May 14th, 2020
IBM has done it again! Recently they released Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 and with this update comes some great additions and enhancements. It is great that IBM continues to release updates about every 3 months to continue making Cognos Analytics even better! Read below for the updates in this release.
Welcome Page and User Experience
Cognitive Learning Pane – Simply click the question mark at the top right of the welcome page and ask a question. This connects you to the knowledge center and delivers answers to your questions. Check out this IBM link for great info on this area.
New Carbon Design Icons – bringing a modern minimalist feel to the welcome page.
Dashboards & Stories
Dashboards and Stories received a number of new features in Cognos Analytics 11.1.6.
Fields Pane – Located on the toolbar, open the Fields pane to add columns and to build and modify visualizations.
Expand hierarchies in cross tabs – Added feature to expand hierarchies in cross tabs.
Visualization toolbar locked at top of dashboard – Instead of clicking the visualization to get a pop up tool bar it is now locked at the top of the page.
Customize unit labels – you can now define custom labels on units in dashboards.
Guided dashboard creation - you can now generate a dashboard based on specified fields of interest. For example, “generate dashboard for top 10 products by profit.”
Use stand-alone (global) calculations – As you can create these in framework manager or data modules, you can now create directly in dashboards.
Category coloring on maps – drag category information to color field in map.
Explorations
In addition to the above enhancements, explorations also received this additional enhancement in Cognos Analytics 11.1.6
Natural language details for time series - Natural language details for time series in IBM Cognos Analytics provides insights for time series data that is displayed in all applicable exploration visualizations. When time fields and a measure field are specified in the visualization and a forecasting model is computed, detected time series insights become available under the Details tab. Cognos Analytics supports three types of insights for time series data: unusual values, seasonal effects, and trend.
Reporting
Reporting added a couple of great features. In addition to adding support for category color for maps, reporting also added the following in Cognos Analytics 11.1.6
Data tables - Data table is a new type of data container in Cognos Analytics reports. Data tables are similar to lists because they also show data in rows and columns. However, unlike in lists, the data is rendered on the browser side and not on the Cognos Analytics server side. As a result, the data in data tables is displayed very quickly. You can group and summarize data in data table columns, expand and collapse rows, apply filters to columns and add custom indicators instead of numbers in measure columns.
Drilling up and down in a visualization in report - If you use a dimensionally modeled data source, you can create a visualization and drill down to lower-level data or drill up to higher-level data.
Compare measure in a visualization - You can compare measures from the same category in a visualization by adding multiple measures on the Length slot. Note - only available in bar and column charts currently.
Data Modules
Use the data modeling component in Cognos Analytics to create a data module that can then be used in dashboards, stories, explorations, reports and other content. Data modules are containers that describe data and the rules for combining and shaping data to make it ready for analysis and visualization. Below are the additions to data modules.
Add individual columns to a data module - After a table is updated in the source, you can update the table in the data module by adding or removing individual columns without updating the whole table.
Reload the schema meta data - Use the Reload metadata action on the source schema to identify potential discrepancies between the data in the source and the data module.
Samples
Cognos Analytics 11.1.6 adds many new industry specific samples so that you can easily apply to real world situations.
Details and links to each of these samples can be found here.
Administration
To see the complete list of administration updates including new supported drivers click here.
Summary
As you can see, IBM has indeed done it again. A lot of excellent updates in Cognos Analytics 11.1.6. If you want to discuss further or set up time to talk about upgrading please contact us at services@lodestarsolutions.com
For the complete list of additions and changes from IBM, check out this link.
Cognos Analytics New Feature Online Training – Version 11.1 and Higher
You may be thinking… “this is great, however I can’t keep up with all of these updates and I feel like I’m behind because I don’t have the time to learn everything new”. Lodestar is here to solve this issue. We just released our brand new, Cognos Analytics Online Training for version 11.1 and higher! Check in out here!