Recommended reading: The Challenge of Good Performance Management

A short article on Enterprise Systems magazine features a Q&A with the IBM Cognos VP of Worldwide Research and Development, Peter Griffiths. The article includes a concise and simple description of Performance Management (bookmarking this for my own reference) and how the new Cognos now under IBM management will continue to be effective in this space.

Read the complete article here: The Challenge of Good Performance Management

IBM Cognos 8.4 - Released to the masses

Just in time for Christmas, Cognos 8.4 was released for download on December 15th. Highlights include Flash-based dashboards, improved BI search, location-aware mobile delivery and new data lineage capabilities. A new viewpoint interface lets business users manage hierarchies and dimensions. A bus full of new features have been added:

• Increased visual appeal includes new background designs and colors. Users can add gradient colors and behind charts
• New chart types: Merimekko, Stepline, Sparkline, Sparkbar, Spark Win/Loss
• Report annotations: Users can add comments directly within the body of HTML-rendered reports
• Enhanced suppression: Suppress all types of reports against relational, dimensionally-modeled relational, and OLAP sources. Also, users can also suppress rows, columns, or rows and columns based on "zero" values, "divide by zero" values, missing values, and overflow values
• Extended filters now include wildcards, range, and between operations
• Associated frames now drill together
• Strategy Maps and Impact Diagrams now available as portlets that can be integrated into IBM Cognos Connection, IBM WebSphere, and MS Sharepoint portals
• Data lineage: Users can access and view major transformations to data as it moves through the system
• Expanded data access: Use data from IBM Cognos Now! and IBM Cognos TM1

The reviews are fairly positive (quote from intelligententerprise.com):

"I give Cognos a lot of credit for taking the time, a few years ago, to rewrite the entire platform, but with that effort they fell somewhat behind on bells and whistles," says Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson. "With 8.4, Cognos is filling out many of the pieces that competitors have provided over the years."

Read the complete review here: After Leading on Platform, Cognos Catches Up On Details

More information can be found on the Cognos site: What's New in 8.4

Reference book: IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

From the editorial review: Develop, deploy, and maintain a complete BI solution across your enterprise. IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence: The Official Guide shows you how to take full advantage of the robust service-oriented architecture and simplified role-based user interfaces. Learn how to create, share, and analyze data-rich reports that lead to increased productivity and better business decisions. Featuring real-world insight and expert tips, this is a must-have guide for IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence users of all levels, from administrators to end users.

Measure and monitor performance using dashboards and scorecards; Assign user roles and privileges; Provide complete and consistent access to a broad range of data sources via Cognos Connection; Use Cognos 8 Go! to extend BI to Office applications, mobile devices, and search engines; Enable business users to create reports with Query Studio; Develop new insights by exploring data in multiple dimensions and perspectives with Analysis Studio; Build Dimensional Reports with Report Studio; Use Event Studio to identify and deliver mission-critical information; Create, modify, organize, and publish a model from Cognos Framework Manager;
Implement sound security measures; Take advantage of the management tools in Cognos Administration to ensure maximum reliability and availability.

We'll review this book soon. You can purchase this book on Amazon or as an eBook.

Disclaimer: The author of this blog is not affiliated with the author or publisher of the above described book.

YouTube find: MB Dashboards for Cognos 8

A UK company called morgan benjamin (lower case on purpose) has developed a sharp looking dashboarding tool for Cognos 8 business intelligence. From the visuals, it seems to integrate nicely into the Cognos suite and is available for all Cognos 8 releases.



Key features:

• Data driven ticker
• Pop up & Transition facilities
• Zoom Functionality
• Links to other Studios (Report Studio, Analysis Studio, Query Studio)
• Animated KPI’s
• Content and functionality Rich Dashboards created in hours not weeks
• Compatible with all versions of Cognos 8
• Leverages your in house report studio skills
• Employs professionally designed graphical layout
• Multiple templates and colour schemes
• Simple to add corporate identity
• Allows users to add comments to dashboards
• Links seamlessly with existing reports, cubes and data sources

I'm most interested in the ability to add comments or annotations to reports although I have read that this type of functionality will be included when Cognos 8.4 is released.

 

Installing Cognos ReportNet on Oracle

This supporting guide is a little dated (Cognos ReportNet) but still useful when setting up Cognos and the BI samples with the Content Store hosted on Oracle. If you need a copy of the Oracle database to practice on, there is a developer program where you can download any Oracle software for free, as long as you do not use it for commercial purposes (and some other restrictions). http://technet.oracle.com

The installation process is as follows:

1. 1. Install Cognos;
   
2. 2. Configure Oracle;
   
3. 3. Configure IIS;
   
4. 4. Configure Cognos;
   
5. 5. Install Samples;
   
6. 6. Test

Download the document: ReportNet Install Guide on Oracle

For more detailed installation information always consult the official install guides.