Extensible Visualizations Product: IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Area of Interest: Reporting
Extensible Visualizations 2 Copyright and Trademarks Licensed Materials - Property of IBM. Copyright IBM Corp. 2013 IBM, the IBM logo, and Cognos are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml 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.
Extensible Visualizations 3 Contents 1 INTRODUCTION... 4 1.1 PURPOSE... 4 1.2 APPLICABILITY... 4 2 IMPORTING VISUALIZATIONS INTO IBM COGNOS BI... 5 3 ADDING A VISUALIZATION TO A REPORT... 6
Extensible Visualizations 4 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.
Extensible Visualizations 5 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.
Extensible Visualizations 6 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
Extensible Visualizations 7 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, drag items to the appropriate drop zones in the data container. 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.