Usability improvements and natural language enhancements in the Assistant

In Cognos Analytics 12.0.1, there are several usability and natural language enhancements in the Assistant that provide a better user experience.

Data source selection enhancements

The Assistant now understands choose source, set source, change source, and select source when you want to change the Assistant's data source.

Assistant understands set source command

You'll notice that after the source changes, a new message in the Assistant panel displays confirming the change.

Source changed message in the Assistant panel

If you want to see a list of available sources, enter select source with a space after the phrase and select one from the list that displays.

Select source displays a list of available sources

Improved responses to questions that don't require visualizations

When you ask the Assistant a question that doesn't require a visualization, the Assistant now responds with just the relevant values.

The Assistant recognizes the following question styles and responds with values in text format.
  • What is
  • When is
  • Where is
  • Who is
Assistant responds with value

In certain cases, you might need to provide a column name for the Assistant to return a response.

Assistant responds with a value instead of a visualization