Visualizing data with Cognos Dashboards

You can use the dashboard editor in projects to build sophisticated visualizations of your analytics results, and communicate the insights that you've discovered in your data on a dashboard.

Service The Cognos Dashboards service is not available by default. An administrator must install this service on the IBM Cloud Pak for Data platform. To determine whether the service is installed, open the Services catalog and check whether the service is enabled.

Required services
Cognos Dashboards

Data format CSV files with comma (,) delimiter Data in tables in Db2, Db2 on Cloud, Db2 Warehouse, Databases for PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Netezza Performance Server, and Data Virtualization Important: Data sources that are for file storage, for example, IBM Cloud Object Storage or Box, are not supported.

Data size Any; columns in CSV files can only be 128 characters long

For more information on choosing the right tool for your data and use case, see Choosing a tool.

The dashboards editor provides a graphical canvas for a line-of-business user to begin investigating data for patterns and insights. You don't need to understand coding or SQL to explore the data and gain insights. Alternatively, you can hand off the dashboard to a data scientist for deeper analysis and predictive modeling.

• Adding a dashboard to your project
• Actions on dashboards
• Known issues

Adding a dashboard to your analytics project

To add a dashboard to your project:

1. Click Add to project > Dashboard editor from the project toolbar, or click New dashboard from the Dashboards section on the project's Assets page. You can create a blank dashboard or upload a dashboard file from your file system. The dashboard file must be a .json file.
2. Type a name and description for your dashboard.
3. Select one of the provided templates that contain predefined designs and grid lines for easy arrangement and alignment of the visualizations. A new empty dashboard opens.
4. Create visualizations of your source data by using the following options in the left-hand pane of the dashboard:
   • Sources: Enables selecting a data source connection. The data source must exist and have been added as a data asset on the Assets page of the project, see also Known issues for data sources. The following data sources are supported:
     • CSV files with comma (,) delimiter
       • Important: Data sources that are for file storage, for example, IBM Cloud Object Storage or Box, are not supported.
     • Connection with shared credentials to Db2, Db2 on Cloud, Db2 Warehouse, Databases for PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or Netezza Performance Server
     • Data from a Db2, Db2 on Cloud, Db2 Warehouse, Databases for PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or Netezza Performance Server connection
     • Data Virtualization assets added into a project
       Note: The following two conditions must be met to use assets:
       • The user must be granted either administrator or steward permissions in the Data Virtualization service.
       • The user must add their Cloud Pak for Data credentials to the Data Virtualization connection that is added to the project. The credentials must be entered in the username and password fields and not by selecting the checkbox.
   • Visualizations: Opens many different types of graphs that you can use to visualize the data from the selected data source connection. Drill down into your source connection and select the data segments you want to visualize.
   • Widgets: Enables adding widgets such as text, media, web pages, images, and shapes to the dashboard. You cannot add your own custom widgets to use in a dashboard.

1. Click the Save icon to save your dashboard. The dashboard that you created is listed in the Dashboards section on the project's Assets page.

Dashboard action bars

From the project action bar, you can:

• Download the dashboard to your file system as a JSON file.
• Undo and redo actions to the dashboard.
• Save your dashboard.
• View your dashboard information. You can change the dashboard name and dashboard description.

From the dashboard action bar, you can:

• Add and remove widget connections, for example for text, media, web pages, images, and shapes.
• Use filters to focus on areas of your data or to see the impact of particular columns.
• Use fields to build and filter data.
• Change dashboard properties, for example, colors.

The dashboards editor uses the dashboard functions from IBM Cognos Analytics. You can learn more about how to use the dashboard in this documentation.

Actions on dashboards

All dashboards are listed in the Dashboards section on your project's Assets page.

When you open a dashboard, you are notified if an associated data asset, for example a CSV file or a connection, is missing from your dashboard. You can select to skip the data asset or to relink it. Before you can relink the asset, you must add the missing asset to your project. Data assets associated with a dashboard might be missing if the data asset was removed from your project, or when you download a dashboard and create a new dashboard from the downloaded dashboard JSON file in a different project without the data assets it uses. If you do not relink the missing asset to the dashboard, the dashboard graphs will not render.

You can select the following actions from the Actions menu of a selected dashboard:

• Publish a dashboard to a catalog so it can be added into other projects. When you select to publish a dashboard to the catalog, you can choose to add a preview of the dashboard with the dashboard file to the catalog. By taking screen captures of the dashboard, other users can see what the dashboard looks like before adding it into another project.
• Remove a dashboard. You must have created the dashboard or have the Admin role in the project to remove a dashboard.

Changing the data asset

• If the name and the content of a data asset associated with a dashboard changes, it is found by the dashboard when it opens. However, the column names and column types in the data asset must be the same as those that were used in the dashboard visualizations.
• To replace a CSV source file with an updated version of the file, add the updated file into the project to overwrite the previous version. When you open the dashboard, it displays the updated data.
• Starting with version 4.0.2, if you download your dashboard and create a new dashboard from a CSV File, the dashboard prompts you to relink to a CSV file, even if that CSV file exists in the same project.

Learn more

• Known issues