Cognos Report Studio - Report Exercise

Report Excercise – Report Studio

Report Studio Report

Excercise

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence

Report Studio

Page 1 of 59 document.docxxSunGard Public Sector- Proprietary Information


Table of Contents

Introduction................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Product Position......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Lab Scenario................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Launch IBM Cognos.................................................................................................................................................. 4

Start Report Studio................................................................................................................................................... 4

Select a Package......................................................................................................................................5

Financial Statements displayed in “Recently used packages”..............................................................5

Financial Statements NOT displayed in Recently used packages.........................................................5

Build the Report......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Quick look at the interface......................................................................................................................8

Add Data Items to the Report..................................................................................................................9

Drag and Drop Data Items.................................................................................................................10

Formatting.............................................................................................................................................14

Grouping............................................................................................................................................14

Calculated Field.................................................................................................................................17

Filters & Prompt Pages......................................................................................................................23

Adding Charts....................................................................................................................................39

Finishing Touches................................................................................................................................................... 51

Run the Report..................................................................................................................................53

Next Steps................................................................................................................................................................... 56



IntroductionThis Test Drive document is intended to demonstrate basic capabilities available within IBM Cognos Report Studio. Report Studio is a Web-based report authoring tool that professional report authors and developers use to build sophisticated, multi-page, multiple-query reports against multiple databases. With Report Studio you can create any reports that your organization requires.

Product PositionReport Studio is designed to allow you to design reports that:

are intended for a wide audience exist long enough to require maintenance for changing requirements require detailed control over the appearance

Lab ScenarioThe accounting group has come to you with a request for a report. They would like the following data presented on a report in tabular and chart format:

Year General Ledger Code General Ledger Description Period Debit Credit Net Amount

They would also like to see a single year, or multiple years’ worth of data.Also, they would like two charts at the top of the report page as follows:

1. Year/Period against Debit/Credit2. Year/General Ledger Code against Debit/Credit



Launch IBM CognosWe need to login to IBM Cognos in order to access Report Studio. Double-Click on the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence shortcut on the desktop

Or

1. Open Internet Explorer (IE)2. Click the link in the Favorites bar called IBM Cognos Business Intelligence

Start Report StudioWe are now logged into IBM Cognos. In the upper right click on Launch, to open a pull-down menu, then click Report Studio.



Select a PackageYou are presented with a Question, “Select a package (Navigate). This is where we decide what data to use in our report.

For this lab we will choose the Financial Statements Package. It may show in the “Recently used packages” window, or, we may need to navigate to it in the “List of all packages”.

Financial Statements displayed in “Recently used packages”If you see Financial Statements in the list of “Recently used packages”, click on it. That will bring you into Report Studio.

Financial Statements NOT displayed in Recently used packagesIf you do not see Financial Statements in the list of “Recently used packages”:

Look at the List of all packages section Click on ONESolution Finance Packages

Click on Financials



Click on Financial Statements



Build the Report

At this point you should see this screen, click Create new.

Select List and click OK.



Quick look at the interfaceLet’s familiarize ourselves with the Report Studio interface. It will be helpful to know where a few things are.

The following is a close up of the Package, Financial Statements, selected in the previous step when we started Report Studio. The Red arrow is pointing to the package name, while the blue arrow is indicating that items will be “dragged and dropped” into the report.

The toolbar may look somewhat familiar to you if you’ve used Word, or Excel.



It has familiar icons such as Save, Undo, Copy, Paste and Delete, and some new ones like Filter and

Group . Hovering over them will show you their function. We won’t go into every option in this Lab, but will touch on several. These toolbar items are not specific to Report Studio, and you will see them in other studios.

Add Data Items to the ReportOn the left, expand Transaction Detail by clicking on the “+”, if you hover over it, it will display a pop-up (see screen shot below).

It may take a moment to expand, in which case you will see this.

When complete you will see a list of data items you can add to the Report.



Drag and Drop Data ItemsFrom Transaction Detail we are going to drag and drop the Year, Period, Debit and Credit data items onto our report.

Click on Year, drag and drop it onto the List in our report.

The result should look like this.





