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
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
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
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, 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
There are various approaches available to enhance the performance of your TM1 application. One such approach is to leverage Stargate Views.
Stargate Views are different from traditional view objects and represent cached subsections of cubes that get created through user experience. As users browse cubes via the Cube Viewer or consume cube data via Cognos BI reports and analyses, these subsections get stored according to the current title elements/context and row and column subsets being requested. Read more
Due to the rapid pace of today’s business world, new strategies, products, projects, and tools are being introduced on a constant basis. This means that the speed of business often does not match the speed at which IT departments, which tend to have to follow rigorous testing and governance policies, can provide ways to measure the success of the given implementation. With tools like social media and Google at our fingertips to provide constant and immediate information at our every whim, the ability to get answers to business questions with the same deftness as we can in our personal lives becomes expected by BI end users. That’s why accounting for self-service options is essential. 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
Even if you don’t have access to the RAVE visualizations available in Cognos 10.2.1, there are still some options to produce non-standard charts and simulate things such as heat maps using older Cognos versions. With some creative HTML use, you can set up a heat map that responds to various conditions in your reports. This article will discuss how to implement this structure. Read more
The IBM Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE) is a new tool introduced in Cognos 10.2.1. The engine can run on the server or the client, allowing for the dynamic creation of both static and active charts. Additionally, visualizations can be tweaked to allow for new charting options on the fly. IBM’s AnalyticsZone website provides a large number of downloadable visualizations, and one of the available options is Gantt charts. The standard Cognos 8/10 charting engine does not provide this type of chart, so this is a great opportunity to expand what Cognos can do. Read more
Ironside helps companies translate business goals and challenges into technology solutions that enable insightful analysis, data-driven decision making and continued success. We help you structure, integrate and augment your data, while transforming your analytic environment and improving governance.