IBM Cognos Connection

IBM Cognos Connection is the portal to IBM Cognos software.IBM Cognos Connection is the Web portal for IBM Cognos Business Intelligence. IBM Cognos Connection provides a single access point to all corporate data available in IBM Cognos software.

You can use IBM Cognos Connection to work with entries such as reports, analyses, queries, agents, metrics, and packages also to create shortcuts, URLs, and pages, and to organize entries. It is the starting point to access your BI information.You can use IBM Cognos Connection to create and run reports and cubes and distribute reports. You can also use it to create and run agents and schedule entries. Cognos Connection provides a single access point to applications so you can view and analyse your data. Use the portal to

IBM Cognos Report Studio

IBM Cognos Report Studio is a report authoring tool that professional report authors and developers use to create sophisticated and managed reports. IBM Cognos Report Studio is a robust report design and authoring tool. Report Studio is a full-blown report generation tool.

With Report Studio, users can create any business intelligence report that an organization requires, such as weekly sales and inventory reports, with any data source (relational or multidimensional). Reports are written in XML which is an enhancement of the universal web page mark-up language HTML. This means report users don’t have to install any software on their desktops except a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer. Using IBM Cognos Report Studio, report

IBM Cognos Framework Manager

IBM Cognos Framework Manager is one of the most important component of IBM Cognos BI Tool.I referred a lot for making this post.Hoping that this post will give you valuable information about Cognos Framework Manager.

IBM Cognos Framework Manager is the IBM Cognos BI modeling tool for creating and managing business related metadata for use in IBM Cognos BI analysis and reporting.IBM Cognos Framework Manager is the metadata model development environment for IBM Cognos BI.

It is a Windows-based client tool that you can use to create simplified business presentations of metadata that are derived from one or more data sources. Framework Manager can rapidly create relational and dimensional models through a guided workflow driven modeling process , check the execution path of the queries , define filters and

IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced

IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced provides a single, integrated environment for advanced business users that allows you to author simple reports and explore your data.

IBM Cognos Business Insight Advanced can be used to perform deeper analysis and report authoring and also advanced data exploration, such as adding additional measures, conditional formatting, and advanced calculations.With Business Insight Advanced, you can create

IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office

IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office can be used to work with secure IBM Cognos BI content in Microsoft Office environment.

People that are more comfortable with Microsoft Office can use Cognos for Microsoft Office to access information using the office applications. IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office provides access to all IBM Cognos report content, including data, metadata, headers, footers, and charts. IBM Cognos for Microsoft makes it possible for users to work with Cognos Business Intelligence content in Microsoft Office applications. You can use predefined reports, or create new content

IBM Cognos Business Insight

IBM Cognos Business Insight is a Web-based tool that allows you to use IBM Cognos content and external data sources like HTML and text sources to build interactive dashboards which provides a good business environment for better decision making.

In Business Insight, objects that you add to a workspace are displayed in widgets. These widgets contain content and interact with each other. Business Insight is a new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) workspace in which users can easily create and share interactive dashboards, modify layout, colors, text, add notations or comments, create calculations and personalize widgets. You can view and open dashboards and reports, manipulate the content in the dashboards and email your dashboards. WYSIWYG is a user interface that allows

IBM Cognos Metric Designer

IBM Cognos Metric Designer is the modeling tool used to create extracts for use in IBM Cognos scorecarding applications.The created extracts are used to map and transfer information from existing metadata sources such as Framework Manager and Impromptu Query Definition (.iqd) files.

IQD contains the query that a user can run against the database to get the data.An Impromptu Query Definition describes a source table from

IBM Cognos Query Studio

IBM Cognos Query Studio is the reporting tool for creating simple queries and reports in IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.

Using IBM Cognos Query Studio,users can quickly design, create, and save ad-hoc queries and reports to meet reporting needs that are not covered by the standard, professional reports created in IBM Cognos Report Studio.It can be used to create self-serve reports that answer simple business questions.

IBM Cognos Map Manager

Using IBM Cognos Map Manager you can now create new region layers from existing map that contains region layers.Each new region within the new layer is made up of one or more complete regions from the existing region layer.

When the regions in the supplied maps do not correspond to the way information is managed and reported you can use this new feature to customize maps.

However, it is not possible to use portions of one region to form a new region.You can use Map Manager to load an existing IBM Cognos map file,define the new region layer, and then save the map with the new layer.

IBM Cognos Map Manager can be used to;

• convert maps from non IBM sources
• assign alternate names for map features
• assign alternate languages for map features

IBM Cognos Transformer

IBM Cognos Transformer is a simple tool for modeling dimensional hierarchies and levels for PowerCubes.

We can use this data modeling tool or component to create a model, a business presentation of the information in one or more data sources. A model can contain any number of regular or calculated measures, together with logical groupings that use measure folders.

Cognos Transformer

After you choose a supported product locale (language), add dimensional metadata, specify the measures(performance indicators) and apply custom views, you can

IBM Cognos Metric Studio

IBM Cognos Metric Studio is the scorecarding and metrics tool in IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.Metric Studio is a performance tool for managing monitoring and analysing metrics, projects, and other performance measures within an organisation. 

It is used to create a scorecard application and monitor the metrics within the applications.It helps you ensure that your organisation’s performance is consistent with its targets and goals.You can use Metric Studio to create a customized scorecarding environment to monitor and analyze business metrics throughout your organization. A metric is a key performance indicator (KPI) related to time.In other words you use Metric Studio to monitor KPIs between one period and the next.A scorecard shows graphically how a metric is performing.This is typically done by using red, orange and green status notations.