Repeat the process for Period, Debit and Credit. You can CTRL-Click multiple data items to add them at the same time. CTRL-Click Period, Debit and Credit, then drag them onto the report. Drag them to the right of Year; drop them when the bars appear to the right of Year, as in this screen shot.

Note: Insure the bars to the right of Year look like the above picture, if they do not you will get a message about

creating a Singleton, or, single data item. If that happens, use the undo button on the toolbar and try again.

The result will look like this.



We will add two more fields, General Ledger Code and General Ledger Description. They are both in the General Ledger Information Query Subject. Click on the ‘-’ next to Transaction Detail to collapse it.

Now expand General Ledger Information by clicking on the ‘+’ next to it.

Drag General Ledger Code and General Ledger Description into the report; however, we want to place them between the Year and Period columns. Highlight the two fields by CTRL-Clicking the two of them, Code first, and then Description, it should look like this.

Now, drag them into the report, when the flashing bar is displayed like this, drop the fields.



The results will look like this. If it doesn’t, you can always hit the Undo button on the toolbar and try again.

If you would like to see what the results look like, press the Run button on the toolbar. A new IE window will open and display the report. Close that window when you are done.



FormattingNow that we have the basic data in our Report it is time to format it. We are going to do some Grouping, Summarizing, Filtering and other basic formatting tasks.

GroupingWe will group several columns to make the report easier to view. For this exercise we are going to group several fields at once using the CTRL-Click option, however, you can also group one field at a time.

CTRL-Click the Year, Period, General Ledger Code, General Ledger Description and Period columns then click on the Group icon in the toolbar.

Your results should look like this.



The next step is to summarize the Debit and Credit columns. CTRL-Click on the Debit and Credit column headers, click the summarize icon and select Total.




As you can see, both General Ledger Code and General Ledger Description have summary totals. We want to remove the General Ledger Description summary total, as it is a duplicate. Click on the blue General Ledger Description then press the delete key to remove that summary row.






Calculated FieldOne of the requests for this report was to provide “Net Amount”, or Debit - Credit. The package we chose did not include this calculation, so we will need to create it ourselves. A Calculated Field allows us the flexibility to do anything from basic arithmetic to highly complex calculations. For example, the total rows we added above are actually calculated fields that Cognos generated for us. There are several ways to add a calculated field in Report Studio; this is just one of them.

Move the mouse over the Query Explorer found in the middle of the page, and hover. The Query Explorer dialog will fly out and the Query Explorer dialog box will display. Click on the query Query1.




Click on the Toolbox icon at the bottom of the source dialog.

Click and drag the Data Item icon into the query (Data Items area).

The Data Item Expression dialog will be displayed. Click on the Data Items tab.



Click and drag Debit from the Available Components to the Expression Definition.

Results.

Type ‘– ‘ without the quotes and then click and drag Credit from the Available Components to the Expression Definition. Click OK.



We will rename the new data item from Data Item1 (Cognos generated this for us) to Net Amount, to give it a more meaningful name. If it is not already highlighted, highlight Data Item1 in Data Items and replace the text Data Item1 with Net Amount. It will update in Data Items when you click off the Name field. This action directly affects the column that will be displayed in the list we are creating. Instead of seeing a column called “Data Item 1”, we will see a column called “Net Amount”.

To add Net Amount to the report hover the mouse over Page Explorer and select Page1 from the fly-out menu.



In the source dialog, click the Data Items Tab.

Click and drag Net Amount from Data Items to the list, after Credit.



The results should look like this.

If you would like to see a Total for Net Amount, repeat the process we used, above to add a Total. You will need to remove the General Ledger Description duplicate row, as Cognos will automatically generate it again.



Filters & Prompt Pages Now that we have some basic grouping, and our calculated field, we’ll turn our attention to the results. We were asked by the accounting group to provide the ability to display one, several, or all the years and General Ledger Codes of data contained in the database. To do this we will create a prompt page that will give the user the flexibility to select the year(s) to be included in the results, and based on the year(s) selected, display a list of valid General Ledger Codes to choose from.

First we need to create filters on the query supplying data to our report, and then we will turn them into prompts.

Hover over Query Explorer and select Query1.

Before you add the filters, rename the query to Report Query. This is done in the Properties dialog in the lower left of the screen.



In the Source dialog click the Toolbox Tab .

