The release of Cognos Analytics R7 on August 24, 2017, took an already good product and made it even better.  As you can see in the picture below, it starts with the home page for Cognos Analytics and goes much deeper.  Read below for the long list of additions and improvements.

Cognos Analytics R7 delivers some great new features to the dashboard area, which include:

• frees up canvas space,  widgets not changed by highlighting and can use check boxes, sliders and hierarchy tree.  Ability to filter on 1 tab or all tabs.

• simple or advanced calcs
• single or multiple values
• expression editor now available for advanced calcs.

• Create Navigation Groups within Dashboard Module
• Added new visualizations with better label placements
• Ability to show values in visualizations

Next, Cognos Analytics R7 delivers great new features in reporting, which include:

• Mapbox maps now included in reporting
• Navigations groups from data modules
• Interactive filter panel in viewer
• View Active reports in viewer and download
• Global parameters
• Package based drill through (ala Cognos 10)
• View tabular data in all formats
• Group repeating cells when export to excel
• Interactive performance assistant

Storytelling allows the end user to create slideshows or infographic displays within the Cognos Analytics environment.  In Cognos Analytics R7, a couple of enhancements are available, which include:

• Animated paths - allows transitions to keep items on the screen
• Administrator led custom image library

The data module in R7 brings a handful of additions and improvements.

• Presto
• MemSql
• Hive 2.1
• Microsoft Analysis Services 2016
• SAP BW 7.5

Finally, IBM has released PowerPlay 11, with Cognos Analytics R7.  This is big news for the many users of PowerPlay and Transformer.

• PowerPlay 11 provides updated operating system conformance
• Updated bowser conformance
• Functions just as 10.2.2
• PowerPlay report views and reports integrated in Cognos Analytics portal
• PowerPlay uses CA portal

• The "everyone" group is removed from everything except system admin
• Cognos roles mapped directly to CA license feature

Check out all of Lodestar Solutions upcoming events here https://lodestarsolutions.com/

I want to highlight a special event!  Are you thinking about upgrading to Cognos Analytics?

The new Cognos Analytics Dashboarding capabilities are crazy awesome, but they still don’t solve the overarching problems that have plagued our profession for decades.

We all know that the struggle with business intelligence is getting people to use it.

You can develop a million reports and dashboards, but if the organization doesn’t act from the data or if the information has a trivial impact on the bottom line, then what’s the point?

Are your budgets being over scrutinized, or worse, just cut with no clear reason? More and more, CEOs and CFOs are starting to re-evaluate their investment into analytics. If they were receiving the expected value, they wouldn’t be slashing the analytics budget.

You must be pretty frustrated too.

Same story, different day. You get requests from the user, take down the requirements, but you know deep down that it’s not going to work. Same old, same old. They are not going to use it, but it’s your job, so you build it.

Change is never easy, but stagnate water will always start to smell. Is your job starting to reek? Before you call it quits, ask yourself this question:

Are you brave enough to admit that you are half of the problem…which means you could be half of the solution?

Check out this link for more info Upgrade Training and to sign up for the event!