Contextual Analysis Reports

In my previous post, I've explained the technique for interactive measure reports. The user could change the measure displayed in the chart and crosstab simply by a click on the radio button list. Below this list a drill through link "Go to Analysis Report" was displayed.

Actually, the reporting solution for this customer consisted of several dashboard reports, one for each type of manager. Each dashboard shows up to 6 charts (one per KPI). Clicking on a chart runs a KPI report like you've seen in the prevous post, containing the button list of measures as well as the "Go to Analysis Report" link. Clicking on this link runs a commonly defined Analysis Report.

Features of the Contextual Analysis Report


The Analysis Report:

• is a generic Report Studio type report called from every specific KPI-report
• receives the specific KPI value as a parameter value
• was developed to deliver basic analysis capabilities to the manager, licensed for not more than the Consumer role
• displayes a crosstab specified by the user
• features limited row and column selection options, including filtering
• offers only the dimensions and measures relevant to the passed KPI, thus being "Contextual"

This report enables the manager (a Cognos Consumer user) to perform some analysis on his business performance without having to use Analysis Studio. This not only reduces the TCO (because no Business Analyst license is needed), but it also relieves the burden of having to learn another user interface with more functionality than strictly needed.

In this project, 30 KPI's were developed. All of these were included in the Measure Dimension Matrix. Each KPI related to one group of measures (resulting in about 120 measures including regular and calculated measures). However, not each measure group relates to a dimension. So it was a rather mixed matrix with moderate scarcity (i.e. empty cells). (Besides that, not all related measures were bound to the same lowest level of any dimension. This is however neatly resolved by scoping the dimension levels in Cognos Transformer.)

The Analysis Report looks like this. It's an example of KPI01 having 6 dimensions related to it. Mind that the total Multi Dimensional Model (MDM) consists of 25 dimensions and 30 KPI's. Using render variables each KPI-parameter is evaluated and the relevant prompt is shown or hidden. Note also that so many dimensions and measures in the model will make this a heavy report, as it will contain a lot of code!

So the report opens up with the prompt page offering prompts for selection of:

• a primary and secondary dimension to be displayed in the outer and inner rows of the crosstab (only the dimensions related to the KPI!)
• a measure within the group of measures the specific KPI represents
• a period of time to be displayed in the columns of the crosstab
• additional filtering (optional) of items of the related dimensions

When the user finishes the prompt pages, the report runs resulting in a crosstab. The prompts are shown in the top half of the report page itself for immediate adaption by the user (Auto-submit).

Toggling of Tree Prompts

Aside from the contextual features of this report, a technique has been applied to toggle display of the optional prompts.

The optional filter prompts in both the prompt page and the report page are Tree Prompt objects. They appear as soon as the user clicks a dimension. Here, some HTML Items containing JavaScript code, <a> and <div> tags are used to toggle display of the prompts.

These items are:

1. at the start of the page, an HTML Item containing the code:

 <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

  function toggleDiv(divId) {

    var theDiv = document.getElementById(divId);

    if (theDiv != null) {

      var divStyle = theDiv.style;

      divStyle.display = (divStyle.display == "none" ? "block" : "none");

    }

  }

</script>

2. before the dimension filter link, an HTML Item containing the code:

<a class="togglePrompt" href="javascript:toggleDiv('prompt_Product');">

3. after the link and before the tree prompt, two HTML Items containing the code:

</a>

<div id="prompt_Product" style="display:none;">

4. after the tree prompt, an HTML Item containing the code:

</div>

It looks like this for each dimension filter:

Well, I hope this may be of any use to you. In case of any questions or so, please drop a comment below and I'll follow up.

Interactive measure reports

Last year one of my customers would like to have a Cognos BI report having an in-report prompt on the measure to be shown in a combination chart in HTML-format. Something like this:

The chart currently shows the number of Worked Hours, a measure that is selected in the radio button list on the left hand of the chart. When the user clicks another measure, the chart directly shows that measure, without further prompting.

In this post I will show how this has been developed. 

Some notes first:

• This report is created in Cognos 8v4 BI, using Report Studio.
• The data source is a PowerCube, so some dimensional authoring is done in the report (using MUN's et cetera). This not relevant though, because I think the technique should also work with relational authoring.

Create a value prompt

First, create a Value Prompt object from the toolbox, and set it to:

• Required: "Yes"
• Multi-Select: "No"
• UI: "Radio button group"
• Auto-Submit: "Yes" (important, otherwise the report will not automatically be rerun):

In the Static Choices property of the Value Prompt object, enter the values to use (i.e. the measure MUN's) and to display in the radio button group:

In the Default Selections property of the Value Prompt object, enter the value to use when the report is run for the first time, so no prompt page appears:

So now the prompt object is finished.

Create a query item to refer to the prompt value

Next, the query used by the Chart object needs to contain an item that dynamically refers to the selected prompt value. Let's call this query item Q_Measure:

This item is defined in the query as a Data Item object, having these properties:

The Expression property contains the # prompt() # macro. This will read the value of parameter P_Measure (as defined in the Value Prompt object), and applies this value an item (the so-called 'token'). In this case, the specified MUN value is used to display the according cube measure in the chart.

In general, this is a very powerful function you could use in many cases to create powerful reports. You are however limited to strings in the expression provided entirely by the macro function, because the macro function cannot be combined with other non-macro functions. See the Report Studio Professional Authoring User Guide for more information on macros and expressions.

Oh, and did you wonder what the link "Go to Analysis Report" was about in the report example above? Check out one of my next posts to come, about Contextual Analysis...