-management subject area, joined to descartes data archive for multi-year history continuity.
ACE entry aging, ISF filing rejection trends, HTS classification roll-ups, duty-paid summaries. Rebuild as OTBI against Fusion GTM Customs subject area. CBP audit reports go to BIP for pixel-perfect compliance output.
Freight invoices, customs filing acknowledgments, BOL prints, customer shipment notifications. Rebuild as BIP RTF/XPT templates — pixel-perfect, carrier-branded, ready for production output.
Exception management screens, geofence event timelines, ETA-variance scorecards, carrier-tracking-compliance reports. Rebuild as OTBI on Fusion TMS or keep in MacroPoint with API feed re-pointed to Fusion.
CFO board-deck slides, freight-cost-per-shipment trending, carrier-performance executive scorecards. Rebuild as OAC dashboards joining Fusion live data with descartes data archive for multi-year executive view.
Parallel with data migration. Reports finished about a week before production cutover so users have time to validate against parallel-run Fusion data.
Crawl Cognos catalog, Descartes job scheduler, embedded GLN dashboards, MacroPoint visibility configuration. Classify reports by last-run date, distinct-user count, business-criticality. Output: ranked descartes report migration backlog with rebuild/decommission/sunset decision per report.
Map Descartes data structures to Fusion OTBI subject areas: shipments→Fusion SCM Shipment, customs filings→Fusion GTM Customs Entry, carrier rate cards→Fusion TMS Rate Management. Crosswalks signed off by logistics ops, customs broker and IT.
Parse Cognos report packages, translate query trees against Fusion subject areas, emit OTBI XML analysis scaffolds. Typical auto-conversion rate: 70% structural. Manual review queue for the remaining 30%.
Customer-facing freight invoices, customs filing acknowledgments, BOL prints, regulatory reports built as BIP RTF/XPT templates. Carrier-branded layouts validated against current production output.
Cross-subject-area executive freight-spend KPIs, carrier-performance scorecards built as OAC DV projects. Joined to descartes data archive for multi-year historical trending.
Logistics ops validates operational dashboards against parallel-run Fusion data. Customs brokers validate customs reports. Finance validates freight-spend reports. AP validates freight invoice templates. Sign-off pack issued.
Reports promoted to Fusion production at the same cutover moment as the data migration. Long-tail rarely-opened reports remain available via descartes data archive sunset queries for 12 months.
12-month sunset window for low-usage reports running off descartes data archive. End of window: reports deleted, archive consultation continues for CBP audit response queries only.
The accelerators that take descartes report migration from a 6-month bespoke project to an 8–11 week structured rollout.
Automatic discovery of every report in the Cognos catalog with metadata extraction — owner, last-run date, distinct-user count, query complexity score, dependency on custom views.
Mappings from Descartes shipment data, customs filings, carrier rate cards, MacroPoint events to Fusion OTBI subject areas. Field-by-field column mapping with data-type translation.
Parses Cognos report packages, walks query trees, applies crosswalks, emits valid OTBI XML analysis files. 70% auto-conversion rate on structural elements.
Pre-built BIP RTF templates for freight invoices, BOL prints, customs filing acknowledgments, customer shipment notifications. Branded and customised in days, not weeks.
Pre-built OAC DV project scaffolds for executive freight-spend KPIs and carrier-performance scorecards, with data-model layer pointing at Fusion + descartes data archive joined.
12-month sunset window orchestration. Tracks last-opened date per report. Auto-decommissions reports with zero opens. Audit trail preserved for the descartes report migration evidence pack.
Descartes report migration is the process of inventorying every operational and analytical report running inside Descartes — shipment status dashboards, customs filing reports, freight-spend analytics, carrier-performance scorecards, MacroPoint visibility dashboards, Aljex commission reports, Datamyne trade-intelligence queries — and rebuilding them as Oracle Fusion OTBI analyses, BIP report templates and OAC dashboards on top of the migrated Fusion SCM/TMS/GTM data model. The technical heart is two-fold: parsing every Descartes report definition (Cognos, embedded reporting, custom SQL views) into a structured catalog, and rebuilding each one against Fusion's subject areas using crosswalks that translate Descartes column names to Fusion data warehouse fields. Syntra ETL's descartes report migration accelerator catalogs reports, classifies by usage, prioritises by business criticality and emits OTBI/BIP scaffolds ready for last-mile finish.
