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IBM Cognos 10 – Active Reports: Is it a solution for your Organization?

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Over the next few months we will be bringing you a number of articles on the new capabilities found in Cognos 10 (last month: IBM Cognos 10: Initial Thoughts and Reactions) with a goal towards providing our fellow developers, implementers and users with our impressions and the associated benefits and drawbacks of the new tool.

One of the most discussed features of IBM Cognos 10 is the availability of Active reports, which has been billed as an ideal solution for managed dashboards aimed at Business Managers, Executives and Front Line users. As with all tools, there are a number of pros and cons that should be considered before making any strategic decisions around the implementation of new functionality. Read more

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IBM Cognos 8 Advanced Reporting – Hidden Prompts

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In the past, we have introduced techniques around dynamic prompting by utilizing a number of Cognos Report Studio built-in features. Occasionally there are scenarios that will necessitate the need to set a report parameter without prompting the user to select a value. For instance, there may be a case where the report developer needs to pass both the selected year and the previous year to a stored procedure or pass in a calculated prompt value that would be based on previously selected prompt values. While there are a number of solutions for such scenarios, in this article we will focus on a Javascript based technique to provide the necessary functionality. Read more

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Learn How Grasshopper Group is Using IBM Cognos Express to Help Over 100K Entrepreneurs Find Success

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The Ironside Group, Inc. is pleased to announce that we will be speaking with our customer, Grasshopper Group, a provider of a suite of products that entrepreneurs love to use and helps them get over some of the initial hurdles of running a business, as the keynote presentation at the December 8th Midsize Business Analytics Virtual Summit. Grasshopper will be offering insight into their experience with us and with Cognos Express. As an attendee, you will gain insight into Grasshopper’s self-service reporting implementation and strategy, which has significantly improved organizational efficiency. The Midsize Business Analytics Virtual summit is an amazing opportunity to see what’s new with Cognos Express without leaving your desk. IBM will be unveiling the newest capabilities of their Cognos Express Reporting, Analytics, and Planning software, purpose built for small to mid-size companies. Sign up and join us at the Keynote presentation featuring Grasshopper and Ironside on December 8th.

Best Practices: Business Intelligence Project Management

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Business Intelligence tools have been one of the most prolific software investments for many organizations in the last decade; from Fortune 100 companies to small 100 person organizations. Providing historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, BI tools offer limitless possibilities within your organization. From analysts identifying and analyzing opportunities and trends to helping business decisions makers such as CEOs and CFOs to quickly review and understand business issues, a well designed BI application can provide significant ROI to your corporation. Read more

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IBM Cognos 10: Initial Thoughts and Reactions

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Cognos 10 was released on October 25th, with much fanfare (and fireworks – quite literally) at IBM’s Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas. I’ve been exploring the interface and feature set within my own test environment the past few days and here are a few early conclusions, including what I would consider to be the top three high-impact features of this release. Read more

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Taking Control – IBM Cognos Advanced Dispatcher Routing

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Like any system or application you are using, performance is one of the most important factors in successful adoption by the user community. As for IBM Cognos users, optimal performance means that their reports run fast and without error;  for system administrators like you, it means that the Cognos environment is stable and that the users are happy. That being said, there is no question that performance tuning is always on a system administrator’s must-do list. By properly tuning the IBM Cognos configuration settings of dispatcher and services, you can optimize the speed and efficiency of the IBM Cognos server. Read more

7 Steps to Going Green with Enterprise Business Intelligence

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Investing in a robust enterprise business intelligence platform like IBM Cognos can be a gateway to improving your organization’s performance in a multitude of ways. One such area of improvement which cannot be dismissed or overlooked is to respond to the call for greater corporate social responsibility. We now live an age where achieving success is no longer measured in simple dollars and cents alone, but also by how large and indelible a mark we leave upon our surroundings in the process. We have already begun to realize the directly proportional relationship between the sustainability of our success and that our own environment.
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Driving User Adoption: How to Get the Most out of Your BI Investment

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Most companies that invest in Business Intelligence technologies do so with high expectations of better decisions, more efficient processes and decreased cost. Others expect increased insight into spending, competition, and customer behavior or employee performance. The simple fact is that many BI implementations do not deliver on their expected value. Read more

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Best Practices in Cognos 8 Framework Manager Model Design: Part 2 – Advanced Modeling Issues

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Editor’s Note:  This blog was originally posted on August 1, 2010 and has been reviewed and updated on 10/5/2020 with Cognos Analytics 11.1.7.  We find that these best practice tips about metadata modeling are still very useful to build solid data foundation for reports, especially cardinality settings and stich query controls as they are critical modeling techniques. These procedures are also applicable to Cognos new web based metadata modeling component – the Data Module, which is greatly adopted by self-service authors and when Cognos is hosted in cloud (no need to install Framework Manger tool).

Last month’s article described the overall approach for best practice model design using the 4 layer architecture. In this month’s article, I’ll describe some advanced issues which arise during model design, and how best to deal with them. Given the limitless and complex situations that can come up during modeling, these techniques may or may not apply to your specific situation. Read more

IBM IOD / Cognos Forum Las Vegas October 24-28 Discount Registration

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The IBM Cognos Forum and IBM Information On Demand 2010 will be jointly held this year in Las Vegas, Nevada from October 24-28.

Through our Premier Partnership with IBM, the Ironside Group is able to offer an amazing discount: $400 off each IBM IOD / Business Analytics Forum registration. Simply enter the Ironside Promotion Code G10IRNSIDE at registration to receive your promotional discount.

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