© 2009 IBM Corporation

What’s New: Versions 3 and 4 of IBM Cognos 8 BI

Vladimir Stojanovski

Solutions Architect for Texas and Louisiana

State/Local Government and Higher Education

© 2009 IBM Corporation

IBM Cognos 8v3

8.3 – Key New Features

Briefing books

Self-Service personal alerts

Improved Transformer capabilities

Global dashboard filtering

More flexible organization of information

Express authoring mode

New scorecard portlets

Model Advisor

Proactive Administration (System Health Metrics)

Report & Job Queue Prioritization

Briefing Books

Professional authors are able to quickly combine different styles and formats within a single report

Business users can easily navigate multi-style, multi-page reports with critical information formatted for easy consumption.

Live TOC to enable quick navigation

No Data Handling allows the business user to customize the

report when there is no data found

A singleton is a dataframe that displays the first value

for a single query item

Inter-mingle different page orientations within the same report

Self-Service Personal Alerts

Users can easily create their own alerts for scheduled reports

Users can control when and how they receive critical information without IT intervention

Define howyou would like

to be alerted

Highlight the report, or value within a report that you wish to be alerted on

Receive alert and monitor over time

Improved Transformer Capabilities

Provides business friendly tools for end users to create and manage their own cubes optimized for exploration and analysis

IT can leverage existing investments and enables targeted analysis to speed decision making

PowerCubes

ReportingAd-Hoc Query

Transformer 8 Relational /Non-Relational

Cognos 8 ReportingAnalysis

Ad-Hoc Query

CUBE BUILDING

AND DEPLOYMENT

Additional capabilities ...

Global dashboard filtering

– Allowing users to quicklyfilter on all data containedin dashboard

More flexible organizationof information

– Ability to push packagesto any folder in the content manager

– Enable organization of alarge number of packages

Express Authoring Mode

Provides financial/business analysts a quick and easy mechanism to create formatted reports to support financial and business processes

Instant feedback and a focused user-interface satisfies self service needs

Optimized toolbox for crosstab functionality

Pre-defined financial calculations

Statement style formatting

Working with livedata to acceleratereport production

New Scorecard Portlets

Users can now access scorecards and history charts through Cognos Connection using new scorecard portlets.

Easier to access and communicate scorecard information and promote broad use across the organization

Global filtering

Embed scorecardsinto Cognos Connection

Embed historycharts into Cognos

Connection

Model Advisor

Enables users to apply proven Cognos modeling practices to optimize model creation

Reduces the amount of time and effort to build high-quality models

Pinpoint areas in themodel where improvementscan be made

Generate a quick report highlighting recommended areas of optimization

Launch Model Advisor from Framework Manager

Proactive Administration

View hundreds of systemmetrics, consolidated

in summary views

Provides centralized holistic management of

Cognos solution

Prioritize critical process to ensure consistent serviceis delivered

Provide administrators with more detailed metrics and thresholds. Also leverages Cognos 8 capabilities such as event management and reporting.

Reduce the time it takes to identify, troubleshoot and resolve an issue

Queue Prioritization and Report Rerun

Re-start report runs

Monitor job queue

Improve IT’s visibility and control enabling them to take action onreporting activities

Provides administrators with the ability to change priority of a scheduled report or re-run a report on a user’s behalf

Set priority on scheduledreports on demand.

© 2009 IBM Corporation

Provides more trusted information with the additional context to add perspective to the information

Annotations

Charting enhancements

Data Lineage

More interactivity on mobile devices

“Informed” Functionality

Cognos 8 v4 delivers information with greater…

Context

Relevance

Confidence in the information

Annotations

Informed

Informed

Annotations

Informed

Annotations – Report Properties (Advanced Options)

Informed

More visually appealing and interesting reports

New and improved charts types available

Background design and color flexibility (ie Excel palette)

New color palettes to match industry standards

Charting EnhancementsBubble chart property – ‘Empty’

bubbles are negative values

Marimekko Chart

Informed

Gain User Confidence

– Provide the ability to understand where the data their decisions originated

Select Objects of Interest from Report View or Package

Depending on your Role, See Business or Technical Lineage

Data Lineage

Informed

Business users easily see where data originated to gain confidence in the data they use to drive decisions

Data modelers and report authors see lineage from report to source, saving time with report development and troubleshooting

Access Metadata Workbench Directly from Cognos Reports

Metadata Workbench - View Other Reports that Contain this

Data, Trace Back to Source

Data Lineage

Informed

Business Glossary

Integration with InfoSphere Business Glossary

Improve overall business understanding of what terms mean

Build enterprise dictionary of terms to align organization and increase data confidence

Select Objects of Interest from Report

View or Package

Access Business Glossary directly from

Cognos reports

Browse definitions, examples, term owner,

usage and related terms

With appropriaterights, contribute to dictionary of terms

Informed

Enhanced Prompt Support

Location Aware Content

Go! Mobile

Support for all Prompt types on the Mobile Device

Informed

Fully Integrated Cognos 8 Scheduling

Ability to Burst reports to Multiple Mobile users

Go! Mobile

Send the report to mobile recipients Select the recipients…

Cognos 8 v4 invites business users with more a dynamic & interactive business intelligence experience

Dynamic and Customizable Dashboards

Authoring and Exploration via BI Search

Extended Analysis for Excel Support

PowerPlay on Cognos 8 Platform

New Scorecard Portlets

“Engaged” Functionality

Dynamic

Rich Flash graphics

Quickly create visually appealing dashboards

Go! Dashboard

Engaged

Highly interactive Slider object

Flash graphics deliver Rich Charts and enable

Re-Sorts, Filters etc

Personalized

Easy to use, Drag-and-Drop interface

Arrange content in a way to maximize impact

Go! Dashboard

Engaged

Modify Chart Types

Reorganize the Dashboard Layout

Personalization options enable End Users to customize look and feel

Trusted

Leverages existing secure Cognos content

Cognos 8 full report or report parts

Access to reports or report ‘parts’