More than the IT team thinks. The reports anyone admits to using are usually 30–50: the shipment status dashboard, the customs filing aging report, the carrier-performance scorecard, the freight-spend trend, the MacroPoint exception dashboard, a handful of board-deck slides built off custom Cognos extracts. The reports that actually exist in a busy Descartes tenant — counting Cognos reports, embedded GLN dashboards, custom SQL views feeding Excel, Aljex commission spreadsheets and Datamyne trade-intel queries — run 400–1,500. Of those, 40–60% have been opened in the last 90 days. Syntra ETL's descartes report migration discovery engine catalogs everything via Cognos APIs and Descartes reporting endpoints, then ranks by last-run date so the team rebuilds the 200 that matter and decommissions the 800 that don't.
Three primary targets, depending on report complexity and audience. Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI): in-Fusion ad-hoc analyses and dashboards for logistics ops users querying live shipment, customs and carrier-performance data — covers 70% of descartes report migration scope. Oracle BI Publisher (BIP): pixel-perfect templates for customer-facing freight invoices, customs filing acknowledgments, BOL prints and regulatory reports requiring exact layouts — covers another 20%. Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC): heavyweight cross-subject-area dashboards, executive freight-spend KPI displays, and analytical workloads that draw from both Fusion live data and the descartes data archive — covers the final 10%. Syntra ETL emits OTBI XML, BIP RTF/XPT, and OAC DV project files ready for import.
Substantially yes. Descartes' embedded Cognos reporting layer exposes report definitions as XML packages with prompt definitions, query specs, layout templates and conditional formatting. Syntra ETL's descartes report migration converter parses each Cognos package, walks the query tree, maps Descartes-side tables and column names to Fusion OTBI subject areas via pre-built crosswalks (shipment data, customs filings, carrier rate cards, freight charges), translates prompts into OTBI dashboard prompts, and emits an OTBI analysis XML or BIP RTF template. About 70% of structural conversion happens automatically — joins, columns, filters, aggregations, sort orders. The last 30% is human review: visual polish, customer-facing layout refinement, sign-off.
Freight-spend trending and carrier-performance scorecards are usually the highest-stakes reports in any Descartes-running logistics organisation — they drive contract negotiations and operational decisions. Syntra ETL's descartes report migration recognises these patterns specifically: freight-spend by carrier, lane, mode and accessorial category; on-time delivery scorecards by carrier; claims rate trending; rate-card utilization heatmaps. Each pattern maps to a pre-built OTBI dashboard template against the Fusion TMS subject area, with the descartes data archive joined in for multi-year historical trend continuity. Logistics ops doesn't lose its operational dashboards on cutover day — and the descartes report migration plan schedules user-acceptance testing on these high-stakes reports two weeks before go-live.
Every Descartes tenant accumulates a long tail of custom SQL views and scheduled extracts feeding Excel spreadsheets — freight payment files for AP, carrier performance pivots for ops weekly meetings, customs duty roll-ups for finance close. These aren't reports in the Cognos catalog; they live in scheduled job definitions and DBA-maintained views. Syntra ETL's descartes report migration discovery walks the Descartes job scheduler, catalogs every active extract, traces the underlying SQL, and maps to Fusion equivalents: OTBI scheduled analyses for the recurring Excel feeds, BIP scheduled bursts for the AP payment files, REST-API-fed Power BI/Tableau pipelines for downstream analytics. Nothing gets lost in the descartes report migration because nobody documented it in Cognos.
MacroPoint visibility dashboards — exception management screens, geofence-event timelines, ETA-variance scorecards, carrier-tracking-compliance reports — are operationally critical for any 3PL or shipper running real-time visibility. The descartes report migration plan addresses these explicitly: where MacroPoint stays alongside Fusion as a continuing visibility add-on, dashboards remain in place with data feeds re-pointed to read Fusion shipments via API; where MacroPoint is fully retired, dashboards rebuild as OTBI analyses on top of Fusion TMS visibility data, with the historical MacroPoint event archive joined in for trend continuity. Either way, the operational team doesn't lose visibility on cutover day.
Descartes report migration runs in parallel with the data migration, starting roughly week 4 once the first crosswalk decisions are signed off. Discovery and inventory take 1–2 weeks. Auto-conversion of Cognos reports takes 2–3 weeks for a typical 200-report scope. Manual review, layout polish and user-acceptance testing take 4–6 weeks. Total elapsed: 8–11 weeks, with the heavy lifting finishing about a week before production cutover so logistics ops, customs brokers and finance have time to use the new reports against the parallel-run Fusion environment. High-stakes customer-facing freight invoices and customs filing acknowledgments are prioritised first; long-tail rarely-opened reports go last and many get decommissioned outright.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll walk through your Cognos catalog size, custom SQL extract count, MacroPoint dashboard inventory and customer-facing report scope — and give you a concrete descartes report migration backlog and timeline before the call ends.