Click and drag a Filter from the Toolbox to the Detail Filters section.



The Detail Filter Expression dialog will appear. Click the Data Items Tab .

Click and drag Year to the Expression Definition.



Now enter the following text after [Year]: in ?Year? and click OK.

Drag another Filter into Detail Filters, and then drag General Ledger Code into the Expression Definition. Update the Expression Definition so that it looks like this, and then click OK.

If you were to run the report now, Cognos would automatically generate a prompt page for the two filters we just created. However, we would not have any control over how they are formatted, and they would not interact, or cascade. In order to put some formatting around the filters/prompts, and create the cascade effect, we will create our own prompts on our own prompt page.

Hover over Page Explorer and select Prompt Pages.



Click and drag a Page from the Toolbox (on the left) to the Prompt Pages area.

Double click Prompt Page1 to edit the page.

Your screen should now look like this.

Click and drag Table from the Toolbox to the page.Page 29 of 59 document.docxxSunGard Public Sector- Proprietary Information


The following dialog will appear, change the number of columns to 3, number of rows to 2, uncheck Maximize width, and then click OK.

We will create an instructional label for each prompt being created. This explains to users running the report how to answer the prompts, and what information is being asked for.

From the Toolbox, click and drag a Text Item into the first box in the first row of the table you just added.



In the Text Item dialog, enter: Select Year(s).

Repeat the last two steps, clicking and dragging a Text Item to the third box in the first row and enter: Select Ledger(s).

Now scroll down the Toolbox and click and drag Value Prompt to the first box in the second row of the table.



The following the dialog will appear. Select Use existing parameter and select Year from the pull-down menu. You will note that when we created a filter for Year, we typed =?Year? in the filter dialog. We are referencing that parameter we created in this step. Click Next.

Rename the query from the default, Query1, to YearQuery. Click Finish.



Click on the value prompt you just added and change Multi-Select to Yes and Select UI to Check box group in the Properties dialog found in the lower left.

In the Properties dialog, click the ellipsis icon for Sorting.



Click and drag Year from Data Items to Sort List and click the sort icon at the bottom to change the sort order to descending. You will notice the arrow will change to a down arrow next to Year in the Sort List. Click OK.

Click and drag a value prompt into the third cell in the second row of the table, under the “Select Ledger(s)” text on the prompt page. Select Use existing parameter and pick GLPrompt. Click Next.



In the query Name field, enter GLQuery. In the Cascading source field, select Year. Click Finish.

The Cascading Source field filters the results of this prompt based on the value(s) selected in the first prompt, this insures that any selection we make in this prompt is valid, and will yield results. If we did not make this a cascading prompt we could select a Year – GL Code combination that would return no data.

Hover over Query Explorer and select GLQuery.



Expand General Ledger Information and drag – and – drop General Ledger Description into Data Items.

Hover over Page Explorer and select Prompt Page1.

Click the General Ledger value prompt and make the following adjustments in the Properties dialog.

In the Properties dialog, click the ellipsis icon associated with sorting (see screen shot above).



Click and drag General Code Description from Data Items to Sort List. Click OK.

Click the Toolbox icon in the Source dialog.

Click and drag a Prompt Button from the Toolbox to the middle cell on the second row of the table.



Click on the button you just added, in the Properties adjust the Type to Reprompt.

Click and drag a Text Item from the Toolbox onto the button. Drop it on top of the button, in the Text dialog box that pops up enter the text: Show Ledgers. Click OK.




Let’s finish the prompt page by making a few minor adjustments.

We will give the prompt page a title. Double-click on the text at the top of the page and enter Account Listing Prompt Page in the dialog. Click OK when finished.



CTRL-Click the first and third cells in the first row on the table and click the Center icon on

the toolbar and then the bold icon on the toolbar. Your prompt page should look like this.



Adding ChartsWe’ve done a lot of hard work to create this report, now it’s time to give it some flash by adding charts.

Before we do this, however, we want to be able to take advantage of the improved charting capabilities available in Cognos 10.1.1.

Turn off Legacy ChartingAt the top of the browser, click on Tools, in the drop-down menu click on Options.



On the pop-up dialog box click on the Advanced Tab, then un-check Use legacy chart authoring (checked by default).

