Extensible Visualizations Product: IBM Cognos

Extensible Visualizations
Product: IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence
Area of Interest: Reporting
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Copyright and Trademarks
Licensed Materials - Property of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2013
IBM, the IBM logo, and Cognos are trademarks or registered trademarks of
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While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this document
is accurate and complete, some typographical errors or technical inaccuracies may
exist. IBM does not accept responsibility for any kind of loss resulting from the use
of information contained in this document. The information contained in this
document is subject to change without notice.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
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Contents
1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 4
1.1
1.2
PURPOSE ................................................................................................................ 4
APPLICABILITY ......................................................................................................... 4
2
IMPORTING VISUALIZATIONS INTO IBM COGNOS BI ................................. 5
3
ADDING A VISUALIZATION TO A REPORT .................................................... 6
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1 Introduction
1.1
Purpose
This document demonstrates how to import extensible visualizations into
Cognos Administration, and how to add extensible visualizations to standard
reports and Active Reports.
You can author visualizations in Report Studio and Cognos Workspace
Advanced, and build dashboards in Cognos Workspace that include authored
visualizations.
1.2
Applicability
To author visualizations in Active Reports, you must use IBM Cognos Business
Intelligence 10.2.1 or later. To author visualizations in standard reports, you
must use IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1.1 or later.
Extensible visualizations use the IBM Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine
(RAVE), which has the flexibility to render a greater variety of visualizations.
As RAVE capabilities evolve, more visualizations become possible. Not all
visualizations are compatible with earlier Cognos BI versions. When you
download a visualization, note the compatible BI version. For example, some
visualizations on AnalyticsZone work only with Cognos BI 10.2.1.1.
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2 Importing visualizations into IBM Cognos BI
Before you can add a visualization to a report, your administrator must import the
visualization bundle that contains the visualization into Cognos Administration. The
visualization then becomes available in the Visualization Gallery window in Report
Studio and in Cognos Workspace Advanced.
Procedure
1. In Cognos Administration, click the Library tab.
2. In the left pane, ensure that Visualizations is selected.
3. Click the Import icon
.
4. Click Browse and select the visualization bundle that you want to import.
5. If the visualization was previously imported, select the Replace existing
entries check box to overwrite it.
Note: When replacing an existing visualization, report authors must update
reports that contain the visualization, so that the changes in the new
visualization are picked up. If the reports are not updated, they may not run.
6. Click Import and then Close.
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3 Adding a visualization to a report
You can add a visualization to a report to efficiently represent your data.
The following image shows an example of a bullet visualization:
Before you begin
Before you can add a visualization to a report, your administrator must import the
visualization bundle that contains the visualization into Cognos Administration. The
visualization then becomes available in the Visualization Gallery window in Report
Studio and in Cognos Workspace Advanced.
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer to view visualizations, you must have
Microsoft Silverlight 5 or later installed on your computer. Firefox or iPad users do
not need Silverlight.
About this task
You add data to a visualization by inserting data items in drop zones.
Visualizations will not run until all of the required drop zones contain data items.
When all the required drop zones contain data items, additional drop zones appear
for extra categories or values. You can use extra categories and extra values to filter
data or set variables. Extra items are not visible in the visualization.
When working with dimensional data sources, if the visualization does not contain
a measure against which to plot data, you must provide one. For example, if you
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add a single member to the values drop zone, such as '2012', the default measure
drop zone appears in which you must insert a measure.
Attention: The supported properties for a visualization are determined by the
visualization definition.
Procedure
1. Create a new report or open an existing report.
2. From the Toolbox tab
, drag a Visualization icon
to the work area.
3. From the Visualization Gallery, select the visualization that you want to add
and click OK.
Tip: You can choose the visualization types that you want to see in the
Visualization Gallery by selecting check boxes in the Refine by pane.
4. From the Source tab
data container.
, drag items to the appropriate drop zones in the
Depending on the specific visualization, multiple measures (or single values)
or categories may be required. For example, the 100% stacked column
visualization has two required categorical drop zones, X categories and
Series. Each item in the data series is plotted as a different color or pattern in
the visualization.
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