Native custom controls in the toolbox

Custom controls can now be added directly to the Insertable objects toolbox. This can be done by creating and uploading an extension for the custom control.

The extension is created by a developer, and includes the following details:

  • The location in the toolbox where the control appears.
  • The name, tooltip (description), and icon.
  • The JavaScript Module path property.
  • The design mode JavaScript module.

To upload the extension, in Manage > Customization > Extensions, click Upload extension Upload an extension, and select the extension.

When you open the reporting user interface, the custom control is available on the Toolbox tab, in the group that the developer assigned it to.

To support this functionality, a sample extension named Native_Custom_Control_Popup and a sample report named Native custom control popup are provided with Cognos® Analytics 12.0.3. The sample extension adds a custom control named Popup to Toolbox > LAYOUT, as shown in the following image:

Sample custom control

And the following image shows how the Popup custom control is used in the Native Custom Control Popup sample report.

Sample report with custom control Popup

For more information, see Sample support for native custom controls.

New JavaScript API documentation Native Custom Controls (https://ibm.biz/NativeCCDocs) was created to support this functionality.

Note: In previous versions of Cognos Analytics, to implement custom controls, you needed to add JavaScript to a report, as documented in the topic Adding JavaScript to a report. This functionality is still valid.