Click on OK when done.

Begin building Charts Before you add the charts, you want to create a place to display them. Hover over Page

Explorer and select Page1.

If you are not already on the Toolbox, click the Toolbox icon in the Source dialog.



Click and drag Table from the Toolbox to the report, to the left of the list. Make sure you get the solid black bar and not the one with a white outline.

When the table dialog appears, set the columns and rows to 2 and uncheck Maximize width.

CTRL-Click the bottom two cells and click the Merge Cells icon on the toolbar. The result should look like this.

Click the 3 red dots on the top left corner of the list (in the Year header). This will select the entire table.



Now click and drag the list into the bottom cell of the table above the list.




Click and drag a Chart from the Toolbox into the top left table cell, you will be presented with the following dialog; select Clustered Column with 3D effects and click OK.

Click on the chart and in the Properties dialog; change the Query from Query1 to Report Query.



Click on the Data Item icon below the Toolbox items.

CTRL-Click Debit, Credit and Net Amount from the Report Query and drag them into the Series box on the chart.

Click and drag Year from the Report Query into the Categories (x-axis) box.

Click and drag General Ledger Code from the Report Query into the Categories (x-axis) box below Year. This is a tricky move. Make sure you get the black bar surrounded in white like shown below. If you miss, you will either get an error, or the chart won’t appear correctly.






There is one last thing to consider. If we were to use any part of this report in Business Insight, to create a dashboard, we should give the chart a name (it defaults to Combination Chart 1, with the number incrementing automatically for each chart added to the report). If we give it a proper name, it is easier for us to find in Business Insight.

Click on the chart, highlighting it, in the properties box in the lower left, scroll all the way to the bottom.

Overtype the Name field, currently Combination Chart1, with Amounts by Year and GL Code.



If you do the Business Insight lab, later, you will see how this simple change makes it easier to identify the proper chart to pull into the dashboard.

Now let’s add the second chart.

Click the Toolbox icon and then click and drag a Chart to the right table cell. On the Insert Chart dialog, select Clustered Bar with 3D effects. Click OK.



Click on the bar chart and in the Properties dialog; change the Query from Query1 to Report Query.

Click on the Data Item icon below the Toolbox items.

CTRL-Click Total(Debit) and Total(Credit) from the Report Query and drag them into the Series box on the chart.

Click and drag Year from the Report Query into the Categories (y-axis) box.



The chart should look like this.

We need to rename the name of the chart, as we did previously, to help us in Business Insight.

Click on the chart, highlighting it, in the properties box in the lower left, scroll all the way to the bottom.



Overtype the Name field, currently Combination Chart2, with Total Amounts by Year.



Finishing TouchesNow that you have created a report and prompt page, there are just a few things you need to finish up the report.

We will start by adding a title to the report. Double-click on the ‘Double-click to edit text’ at the top of the report and enter Account Listing in the dialog box and click OK.

Next CTRL-Click in each row of the table. You must click on the left side in the narrow area between the chart/list and the beginning of the table. Do not click the 3 red dots in the top left corner.



In the Properties dialog, click the ellipsis icon for Padding.

In the dialog that comes up, enter 5 into each entry field.

Click in the cell that the list is in (click to the right of the list).



Click the Center Icon on the toolbar. This will center the list under the two graphs.



Run the Report

It is time to run the report to see what it looks like. Click the Run icon on the toolbar. You should see a prompt page, like shown in this screen shot.



You will notice the Select Ledger(s) list is not populated and several of the buttons at the bottom of the page are deactivated. Because these fields are required for entry, the buttons are disabled until all selections are made.

Select the Years 2012-2006 then press the Show Ledgers button. This will populate the Ledgers list.

Click the Select all link below the Ledgers list and then click the button at the bottom of the page.



Your report should look like this.

Note: at the bottom left there may be paging controls. You can page up, down, go to the top or bottom of the report.

The lab is now complete, exit by clicking on . If prompted, do not save your work.



Next StepsYou have now completed the Report Studio Test Drive Lab. Other Test Drive lab exercises such as Business Insight, Cafe and Analysis Studio, will show you how those studios can be useful to your organization. We encourage you to complete those labs, as time permits.


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Cognos Report Studio - Report Exercise

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