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

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence platform has built-in monitoring systems that gather different metrics on each service, dispatcher, server and server group. These system metrics provide better insight into the status and overall health of a Cognos BI environment. The performance of these system metrics play a key role in tuning a BI environment to its full potential. Read more

Effective July 1, 2013, IBM training has been discontinued. IBM has moved to a partner-led model which shifts the responsibility of IBM’s internal training practice to qualified specialists and partners like Ironside. Clients will now be able to select training from industry experienced partners who can tailor courses and schedules to their needs. Training is obviously a critical piece of utilizing technology and is perhaps why this transition was made. While IBM continues to focus on creating best-of-breed technology, partners and third parties can focus on providing the highest quality training to customers. Read more

Thomas Friedman’s book “The World Is Flat” describes how outsourcing, technology, and other factors helped level the business playing field around the globe. What if traditional barriers to entry for using big data and business analytics were removed? Would small to mid-sized businesses be able to compete more effectively with larger organizations? IBM has made it possible to answer these questions and many more for its customers who leverage IBM Analytic Answers. 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

Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE) is the technology behind IBM’s extensible visualization offering. With the ability to create your own visualizations and to utilize those that others have created, the bounds of what have historically been accepted as the limits of IBM Cognos charts and graphs are gone. Read more

Update 9/9/2013 – Cognos 10.2.1 FP1 has been released – Click to learn more about how this fix pack adds and enhances important functionality of IBM Cognos 10.2.1.

On June 11th, IBM announced the release of Cognos 10.2.1, billed as a refresh pack, but loaded to the brim with new features, enhancements and improvements. The Ironside Group participated in the 10.2.1 beta earlier this year and had the opportunity to fully vet these new and exciting features and we have been anxiously awaiting general availability of this release. Read more

Because a large number of IBM Cognos clients have upgraded to Cognos 10, IBM has announced Cognos 8.4 will reach End of Support (EOS) at the end of September 2013. To help clients manage this transition, the Ironside Group is offering a 2-day free assessment for any current Cognos 8.4 client looking for guidance on how to proceed with their Cognos environment. 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

Previously in our “What’s New in IBM Cognos 10.2” article, we touched upon the new IBM Cognos OLAP capability known as Dynamic Cubes. In this article, we will discuss what it is, when it is useful, and how to put it into practice. Read more