Tag Archive for: Tech Tip

Synopsis

Define the technique behind and benefits of standardizing prompt conventions in Report Studio.

Overview

Report authors can easily create automatically generated prompt page prompts for data items in a report using the question mark syntax, as shown below: Read more

Synopsis:

Three methodologies for documenting Report Studio reports.

Overview:

Reporting tools like IBM Cognos Report Studio do not naturally provide a means of documenting and commenting procedures like traditional programming languages do. As a result, once a report has been created, it may be difficult to follow the logic and design of the original report, modify it, or reverse-engineer how it works. Additionally, the lack of documentation makes it difficult to determine how and why a report was built and what specific techniques were used to create it. Read more

Using Cognos we can generate reports in Excel, Microsoft Word and Power Point. In this article we will see what components we need to produce these reports in Microsoft Office.

Required Components and Installations:

1. You need to have Cognos environment ready and useable for generating reports, as shown below.

Cognos Connection

2. You have to install Microsoft Office in all the destination systems or client machines where we are going to access Cognos reports using Microsoft Office components. Read more

Use the SPSS Modeler Text Analytics Add-On to Monitor Social Media

As channels of social media penetrate people’s daily life more extensively and intensively, bad reviews and negative opinions travel faster than ever before. Research and surveys have shown that people are far more likely to spread the word about bad experience than a favorable one . Social media, by providing numerous opportunities for word-spreading, escalates this process. It is in the best interest of businesses to monitor comments on social media in real time. Read more

clock graphicSecurity in Cognos is extremely robust, permitting or denying very precise access to data elements in a package, data source, or even to row level access in a database. Read & Execute permissions are usually applied to a report allowing certain Groups or Roles the ability to run a report. However, you can also allow or deny access to a report to only let it execute within specific hours of the day. Read more

Difficulty: Easy

Required Ingredients: Prompt macros and static values within a prompt parameter.

Scenario:

You have some existing reports that prompt on Year and Month.

Users would like a better experience by having default selections provided for them. For scheduling purposes you’d also like to set relative time so the report can run based on current month and current year. You can accomplish this using macros. Read more

Difficulty: Easy

Required Ingredients: Report Studio, List Object, PDF Viewer

Scenario:

A report that you expected to be viewed exclusively in HTML will need to be printed. In order to do this, you switch the output to PDF to create a printable report and find that the columns span across multiple pages, making the report more difficult to understand.

You’ll need to make some minor modifications in order for the printable report to remain effective. Read more

In continuing with our Report Studio Cookbook series, this month’s cookbook recipe will show you the steps for altering report XML to make bulk changes. This is most commonly used when name changes are made to the FM Model and abandoned data items result. Read more

Difficulty: Medium

Required Ingredients: Two or more crosstabs, Report Studio, report formatting

Scenario:

You have two or more crosstabs on a Report Studio report. All of the crosstabs should have the same report formatting, which differs from the Cognos default. Read more

Set Dynamic Default Prompts Using the New JavaScript Prompt API in IBM Cognos 10.2

Continuing with our Report Studio Cookbook series, today we will look at the new Report Studio JavaScript prompt API available in IBM Cognos 10.2. Since the very first release of the web based Report Studio, report authors have been asked often to use JavaScript in a report to achieve some common web application functionality, such as dynamically show/hide certain objects on page based on a user’s selection or changing a page’s color theme by data values. Ironside has published several articles illustrating how to use JavaScript in Report Studio; however undocumented JavaScript APIs and difficulties in migrating JavaScript after a Cognos upgrade have prevented many report developers from exploring this area. Read more