The user interface

You enter IBM® Cognos® Analytics - Reporting by creating a new report or by opening an existing report in the Cognos Analytics portal.

The following table describes where you can find features and functions in Cognos Analytics - Reporting.

Table 1. Cognos Analytics - Reporting function mapping
Cognos Analytics - Reporting icon	Description
and	Navigation menu. See Navigation menu.
	Data sources. See Sources tab.
	Data items. See Data items tab.
	Toolbox. See Toolbox tab.
	Save as Convert to Template Convert to Active Report
	Toggle between editing the report and viewing the report. Tip: These two states are referred to as edit mode and view mode.
	Undo and redo the last change you made to the report
	Specify run options for the report and run the report. Run options include output format, orientation of the report, how much data to return, language, rows per page, accessibility features, bidirectional support, and performance details. Appears only in edit mode.
	Run the report using the current run options. The data is refreshed (database re queried) only if you change the output format from the last time you ran the report. To change the output format, click the down arrow. Appears only in view mode. The run option is also available when you are on the Pages tab in a report. You can run an individual page with the output format you require.
	Refresh the report using the same prompt values. Appears only in view mode. Note: To ensure that the data is refreshed, disable the Use local cache property in the properties for the query.
	Clear all parameters
	Toggle between locking and unlocking objects on the canvas.
	Switch between page design, page preview, or page structure view
	Open report from clipboard Copy report to clipboard Visual aids Find. See Find objects in a report. Validate report Validate options Auto correct Layout component cache Manage conditional styles Show generated SQL/MDX Add shared set report Manage Shared Set Reports Manage Shared Set References Show specification Options. See Options in Reporting.
	Toggle between showing and hiding the Properties pane for the active object. The properties that are displayed are different, depending on the object. For a list of the available properties for a report, see Properties pane.

On-demand toolbar

The on-demand toolbar (formerly known as the report object toolbar) contains the actions you can perform on an object.

You can disable the on-demand toolbar. For more information, see Disabling the on-demand toolbar.

The following list shows the actions that are available from the on-demand toolbar. The actions that appear depend on the type of object that is active on the canvas:

Pin , Unpin

When the on-demand toolbar is pinned, it stays at the upper left corner of the canvas, regardless of which object is active. When it's unpinned, it floats near the object that is active.

You can also control the display of the on-demand toolbar by setting the Show on demand toolbar on right-click option. Click the More icon . Select Options > View. When the Show on demand toolbar on right-click check box is selected, the on-demand toolbar displays when you right-click an object. When cleared, the on-demand toolbar displays when you click an object. If the on-demand toolbar is pinned, it appears at the top left corner of the canvas, regardless of the setting of the Show on demand toolbar on right-click option.

Cut , Copy , Paste , and Delete

Cut, copy, paste, or delete an object

Filters

Click the down arrow to add, edit, or delete filters or add filter text to the visualization

Swap rows and columns

In a table, switch the row and columns around

Apply style

Apply a custom or default style

Font

Edit the font for an object

Border

Apply a border. You can choose the style, width, and color.

Background color

Apply a background color background color icon

Horizontal alignment

Change the horizontal alignment horizontal alignment icon

Vertical alignment

Change the vertical alignment

Style current selection

Create and apply a custom style to the selected object

Apply layout

Select a different layout for the report

Insert table

Insert a table

Select ancestor

Select an ancestor of the current object

More

Other actions that vary, depending on the type of object that is active. For example, for a visualization, you can change the headers and footers. For a table, you can apply a table style. For a table cell, you can build a prompt page.

Sources tab

The Sources tab sources icon contains items from the package selected for the report, such as data items and calculations. When you drag an item to the canvas, the visualization recommender chooses a visualization to represent the data. If you don't like the visualization, you can change it.

Search through the sources by typing a value in the Find field. As you type, the items that match your search string appear in the tab.

Data items tab

The Data Items tab shows the queries in the report.