Go! Dashboard

Engaged

Search Assisted Exploration and Authoring

– Exploration – May drop you into PowerPlay Studio with a selected cube

– Authoring – May drop you into a Studio

More relevant results

– Relevance adjustments

– Suggested content

Go! Search

Engaged

Search results categorized and weighted; Includes 3rd Party search results

Improved Administration

– No longer required to edit the csnconfig.xml file

– Inclusion / Exclusion / Freshness / Relevance of Types, Content, Data

Configuration of Third Party Search

– Google Search Appliance, IBM OmniFind Enterprise, IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition

Admin Options - Index group items, Adjust resource utilization, …

Go! Search

Engaged

Go! Search tab added to the standard admin area

Access to Relational data sources

– Not all data suited to Dimensional Model (e.g. price lists)

– Not a replacement for Query or Report Studio

– Avoid Time based reporting when leveraging relational data

– Lists added to support relational data

Engaged

IBM Cognos Analysis for Excel

Users see metadata tree instead of member tree

Complex Filters

– Contains, And, Or, brackets, etc.

– Very similar to Analysis Studio

– Can filter on Label or Measure

New complex filters to enable you to quickly

focus your data

Engaged

IBM Cognos Analysis for Excel

Preview

– Preview with no data

Select Levels– Put Levels side by side

(Like a relational table list)

Expand Levels– Expand All– Multi-Select then Expand

Exploration Style Sheets

– Header, total lines, etc.

Engaged

IBM Cognos Analysis for Excel

Brings PowerPlay onto the Cognos 8 BI platform

Maintains the same PowerPlay user interfaces

Facilitates the migration of content from PowerPlay 7

Zero footprint administration

Engaged

PowerPlay

Windows Client

PowerPlay Studio

Enable/Disable Drill-through to Cognos 8

Support for IPv6

PowerPlay Auditing integrated with C8 Audit database

Complete Administrative Monitoring (including interactive)

Transformer 8 Automation

Performance improvements

– New load balancing algorithm

– On-demand thread creation available

– Age limit on Idle Connections for PPESBusServer (if using on-demand thread creation)

Engaged

New PowerPlay Functionality

If upgrading from FCS…

– Must uninstall FCS if installing in the same directory

– The FCS Content Store can be retained and automatically updated

Migration from PP 7 MR3 fully supported

Support for Cubes from Cognos Connection with no associated reports

Migrated packages, reports, etc. may be moved and renamed

Security information captured

– Every time migration is run

– Only for relevant users

Improved accuracy of cube mapping for duplicate named cubes

Engaged

PowerPlay 7 → 8 Migration

Strategy map and impact diagram portlets

Easier access to scorecard information

Easy integration into 3rd party portal

Engaged

New Scorecard Portlets Impact Diagram for better operational

understanding

Strategy Map portlet for easier strategy

communication

Cognos 8 v4 improves alignment between strategy & operations, increasing with complete visibility from business operations to advanced analytics & strategic plans, e.g.

Dimension Management

Integration with Cognos Data Sources

Expanded Conformance & Compliance to IT Standards

- New 3rd Party Release Support

- Deployment & Administration

“Aligned Theme”

Benefits…

– Information structured to reflect the reality of the business

– Organizations can quickly respond to business change

– Plans and Actuals can be aligned to future structures

Replace manual, error prone efforts with fully transparent

automated processes

Aligned

Business Viewpoint

Easily create their own perspective

Deliver shared, approved viewpoints across PM

Drive a single, sanctioned source of dimensions and hierarchies across performance management

Integration into the entire Cognos portfolio

– Planning, BI, TM1 and Transformer

Maintain any and all dimensions, attributes

and hierarchies

Assign specifics roles and areas of responsibility across

the business community

Visualize create and relate dimensions and flexibly add

any number of attributes

Aligned

Business Viewpoint

Manage nominations, approvals and versions with

business workflow

New 3rd Party Release Support

IPv6

Browsers: Firefox 3

Adobe Acrobat Reader 9

O/S: Linux on IBM System z

Application Servers

– Update Versions: SAP Netweaver 7, IBM WebSphere 6.1

– 64-Bit Support: Tomcat, Netweaver, IBM WebSphere (32-Bit still available)

Database: Oracle 11g, Teradata 12

Aligned

Expanded IT Compliance

Deployment and Administration

SQL Tagging (comments helpful in debugging)

Virtual View Manager (Composite Information Server Rebranded)

Hide Portal Objects

Hide Logon Namespaces

Improved Prompt Performance

PowerPlay IPF Database Audit Logging

PowerPlay Service Requests Display in Current Activities

Six New Languages

Aligned

Expanded IT Compliance

Aligned

Integration with Cognos Data Sources

TM1

Now!

Cubing

Services

Virtual View

Manager

Leverage power of TM1 across performance management

– TM1 data available through published packages

– Cognos 8 BI capabilities available to Cognos TM1 communities

– TM1 cubes can be loaded by Data Manager from any source

Gain broader visibility into operational datasets– Now! data available through published packages

– Deliver operational metrics across performance management

IT can leverage power of InfoSphere Cubing Services– Cubing Services data available through published packages

– Existing DBA skill set optimizes warehouse performance

Greater confidence to deploy on-the-fly views– Rebrand and packaging of Composite Information Server

Integration with Cognos Data Sources

Any ESRI Users in the Room?

We now have an out-of-box integration solution