Thursday, March 11, 2010

Missing Features in Cognos

I wanted to maintain a list of good-to-have features in Cognos that are currently missing:

  • Prompts - Tool tips for Prompt values, Data Items.
  • Prompts - Default Selections in Prompts to be set to a data item rather than hard-coded values thus eliminating the need for Java Scripts to implement dynamic default selections.
  • Chart - set width in % doesn't work. Not setting width makes the chart look ugly when there are less data points.
  • Chart - unable to set Min and Max property to dynamic values.
  • Chart - Unable to set data format for labels in some cases.
  • FM - Using Parameter Maps to dynamically select schemas and not run into meta data callback issues.
  • Reports - Ability to specify if burst reports with Master - Detail Relationships be run as 2 queries (one for Master and One for Detail) or have detail run for each master record.
  • Reports - Include Burst Key in Subject Line of Email 
  • Chart - setting values dynamically for color boundaries of the gauge palette, besides Max and Min. [User Contribution]
  • Chart - better excel-like label options(for example, being able to show both % and absolute values for a pie slice (near the slice itself), or show a label (i.e. sales $ for region) on top of a column of a stacked chart which depicts a different (but linked) measure (i.e. % contribution to total) [User Contribution]

I will keep updating this list with items as and when I face issues. Your comments and updates are most welcome. There is no great purpose as such to maintaining this list. But probably it can serve as a good starting point for those wanting to verify the feasibility of certain functionality in Cognos.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to add:
- Chart - setting values dynamically for color boundaries of the gauge palette, besides Max and Min.
- Chart - better excel-like label options(for example, being able to show both % and absolute values for a pie slice (near the slice itself), or show a label (i.e. sales $ for region) on top of a column of a stacked chart which depicts a different (but linked) measure (i.e. % contribution to total)

Zephyr said...

Thanks for the updates. I have updated the articles with your comments. Most appreciated.