Toolbox tab

The Toolbox tab Toolbox icon contains various objects that you can add to a report, such as visualizations, text, layout objects, and prompts. You can also add advanced objects such as custom controls and hyperlinks. Depending on the type of object, you can drag it from the Toolbox to the canvas or double-click it to open a window in which you define values for the object. When the object is placed on the canvas, its properties are displayed in the Properties pane.

Search through the objects by typing a value in the Find field. As you type, the items that match your search string appear in the tab.

Toolbox items are organized into groups. Click to show all of the items available in each group or to collapse the groups. Click type of view icon to toggle between a list view or a tree view of the items in the groups.

Add items that you use often to the PINNED group. Items in the PINNED group appear on the canvas when you create a new report. To add a toolbox item to the PINNED group, right-click the item and click Add to pinned toolbox items. To remove an item from the PINNED group, right-click the item and click Remove from pinned toolbox items.

Active reports

If you are authoring an active report, you can use the following features:

Active report controls: Shows the controls and active report variables inserted in a report and their relationships to one another. You can click a control in this tab to quickly locate the control in the report and set default values for variables.
Active report variables: Shows the active report variables defined in a report. Use this tab to create new variables and set default values.

Report overview pane

Click

in the navigation drop-down to see the following information:

A description of the report
Data sources used in the report
Number of report objects
Number of page objects

The pane contains links to report objects to make it easier for authors to navigate to the area of the report where the specific object resides.

Report overview page with links

Click the Validate report icon to validate the report specification.

Pages pane

Click pages object icon to view or create new report pages and prompt pages, and to create and modify classes. You can insert a page, a set of pages, or a reference to a report from the pages pane.

Queries pane

Click queries object icon to create or modify queries in relational reporting or dimensional reporting, and to perform complex tasks, such as defining joins, unions, intersects, excepts, and writing SQL and MDX statements.

Click a specific query to add a calculation, detail or summary filter, or a set expression.

Classes pane

Click classes object icon to define a style. For example, you can define a style for the title of an axis. You can then apply the style to all axis titles in the report.

Variables pane

Click variables object icon to add a variable that has values in a different language, values as strings, and values in boolean.

Filters pane

The Filters Filter icon in the application bar pane is available in View mode. It displays all filters that are created by the report consumer on the report output. When you click a filter in this pane, all data containers that use the selected filter are automatically highlighted in the report. When a data container is selected, the filter pane is updated instantly to display only filters that are applied to the selected data container. You can edit or delete the filter directly in the pane.

You can resize the filter pane, and pin or unpin the pane depending on the screen resolution. Report authors can also make an authored filter visible to report consumers so that they can interact with it in this pane.

The pane cannot be used to create or view low-level filter expressions that are manually created in the expression editor. By default, interactive filtering is disabled for filters that were created in earlier versions of Cognos Analytics.

Note: Low-level filters, such as ones defined in the expression editor, cannot be changed in the viewer.

This feature is not available for active reports.

Parameters pane

Click parameters object icon to view, create, and manage parameters that are used in the report.

On the Default values tab, create or view parameters and define default values for them.

On the All parameters tab, view all available parameters, including global parameters. Using the links in the Set by column, you can easily navigate to the objects that use the specific parameter.

Properties pane

The properties pane lists the properties that you can set for an object in a report or for the entire report. The properties that are displayed vary depending on the type of object. When you specify a value for a property, press Enter, click another property, or save the report to ensure that the value is saved. Click the properties icon show properties icon to show or hide the properties pane.

Starting with Cognos Analytics 12.0.4, search functionality is available in the properties pane. To locate the property, type a keyword in the search box in the Properties panel. The properties that match the search term are highlighted, and the search box displays the number of search results. Using the up and down arrows (or pressing Shift+Enter and Enter) in the search box, you can navigate through the search results. To cancel the search, click the x icon (or press the Esc key) in the search box.

