Create an exploration

Create explorations of IBM® Cognos® Analytics data to help you make more effective business decisions by exploring significant company data. To explore IBM Cognos Analytics data, select a package and choose items from that package to place in the rows and columns of the Microsoft Excel worksheet.

Before you begin

Before you can create an Exploration View or list view, the administrator must create a package and publish it to a location to which you have access.

The administrator must create a package in Framework Manager and publish it to a location in the IBM Cognos Connection portal to which you have access. For full access to IBM Planning Analytics for Microsoft Excel, you should be a member of the Express® Authors or Report Administrators role in IBM Cognos Analytics. An administrator must configure these privileges using IBM Cognos Administration.

Procedure

  1. Specify the package.
  2. Add data items to rows and columns.
  3. Add a measure.
  4. Optionally, nest and filter data. For more information, see Nest rows or columns and Creating custom filters.

Results

To format cells in your Exploration View or list view, you can use the IBM Cognos custom styles, such as Measure - IBM Cognos or Calculated Column - IBM Cognos, in addition to the pre-built Microsoft Excel styles.

You can access the IBM Cognos styles by clicking Home > Cell Styles. The IBM Cognos styles are listed along with the pre-built Excel styles. You can modify attributes, such as font and alignment, and then save the changes to a template for re-use.

In Microsoft Excel 2010, a background color that is set using the Format Cells command overrides the background color that is set for the cell styles.

To preserve formatting you applied to the exploration, from the IBM Planning Analytics tab, click the Use Server formats dropdown and select Use Excel formats. If you select Use Server formats, all custom formatting is removed.

Note: Worksheets containing an Exploration View can only contain the single Exploration View. Combining other report types in a worksheet containing an Exploration View is not supported.