Category
Technology
Submitted By
Aron Sage, PhD, MPH, aron.sage@cu.edu, Associate Director of BI, Database, and Technical Architecture
Project Team
Gwen D'Elia, gwendolyn.d'elia@cu.edu, Senior Training Specialist
Jay Fetterolf, jay.fetterolf@cu.edu, BI Analyst
Morgan Holleran, morgan.holleran@cu.edu, Senior BI Analyst
Aron Sage, PhD, MPH, aron.sage@cu.edu, Associate Director of BI, Database, and Technical Architecture
Katarina Schmidt, katarina.schmidt@cu.edu, BI Analyst
Elizabeth Snow-Trenkle, elizabeth.snow-trenkle@cu.edu, BI Team Lead
Mike Wolbrom, PhD, MPH, michael.wolbrom@cu.edu, Program Director Training and Development
Project Description
This project uses a Copilot agent to automatically interpret IBM Cognos XML report outputs and generate standardized, business‑ready report user guides. The agent analyzes report structures, calculations, filters, prompts, and visualizations, then converts them into clear, consistent documentation aligned to enterprise training standards. Once generated, the guides are handed off to the training team for light review and distribution to business users. What previously required days of manual analysis, documentation, and formatting is completed in hours, improving speed, accuracy, and consistency. The solution reduces training workload, accelerates report adoption, and ensures business users receive timely, easy‑to‑understand guidance for complex business intelligence reports.
Project Efficiency
The single greatest efficiency and innovation is automating semantic understanding and documentation of businesss intelligence reports at scale.
Instead of humans manually reverse‑engineering XML to understand calculations, filters, prompts, and layouts, the Copilot agent interprets the report logic directly from the source metadata and converts it into standardized, business‑ready user guides. This eliminates repetitive, error‑prone analysis work and shifts human effort from creation to validation.
Project Inspiration
This project was inspired by the need to eliminate time‑intensive, siloed documentation work and replace it with a faster, more collaborative approach that scales. By using a Copilot agent to translate complex business intelligence report logic into clear, standardized user guides, the solution improves efficiency, strengthens collaboration between report developers and training teams, and frees experts to focus on higher‑value work. Most importantly, it empowers business users with timely, consistent documentation that answers questions faster and improves confidence in using data to make decisions.
What Makes You Happiest about this Project?
We should be most happy that this project transformed a slow, manual, and siloed process into a fast, scalable, and collaborative solution. It dramatically reduces documentation time from days to hours while improving consistency and quality. The project empowers training teams to focus on value‑added review instead of repetitive work and gives business users clearer, more reliable guidance that answers questions faster. Most importantly, it demonstrates how AI can amplify human expertise—improving efficiency, collaboration, and user confidence all at once.
