In a world of ever changing government and industry regulations, many organizations are having a challenging experience efficiently meeting compliance requirements. Additionally, as the economy continues to sputter, organizations are exploring new ways to reduce loss, improve decision making around resource allocation, and optimize their business processes. With the latest release of IBM’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) solutions, which includes: OpenPages and Algorithmics, meeting these requirements and beginning to improve processes internally can become seamless. The painful, long drawn out process of managing market, credit and liquidity risk can soon become an efficient exercise. Integrating your current reporting technologies (IBM or not) will help your organization gain greater risk visibility and be ready for any challenges. Read more
The popularity of IBM Cognos Active Report has been steadily gaining and as a result, the bar continues to be raised. Active Reports not only offer an incredible wow-factor because of their highly visual and stylized nature, they also offer powerful interactive capabilities that promise to take business analytics to a whole new level. In the past Ironside Group has written about overall Active Report best practices, but let’s assume you’ve already read those articles and still can’t figure out why your reports don’t look as professional as some of the samples you’ve seen. At the Ironside Group, we receive countless requests for assistance in shortening the learning curve to develop pixel perfect Active Reports. This article will walk through some best practices in getting started down the right path, in the hopes of reducing frustrating re-work. 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
IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced and IBM Cognos Report Studio allow you to integrate external data directly into your reports. This allows you to create a report using an external source that contains data which is not part of your IBM Cognos Business Intelligence enterprise data. You can import your own data file and start reporting on it right away. After importing, your external data file is protected by the same IBM Cognos security as your enterprise data, thus allowing you to report on your data in a secure and private environment. Read more
This article is based upon an interview with Monique Dozier, Assistant Vice President of Advancement at MSU.
In 1989, Howard Dresner, a leading analyst for Gartner, coined the term “business intelligence.” In 1994, this thought leader, strategy advisor, and former Gartner Research Fellow, made the following powerful prediction: Read more
This is the second in a series of articles for the Ironside Cognos Report Studio Cookbook. The first article can be viewed here. These are tips and tricks used by our professional report developers to meet the unique needs and requirements of our clients. While some of these techniques may be touched upon in a typical Report Studio training class, we will take a deep dive into these concepts to uncover how our professionals actually use them in the field every day. Read more
This is the first in a series of articles for the Ironside Cognos Report Studio Cookbook. These are tips and tricks used by our professional report developers to meet the unique needs and requirements of our clients. While some of these techniques may be touched upon in a typical Report Studio training class, we will take a deep dive into these concepts to uncover how our professionals actually use them in the field every day. This month’s article will focus on how to make concise list reports by unlocking the report format. Read more
During the course of an IBM Cognos environment’s lifespan, there may be times when you will need to configure IBM Cognos to allow users to connect to more than one third party authentication source from the same Cognos portal. This can happen in several scenarios. Read more
For an updated version of this blog post using IBM Cognos Analytics 11.1.7, click here.
For users of IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced (formerly Business Insight Advanced), a popular request is to have the ability to highlight every other row in a list report. This technique has been demonstrated with IBM Cognos Report Studio using the running-count() and mod() functions. The issue is that IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced does not expose all functions that can be used in query calculations, so users think they are not available.
This article will demonstrate how to highlight every other row using IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced by entering a ‘non-exposed’ function in the expression editor (the twist!). Read more
On April 13, 2012, IBM announced the acquisition of Varicent, a leading provider of sales performance management (SPM) and incentive compensation (IC) analytics software. The Ironside Group loves this move as it further sets IBM business analytics solutions apart from the pack. This acquisition is continued proof of IBM delivering on its strategic growth objective of expanding its analytics portfolio to help enable a “smarter planet”. When reviewing this acquisition, it appears the most quantifiable value proposition marketed is heavily weighted towards improving back-end sales operations; “reduce sales operations administration by 40-50%, reduce commission calculation and erroneous payments by 90+%, etc.” This article is going to focus on what I believe to be the real value of a commercial IC and SPM solution. 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.