Written by Mike Bernaiche on June 10th, 2021
The next major update from IBM on the Cognos Analytics platform was released in late May. Cognos Analytics 11.2 brings several enhancements improvements and a new user interface. I will detail a few of the new items below.
User Interface
IBM has moved to Carbon, the IBM open-source design system for digital product and experience. Personally, I believe it is a beautiful interface, very clean and makes sense as you move throughout the product.
- Welcome Page – A quick launch and samples area has been added to the welcome screen. This is for ease of use and efficiency.
- Open Menu – Compact point to enter any area of Cognos Analytics 11.2.
- Full page content viewer – Here you will find your content, team content and samples in a full page view. You can switch between tiles and a list view.
- Search and Assistant – these items have been moved to the global content bar.
- Edit Icon – Is now a toggle button at the top of dashboards, reports, etc.
For the complete list of changes to the welcome pane and user experience please check out this link from IBM. Getting started - IBM Documentation
Dashboards
There are a couple of new changes to dashboards in Cognos Analytics 11.2. They include:
- 2 New Visualizations – Boxplot and Radar. These visualization are also available in Explorations.
- Show labels on maps in local language.
Notebooks
New in Cognos Analytics 11.2, if you have access to an external Watson environment enabled, you can import notebooks that were authored in IBM Watson Studio and use that data in reports or dashboards.
Reporting
A number of items were added to reporting in Cognos Analytics 11.2. They include:
- Add baseline to visualization using layout or query calculation. Baselines are horizontal or vertical lines that cut through the chart to indicate major divisions in the data.
- Local language labels in Maps - as in dashboard, you can show the local language in maps in Cognos Analytics 11.2.
- New Themes – Carbo X Light and Carbon X dark are now available in reporting.
- Support for PDF drill actions in Chrome and Firefox.
For the complete list of new items in reporting please check out this link from IBM. Reporting - IBM Documentation.
Modeling
- Navigation Path Enhancements – Navigation paths are now grouped into a folder named Navigation Paths and allows for a much cleaner and efficient use.
- Java Examples for modeling – using the rest API you can now perform the following:
- Load metadata
- Load metadata with select tables
- Reload metadata
- Upload new files
- Replace uploaded files
- Append to uploaded files
To access the examples and readme.txt, navigate to ../sdk/modeling/java/examples in your local installation.
Administration, Installation and Configuration
For more information on all of the changes in administration and installation of the product, please check out these links.
Call to Action
As you can read IBM has made a number of enhancements to Cognos Analytics 11.2. Many of them are based on the user experience and I believe that is setting the stage for some great customizations and enhancements in future releases. As of now, I believe Cognos Analytics 11.2.1 will be released in early fall and from what I have heard, it could be a very exciting release.
Recently Lodestar Solutions created an Upgrade Bundle to help our clients with the upgrade process on both Cognos Analytics and Planning Analytics. The bundle includes technical support hours as well. Trust me when I tell you this is a great deal! For more information check out this blog on
Solving the IBM Cognos Upgrade Challenge - Lodestar Solutions.
If you have questions regarding Cognos Analytics 11.2 or the upgrade bundle, please reach out to services@lodestarsolutions.com.