Creating a report

When you create a report, you are actually creating a report specification. The report specification defines the queries and prompts that are used to retrieve data and the layouts and styles used to present the data. For simplicity, the report specification is named by the same name as the report.

This post will cover the basics of creating, validating, and running IBM Cognos Analytics Reports. For additional tips and tricks on IBM Cognos Analytics report writing or to inquire about report studio training or custom reports for your company please contact us.

IBM Cognos Analytics Help

The Basics

On the home/portal page click the new icon and then select "Report."
Now you will be on the "templates and themes" window.
Select the template tab and select a template.
Click the themes tab and select a theme.

Now its time to add your data

Click the Data icon .
Click the Add report data icon .
Open the packages that you want, or open a single data module.
If you opened multiple packages, to specify a package as the default package, right-click an item in the package and select Set default package.
To delete a package, right-click an item in the package and select Delete package.
To replace a package by another package, right-click an item in the package and select Replace package. If queries exist that use the package that you are replacing, model paths in the queries are updated to the new package.

Pro Tip - Inserting a single data item

You can insert a single data item anywhere in your report using the singleton object.
The singleton object retrieves only the first-row value for that query.
Inserting a single data item is useful when you want to show a value that is independent of the rest of the values in the report or when you want to insert some boilerplate text, such as a company name and address.
Example - you can add the total revenue value in the header of each page in a report.

Report Validation

Click the Pages icon or the Queries icon , right-click the Report icon , and click Validate Report .
A message box appears indicating whether any errors were found in the report.