There are 8 license roles for Cognos 8 BI:
1. BI Administrator - This role is aimed at IT administrator users who need to administer server environments, create and maintain metadata and create and maintain all types of business intelligence on behalf of their organization.
2. BI Professional - This role is aimed at technical users who need to create and maintain all types of business intelligence content on behalf of their organization.
3. Professional Author - This role is aimed at technical users who need to create new reports on behalf of the organization and test them.
4. Business Manager - This role is aimed at business users who need to view scheduled reports, run reports interactively, and need to manage corporate performance through the use of metrics.
5. Business Author - This role is aimed at business users who need to view scheduled reports, run reports interactively, and need to create new reports.
6. Business Analyst - This role is aimed at business users who need to view scheduled reports, run reports interactively, and need to perform interactive analysis.
7. BI Consumer - This role is aimed at users who will view scheduled reports and run reports interactively through the Cognos Connection portal.
8. BI Recipient - This role is aimed at users who will need to view scheduled reports through the Cognos Connection portal.
User Roles and Capabilities Matrix:
| Cognos 8 License Role | Cognos 8 Namespace | Studio Access | Characteristics |
| BI Administrator | Directory Administrator | All Studios, All capabilities | Includes Framework Manager and OLAP builder |
| BI Professional | Authors, Metrics Authors, Event Author | All Studios | |
| Professional Author | Authors | Portal, Query, Report | |
| Business Manager | Metrics Authors | Portal, Metrics | |
| Business Author | Query Users | Portal, Query | |
| Business Analyst | Analysis Users | Portal, Analysis | |
| BI Consumer | Consumers | Portal | No Metrics Watch List. Event Newsitems OK. Metrics Package Content |
| BI Recipient | deny write, execute and set policy for public folders for Recipient Users | Portal | No Metric Watch List No Event Newsitems Metrics Package Content View pre-run reports |