IBM Cognos Metric Studio

Metric Studio helps you translate your organization's strategy into relevant, measurable goals that align each employee's actions with a strategic plan.

IBM Cognos Administration

Cognos Administration is a central management interface that contains the administrative tasks for Cognos BI. Administrators for IBM Cognos environments are able to control user access to object such as reports, packages, and data sources, as well as access to functionality within the application. It provides easy access to the overall management of the IBM Cognos environment and is accessible through Cognos Connection. Users can access current activities, past activities, upcoming activities, and schedules on the Status tab in IBM Cognos Administration to monitor the server activities and manage schedules.You can use the scheduling capability to grant access to the scheduling functionality independently from the monitoring functionality.

Cognos Administration is organized into three sections:

• Status:Cognos administrator can use the links in this section to monitor activities, server status, and system metrics, and change some system settings.Here the system settings can be altered if needed and certain activities can be monitored and status of server can be monitored.

• Security:Cognos administrator can use the links in this section to define users, groups, and roles for security purposes, configure capabilities for the interfaces and studios, and set properties for the user interface profiles.The users can perform task according to the privileges they have.

• Configuration:Cognos administrator can use the links in this section to set up data source connections, deploy IBM Cognos BI content from one content store to another, create distribution and contact lists, add printers, set styles, manage portlets and portal layout, start or stop dispatchers and services, and change system settings.Here as the name indicates the administrator can configure the system settings,manage portal,configure printers,transfer BI content from one content store to another.

Apart from these tasks you can also perform the following,

• Automating/scheduling tasks
• configuring your database for multilingual reporting
• installing fonts
• adding and configuring printers
• configuring web browsers
• allowing user access to reports from IBM Cognos Connection
• restricting access to IBM Cognos software

Using IBM Cognos Administration,you can also customize the appearance & functionality of different IBM Cognos components.

IBM Cognos Event Studio

IBM Cognos Event Studio is a web-based Cognos Business Intelligence module.It is the notification tool used to alert decision-makers in your organization of events as they happen, so that they can make timely and effective decisions. 

 

An event is a situation that can affect the success of your business.This tool can be used to create agents that monitor status changes, priority customers, your organization's data to detect occurrences of business events, or any other factor that is important to your business. It is used for creating and managing agents and alerts.Specify the event condition, or a change in data, that is important to you. An event is identified when specific items in your data achieve significant values or if they achieve some threshold value.

The purpose of a process or an agent is to monitor the data in the background to ensure that critical information is detected quickly and to perform tasks when a predefined boundary/threshold is reached.In Event Studio, you set up agents to monitor your data and perform tasks when business events or exceptional conditions occur in your data. When an event occurs, people are alerted to take action.When an agent detects an event, it can perform tasks, such as sending an email, adding information to the portal, and running reports.A task can be set up to do a number of actions, including send an email, run a report or update a database.

Agents can publish details to the portal, deliver alerts by email, run and distribute reports based on events, and monitor the status of events. Each agent has a subscription list of users who will be notified when the agent is activated.The IBM Cognos Platform includes a new service to support enhanced event management functionality called the Human Task Service. With Event Studio, you can establish a threshold or assign a specific event that sends a notification to the decision makers in your organization.It does this by allowing you to create agents to monitor events you are interested in.There is no limit to how many events you can set up. Agents can be scheduled to run at any time or frequency.

You create agents that monitor your thresholds or event, and when the threshold is reached or event occurs, the agent sends the notification or takes action. Notifications or actions include running reports, sending emails, adding information to the portal or running reports and monitor services. For example, if the event triggers a value that is less than a given value, event manager can send an email or an SMS to a specific user that contains a warning with the problem description and even add a link to a report

Example1

For instance, if quantity of a product on stock is less than a given value, event manager can send an email to a responsible person which will contain a warning with the problem description and a link to appropriate report.Then Event studio will take necessary actions.

Example2

If the number of subscribers in a mobile broadband service exceeds the set capacity, event is occurred and event manager will take necessary actions such as generating emails, running reports.

Example3

A support call from a key customer or the cancellation of a large order might trigger an event, sending an email to the appropriate people.Event studio takes actions such as generating emails, running reports, updating in corporate portal.

Example 4

When a metric you have been watching falls below acceptable levels an event is occurred and event manager will take necessary actions.

IBM Cognos Analysis Studio

Managers and analysts use IBM Cognos Analysis Studio to better understand their business and to get answers to questions that they have about their business.

Analysis Studio provides access to dimensional, online analytical processing (OLAP), and dimensionally modeled relational data sources.Users can quickly and easily perform analysis to get into the what and why behind an event or action so that they can improve their business performance.Use the interactive drag-and-drop environment in Analysis Studio to explore and analyze data to find answers to business questions.

With analysis, it is possible to see trends and understand strange condition or situation or variances that may not be evident with other types of reporting.Analyses created using Analysis Studio can be opened in IBM Cognos Report Studio and can be used to build professional reports.Analysis Studio users can easily focus on what is important even with large volumes of dimensional data.When you use Analysis Studio, you interact directly with visible data.

Analysis Studio supports the same drill up and down behavior and drag-and-drop control and provides effective ways to analyze large amounts of data.

Using IBM Cognos Analysis Studio, you can;

• find and focus on items that are important to your business
• understand trends and anomalies
• answer business questions quickly and easily
• compare data, such as details to summaries, or actual results to budgeted results
• assess performance of business by focusing on the best or worst results
• take good decisions after reviewing the results
• analyze large amounts of data
• establish relative importance using calculations such as growth or rank