Known issues for Cognos Dashboards

The following limitations and known issues apply to Cognos Dashboards.

• General
  • You cannot upgrade to Cognos Dashboards Version 4.0.9
• Data sources
  • Cognos dashboards can only use data connections created with username and password credentials
  • A Data Virtualization asset cannot be used without credentials and a Data Virtualization Administrator or Steward role

• CSV files

  • Non-English column names cannot end with underscore ( _ ) character
  • Unsupported special characters in CSV files
  • String values limited to 128 characters
  • Date format limitations
• Visualizations
  • Can't replace a data table in a visualization
• Publishing dashboards
  • Publishing a Cognos Dashboard with more than one image creates multiple attachments with the same image data
  • Asset preview of a Cognos Dashboard in a catalog initially shows the data in a table
• Unsupported functionality
  • Cognos Analytics features that are not supported

General

You cannot upgrade to Cognos Dashboards Version 4.0.9

If you are running a previous version of Cognos Dashboards on Cloud Pak for Data 4.0, you cannot upgrade to Cognos Dashboards Version 4.0.9. You must uninstall the service (do not uninstall the operator) and then install the Cognos Dashboards service at Version 4.0.9.

Data sources

Cognos dashboards can only use data connections created with username and password credentials

Cognos Dashboards requires that database connections and connected data assets added as data sources to a dashboard must include username and password credentials.

If these credentials are not specified in the connection and a token or API key is used instead, then Cognos Dashboards cannot use that connection or connected data asset as a data source.

A Data Virtualization asset cannot be used without credentials and a Data Virtualization Administrator or Steward role

To use Data Virtualization assets, the following two conditions must be met:

• You must add your Cloud Pak for Data credentials to the Data Virtualization connection that is added to your project. You must add your credentials in the username and password fields, not by selecting the Use your Cloud Pak for Data Credentials to authenticate to the data source checkbox on the Platform connections page. For more information, see Connecting to data sources.

• You must have either the Data Virtualization Administrator or Steward role in the Data Virtualization service. For more information, see Managing users and roles (Data Virtualization).

CSV files

Non-English column names cannot end with underscore ( _ ) character

Columns that use non-English names cannot end with the underscore ( ) character. If the non-English column name ends with an underscore ( ) character, an error message is displayed.

Unsupported special characters in CSV files

The source CSV file name can contain non-alphanumeric characters. However, the CSV file name can't contain the special characters / : & < . \ ". If the file name contains these characters, they are removed from the table name.

Important: Table column names in the source CSV file can't contain any of the unsupported special characters. Those characters can't be removed because the name in the data module must match the name of the column in the source file. In this case, remove the special characters in your column names to enable using your data in a dashboard.

String values limited to 128 characters

String values in a column in your source CSV file can be only 128 characters long. If your CSV file has string columns with values that are longer, an error message is displayed.

Date format limitations

There are date format limitations for CSV files used in visualizations. For details, see Resolving problems when using data from CSV files in Cognos Dashboard Embedded.

Visualizations

Can't replace a data table in a visualization

When you add a visualization to a dashboard, you cannot add a data table to the visualization if you previously added (and then removed) data fields from another data table. This restriction applies to Db2, CSV tables, and other data sources.

Publishing dashboards

Publishing a Cognos Dashboard with more than one image creates multiple attachments with the same image data

When you publish a Cognos dashboard to a catalog and choose to add more than one preview of the dashboard, all attachments in the catalog show the image added last. This issue occurs when you select multiple images at a time and drag them into the publish page and when you add files one at a time.

In addition, when you browse for files in the publishing step, you can select only one file. To add further images, you must drag them to the publish page.

Whenever you publish the same dashboard again, it will have the images from the previously published assets as well as the newly added images. For example, if you publish dashboard A with images 1, 2 and 3, it will have 3 screen captures of image 3. If you publish dashboard A again with images 4, 5, 6, it will have 5 screen captures, 3 with image 3 and 2 with image 6.

Asset preview of a Cognos Dashboard in a catalog initially shows the data in a table

In a catalog, when you go the the Asset tab of a dashboard to preview the asset, the data is shown in table format. When you switch tabs after applying the workaround, you'll have to re-apply the workaround to have the data properly displayed.

Workaround: Refresh the page at the browser level or within the preview table to have the dashboard displayed as expected.

Unsupported functionality

Cognos Analytics features that are not supported

The following functionality from IBM Cognos Analytics is not supported in dashboards:

• Data grouping
• Custom color palettes
• Custom visualizations
• Assistant
• Forecasting
• Insights in visualization
• Jupyter notebook visualization
• Advanced data analytics

Parent topic: IBM Watson Studio