UIS has identified two problems that look like they have been causing this issue.  One has been taken care of, the other is still being worked on.
 

Both problems are taken care of now.  Production Cognos is functioning normally.
 

We were good for much of the morning but many m-Fin reports are now just spinning again instead of loading the initial prompt page.  The issue is being investigated with high priority.
 

So far today Cognos reports are running ok.  I think the problem happens when there are more users on the Cognos system.  I will post another comment here in the afternoon, or sooner if there is news to share from the technical investigations.  If you experience long wait times loading the initial prompt page of a report, please let https://www.cu.edu/controller/finance-procurement-help-desk know the approximate time the problem occurred and the name of the report.

Production Cognos will be taken out of service after hours today (Tuesday Oct 14, 2014) so that some changes can be applied.

The changes have been applied.  If you find m-Fin reports just spinning instead of rendering the initial prompt page, please let us know:  https://www.cu.edu/controller/finance-procurement-help-desk

The problem is still with us.  Initial prompt pages sometimes do not render.  UIS is continuing investigations and I expect will engage the software vendor, IBM/Cognos.

Another change was made to the Cognos production software last night, advised by IBM.  So far production Cognos is running Ok.

We've heard from four people having the trouble earlier this morning.  None this afternoon so far.  If you find m-Fin reports just spinning instead of rendering the initial prompt page, please let us know:  https://www.cu.edu/controller/finance-procurement-help-desk

We've had more cases reported today.  We have a technical person reviewing the Cognos server logs for the times that we know the problem flared up.

Another change was made to production Cognos at the end of the day today, to increase its capacity to handle multiple requests at once.  For about an hour until this change it seemed none of the affected m-Fin reports would load.  Now with the change the problem flare up has passed and reports are running ok but it is after 5pm on Friday now.  We'll do some more test runs over the weekend, and keep close watch on Monday as the day progresses.

So far it appears that Friday evening's change has remedied the problem.  All runs I have done over the weekend and today have been successful.  Finpro Helpdesk and UIS helpdesk have not had any users contact them today about m-Fin reports getting stuck just spinning.

I am not sure if this is the same issue - I still cannot get Operating Summaries to run for my Fund 30s.  All the other fund types seem to be ok, it's just the 30s that won't run. It won't even let me click 'next' or 'finish'.

I believe the problem loading m-Fin reports is now under control.  We have gone four days without incident (two weekend days and two work days).

It's 9:40 on Friday morning, 10-24 and I've been waiting for about 10 minutes just to get to the first prompts page to run a Financial Detail with Budget & Encumbrances only for an entire org node.  At this rate I will still be waiting when it's time to leave this afternoon.

I just ran the same report using the URL I was given in order to successfully run reports to Excel and it worked normally with verly little delay.  Shrug.

getting this error message after clicking on reporting in the portal

DPR-ERR-2008

   
The dispatcher is unable to process the request. The request is directed to an unknown service name: http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/cognos/sacamsrvc-internal/201301/.

Details

The problem did flare up again on Friday.  For a robust solution to this problem we plan to update the IBM/Cognos software to the latest version.  We'll upgrade Cognos QA on the weekend of November 7th.  If no issues are found in testing then we'll upgrade Cognos production on the evening on the weekend of November 14th.