Visualizing dashboards and reports

IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps includes support for analyzing and visualizing data through an integration with IBM Cognos Analytics. IBM Cognos Analytics integrates reporting, modeling, analysis, exploration, dashboards, and stories, so you can understand your organization's data, and make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a proven, self-service, dependable analytics solution that provides scalability and analytics governance.

This integration provides you with tools to create custom IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards and reports.

With IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards, you can build visualizations of your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data, such as alert and topology data, to monitor your data at a glance. IBM Cognos Analytics includes a wide range of customizable visualization options to help you create these interactive dashboards. You can then use the exploration, analysis, and reporting capabilities within IBM Cognos Analytics to discover patterns and relationships and gain further insights into your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data.

With IBM Cognos Analytics reports, you can use the provided web-based report authoring tool to build sophisticated, multiple-page, multiple-query reports whenever you require, such as for creating alert resolution rates or impacted resource reports.

When you set up this integration, you can open IBM Cognos Analytics from the Cloud Pak for AIOps console.

Note: This functionality is not enabled for deployments of IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps on Linux®.

Before you begin

  • IBM Cognos Analytics requires a database to act as a 'Content store' that contains IBM Cognos Analytics configuration and settings. You can use the same IBM Db2 instance that you use to sync your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data to, but in a separate database. For more information about using IBM Db2 as a content store in IBM Cognos Analytics, see the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation.

    The complete list of components that must be installed and configured for the integration between IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps and IBM Cognos Analytics is the following:

    1. Install IBM Db2.
    2. Install IBM Cognos Analytics (using IBM Db2 as a content store).
    3. Link IBM Cognos Analytics and IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps.
    4. Create the data flow.
    5. Create the data module.
    6. Create a dashboard.

  • Entitlement to IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps provides limited entitlement to using IBM Cognos Analytics and IBM Db2 for IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data sources only. Review the IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps license terms.

Installing and configuring the integration

You can configure an existing IBM Cognos Analytics environment with IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps. For more information, see Integrating IBM Cognos Analytics with IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps.

For information about new IBM Cognos Analytics installations, see the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation.

You must configure IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps to synchronize data with IBM Cognos Analytics through an IBM Db2 integration. For more information and instructions, see IBM Db2 integration.

Getting started with IBM Cognos Analytics

When you have the integration configured you can access and use IBM Cognos Analytics.

As a starting point, review the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation Getting started - User interface. This page and section of documentation provide basic information about navigating the IBM Cognos Analytics user interface, and creating and managing the application content.

The full set of documentation for using IBM Cognos Analytics is available in the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation. This documentation describes all features of IBM Cognos Analytics, including features that are not supported in IBM Cognos Analytics for IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps.

Opening IBM Cognos Analytics

You can open the IBM Cognos Analytics UI from the Cloud Pak for AIOps console main navigation menu by clicking Visualize > Cognos. The IBM Cognos Analytics UI opens in a new browser tab.

The IBM Cognos Analytics UI includes an AI Assistant (left pane of the UI), and a Details pane (right side of the UI), to help interpret the chart that you are viewing. The Assistant supports natural language exploration, while the Details pane provides system-generated plain-language information to augment the chart. The Explore feature reduces the guesswork that is associated with data exploration by finding the strongest relationships in your data. The relationships are displayed in the relationship diagram, and suggested starting points are offered for more data exploration.

Important: To access and use IBM Cognos Analytics to create and use dashboards and other visualization tools, you must have a user role with the following permissions:

  • Manage dashboards/reports
  • View dashboards

Supported features

The following features are supported in IBM Cognos Analytics for use with IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data:

Working with dashboards

You can create a dashboard within IBM Cognos Analytics to build visualizations of your IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data, such as alert and topology data. IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards help you to monitor events or activities at a glance by providing key insights and analysis about your data on one or more pages or screens. For more information, see Creating a dashboard. For more information about editing an existing dashboard, see Editing a dashboard.

For detailed instructions and information about working with dashboards, review the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation Dashboards. This page lists various topics to explore to learn more about using and understanding dashboards within IBM Cognos Analytics. For tutorial about the basics for creating a dashboard, see Cognos Analytics dashboards: a tutorial

For more information about building the visualizations on your dashboard, see the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation Visualizations. As part of building the visualizations, you can use IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps widgets within IBM Cognos Analytics.

You can also create custom visualizations to meet your specific business needs. For more information, see Custom Visualizations Developer. For a step-by-step guide for how to set up your development environment, create custom visualizations, and deploy and authorize the visualization, see Step-by-step guide for custom visualizations.

IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps widgets

IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps provides a default setup for creating 4 custom widgets. When you have configured the data flow to include IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps data in IBM Cognos Analytics, you can create these widgets. For more information, see:

These widgets can be combined with other IBM Cognos Analytics widgets in your IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards to create custom views for analyzing your data to meet your operational requirements and use cases.

Working with reports

You can create reports to meet your various needs, such as alert resolution rates or impacted resource reports. When you create a report, you are actually creating a report specification. The report specification defines the queries and prompts that are used to retrieve data and the layouts and styles used to present the data. For simplicity, the report specification is named by the same name as the report. For more information about creating and using reports, the IBM Cognos Analytics documentation Reporting. This page lists various topics to get started with creating reports based on your data within IBM Cognos Analytics.