Have you ever tried to change a Cognos Metric Studio chart? If you have, then you now it can be downright maddening and frustrating. Well, I am here to give you four tips that will save your sanity and just might stop you from throwing your hands up and losing all hope.

1. Metric Studio Charts are like crosstabs – I was given this little piece of advice and it has served me well.  In order to apply this little jewel, make sure you have a crosstab visible before you try to modify a chart. Normally when you try to troubleshoot a chart, you look at the tabular data -but that can be misleading because a chart shows the intersection of two points while tabular data is just a list.

2. Move to the top – sometimes when you add a new point on a chart, it doesn’t seem to show up. This can be so annoying because you can see the new data element on the crosstab and in the tabular data, but not on the stupid chart! It might sound strange, but just move the new point to the top of the chart. I know you might not want the element on the top, but once you can see it on the chart you can move it where ever you want.

3. Adjust the legend – ok … you have your new element, but you don’t see it in the legend. You have made the chart bigger, but still you don’t see it. All elements must appear on the legend in order for the chart to be correct. You might be thinking that this tip should go before two and in some cases you might be right, but at least you are getting the tip. Anyway, change the legend size so that you can see the new element on the chart.

4. Change the chart point size – if you have multiple values on a chart and two seem to have the exact same values, then it is possible you will only see one of them. By default all the elements on the chart are same size. The element that gets charted last is the one on top, which is often the last element on the chart axis. In order to see the see the other element, change the shape and its size to a larger point than the measure you can see.

All of these suggestions can be done in any order. I am pretty confident you will find at least one of them useful and I encourage you to pass on all the tips to another Metric Studio user.