At the report level, you can set the following properties:

Burst options: Specifies the data item on which to burst reports. Specify recipients.
Run with full interactivity: Enable users to change the report
Theme: Apply local and global styles from another report
Language: Specifies the language package
Name: Name of the report, specified when you save it
Report styles: Specifies the product classes used to format objects. You can select between ReportNet, 8.x, 10.x, 11.x, and simplified styles.
Page break for interactive HTML: For reports with multiple data containers, specifies whether to render the default number of rows of each data container on each page.
View pages as tabs: In HTML output, specifies whether to show each report page in its own tab, and the location where the tabs appear in the browser.
Paginate saved HTML output: Specifies whether to create multiple pages or one scrollable page
Use 1.x CSV export: For Cognos ReportNet, specifies whether to create CSV report output.
Group repeating cells - export to Excel: Group repeating cells - export to Excel
PDF page setup: Sets PDF page options
Conditional layouts: Add layouts to a report based on conditions
Data formats: Specifies the default data format properties for each type of data
Package-based drill-through source: Enable or disable the report to be used as the source during a package drill-through. This property can also be set in the Basic tab of the Advanced drill behavior property.
Dynamic filtering: When the report is a drill-through target, specifies whether to apply more filtering when names from the context in the source report match names of items in the target report. This property can also be set in the Basic tab of the Advanced drill behavior property.

For other types of objects, like containers, you can set conditional styles, queries, pagination, margins, color and background, font and text, and many other properties.

Visual aids

Visual aids include the following options to help you when you are designing reports in the layout. You can enable and disable visual aids by accessing the Visual aids menu item from the More icon in the toolbar. You must be in Page design or Page preview mode.

Option	Description
Show Boundary Lines	Shows all boundary lines around objects
Show Repeating	Repeats objects when you insert them. For example, when you insert a data item in a crosstab, the data item appears in each row or in each column of the crosstab.
Show Page Header & Footer	Shows the page header and page footer
Show Drag & Drop Padding	Shows drag-and-drop zone when the Padding property for an object is set to 0. If the Padding property is set to a value that is greater than the minimum padding that IBM Cognos Analytics - Reporting uses to show drag-and-drop zones, only the minimum padding is shown.
Show Hidden Objects	Shows objects for which the Box Type property was set to None or for which the Visible property was set to No.
Show Sorting	Shows the sorting icon for data items for which a sort order was specified. For more information about sorting data, see Sorting Relational Data or Sorting Dimensional Data.
Show Grouping	Shows the grouping icon for grouped data items
Show Source Type	Shows the icon for the source type of objects, such as layout calculation
Show Data Item Type	Shows the icon for the type of data item, such as query item, member, or measure
Show Drill-through Definitions	Shows data items for which the drill-through definition was defined as a hyperlink
Show Table of Contents Entries	Shows table of contents entries inserted in the report
Show Bookmarks	Shows bookmarks inserted in the report
Show Master Detail Relationships	Shows master detail relationships defined in the report Tip: Pausing the pointer over the master detail relationship icon shows the relationship
Show No Data Contents Tab Control	Shows tabs if the data container's No Data Contents property is set to Yes
Show Repeater and Singleton Containers	Shows repeater and singleton containers inserted in the report
Show Deck Controls	Show the deck controls for active reports. For more information, see Adding Controls to a Report and Master detail relationships.
Show Container Selectors	Shows a small selector (three orange dots) for the following container objects: list, crosstab, repeater table, table of contents, table, and active report application objects. You can click to select all the objects within a container.
Show Empty Text	Shows empty text item objects that were inserted in the report
Show Insertion Icons	Shows the Add circular menu

Page layers area

When you are working with dimensional data, use the page layers area to create sections, or page breaks, in a report to show values for each member on a separate page. For example, you can drag Northern Europe sales territory from the Sources tab sources icon to the Page layers area. The report is broken into a separate page for each territory within northern Europe. Each page's context appears in the report header.

For more information, see Create page layers.

Context filter area

When you work with dimensional data, use the Context filter area to filter your report to show values, or context, for only a specific data item. This technique is also known as a slicer filter. For example, you can drag Sales Territory from the Source tab to the Context filter area. When you click a specific territory from the list, the values in the crosstab change to represent data for that territory.

For more information, see Create a context filter.