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How IBM Cognos Capabilities Are Translated into IBM User Based Licenses

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One question that Cognos Business Intelligence consultants often hear is “I bought licenses from IBM. How do I implement them in my user community and provide them with the various studios available in Cognos? There are so many studios, and I’m not sure which ones to give my users.”

The purpose of this article is to help your Cognos BI Administrator appropriately distribute user licenses and give access to licensed capabilities in IBM Cognos. There are four primary user license types: Enhanced Consumer, Advanced Business Author, Professional, and Administrator. One responsibility that generally lands on the IBM Cognos Administrator is to monitor the use of each purchased Cognos license. This is required to both maximize the utilization of the licenses and to make sure that the organization is in compliance with the IBM Cognos license agreement. The BI Professional role is for the technical developer/user who does not have administrative tasks. The BI Enhanced Consumer role is for consuming reports. Falling in between Enhanced Consumer and BI Professional is the Advanced Business Author, who has a need to both create and consume reports. Read more

Ironside Webinar Series: Transform Sales Performance Management with Dashboards

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On July 23rd, Ironside hosted a Transform Sales Performance Management with Dashboards webinar exploring how visualizations can inform and motivate sales organizations.

Topics covered include:

  • Common sales performance management (SPM) concerns and problems
  • Dashboard design best practices
  • SPM dashboarding demonstration

Read more

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Ironside Tech Tip: Creating a Burst Table for a Cognos Report

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Synopsis: How to create an external data file to use as a burst table for a Cognos report.

Pre-Requisites: This article assumes familiarity with how to burst a report and how to use external data, and creating an external data package. Read more

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Ironside Tech Tip: Leveraging Time and Aggregate Functions in Dimensional Reporting to Create Low Maintenance Cognos Reports

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Over the years I have successfully used the ancestor(), parallelPeriods(), periodToDate(), aggregate(), and set() dimensional functions to develop robust and durable dimensional reporting solutions in IBM Cognos BI.

I had the opportunity to go to lunch the other day with one of my clients from a few years ago and they told me that the profit and loss reports that I wrote for them were still in use. These reports used no year or month members (directly) and required little if any maintenance over the last two years, despite daily refreshes of the source PowerCube. Read more

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Boosting the Power of SPSS Statistics with Python

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What Python Is and Why to Use It

Python is a powerful open source general-purpose programming language. Through an easy-to-use structure, it allows users to perform a huge variety of controlling tasks on a computer.

In the case of using the Python plug-in for SPSS, it enables one to control the program flow based on conditions, to execute different syntax dynamically and interactively according to intermediate results, to apply command extensions and unlimited Python modules for more complicated algorithms, etc. Read more

Ironside Webinar Series: Customer Analytics for the Informed Executive

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On June 17th, Ironside hosted a Customer Analytics for the Informed Executive webinar exploring how advanced analytics can help businesses attract and retain customers. This webinar reviews a variety of data science methods that can utilize extensive existing data to provide guidance on many functional areas within a company. Read more

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Ironside Webinar Series: Comparing TM1 Performance Modeler vs. Architect – Part 2

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As a follow-up to the TM1 Performance Modeler Webinar that we hosted on April 15th, Ironside presented an advanced version for more experienced users on June 10th . This webinar focused on some of the additional advanced new features in TM1 Performance Modeler. These exciting new features require more business knowledge than technical ability and can be performed by TM1 administrators at any technical level. Read more

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Ironside Tech Tip: Standardizing Prompt Names in Report Studio

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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

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An Overview of IBM Cognos ICM Version 8.1.0

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Version 8.1.0 of IBM Cognos ICM, formerly Varicent, was released on Friday May 16th. It has become common practice to have approximately two major releases each year and several smaller releases between them. Updates roll out as needed between releases. The most important fact to remember is that the product is continuously improving to meet client needs. Enhancements start from two primary sources: implementers and business users requesting a product enhancement. Read more

IBM Vision 2014 Insights

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IBM Vision 2014, the premier global conference for finance, risk management, and sales compensation professionals, took place in Orlando, Florida from May 18-21. There were over 1,500 Business Analytics users, clients, developers, and others in attendance. This was my first time at the conference, and there was excitement of all kinds in the atmosphere. Current and prospective clients learned how organizations and individuals solve their strategic and everyday problems using analytics. Technical sellers and implementers like me were excited to swap stories and learn what is in store for the amazing tools we use today and will use tomorrow. Sales people were glad to see their clients sharing their success stories and build new opportunities for customers. Read more