There has been a paradigm shift in how business users receive their information.  Not too long ago, if the business needed data to answer a critical question, they would call IT, submit a formal request for a report to be written, and wait.  The timeframe from when the request was queued to when it was delivered used to take weeks.  Through lost opportunities and poor decisions based on old data, businesses quickly realized how expensive this process was. Enter IBM Cognos and Query Studio.  Today I'm going to write about steps to take to Test Cognos Framework Manager Models in query studio.

Today, IBM Cognos BI Studio allows the business users to query and report from the data directly, providing timely information to decision makers and alleviating IT resources.  However, many organizations still struggle with this transition.  Although Cognos can put more control into the business users’ hands, IT still plays a critical role.  It is now the job of IT to build and provide user friendly models and packages.  This includes building packages with proper business terminology and ensuring that all query items displayed are confirmed and produce expected results.

It is easy to spot a company that has gone from a culture heavily dependent on IT to produce BI and one that has not properly UAT’d their models and packages before rolling them out to production.

The best place to UAT your models and packages is in Query Studio.  This will allow you to ask some very basic, but important, questions.  Can business users easily find the data items they need?  Do the relationships built in Framework Manager produce expected results?  Is all the data necessary to answer the business questions available?

Additionally, Query Studio is simple to understand and learn.  Business users only need a 30-minute training before they are able to create simple list and crosstab reports.  Although it is a good idea to develop test scripts, it is also recommended that business users are encouraged to try to recreate reports already being used, or build queries to answers common questions.

For more information about Query Studio or other IBM Cognos software, contact us at Sales@LodestarSolutions.com.