Let's face it. Mobile BI is booming. All leading BI vendors are selling their mobile solutions, some successful, others less successful. IBM Cognos has been pushing hard on this terrain, and provides some useful features. One of those useful features is the ability to pre-configure an iPad.
Often, mobile users are salesmen, or members of upper management. Chances are that those people are not so IT-minded, and configuring the IBM Cognos mobile application on an iPad, though not difficult, might prove a problem.
Therefore, IBM Cognos provides a feature whereby a link can be sent to a users, either by mail or via chat. When the users clicks the link from within their iPad, the mobile BI application is configured automatically. Of course, the user must give a confirmation.
The link can be generated from with in the Administration module in Cognos Connection. Since Cognos 10.2.1 an extra tab can be found in there. The contents of the tab looks a bit like the screenshot below.
By clicking the "Generate Mobile Configuration Code" button, IBM will generate the URL that can be sent to the users.
Some extra info on the feature can be found in the "Cognos Mobile installation and configuration guide", provided in the IBM Cognos help. For your convenience I've provided a link below.
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/10.2.0.2/ig_mob.pdf
Note that more recent versions of IBM Cognos Mobile might have some more configuration possibilities.
Good luck!