Wednesday is “hump day” and I have a great tip to help you get over the hump of using analytics.

Tip 3) Get started with IBM Cognos Analytics in 30 seconds with out-of-the-box workspace widgets. Customers often tell me they want to get started with Cognos Analytics, but they don’t know how or think it’s complex. It’s actually fairly simple to at least get started and you don’t have to build custom reports or insights. In a matter of seconds, by dragging and dropping out-of-the-box widgets, you can find the key insights you need immediately.

Here’s how: Under Analyze, click on the Dashboard tab where you can select from 10+ built-in widgets. Drag and drop the one you want to work with into the Personal Workspace. Select what you want to monitor, and the widget auto-populates with the appropriate insights. You can then build a graph, table or chart to display the results.

For example, you might be interested in monitoring server performance [Figure 2] to look for opportunities to optimize file transfer activity, so you need a baseline of trends and flows over the past week or month. You can select the “Volume by Time Period” widget and then select the data sets you want to pull from and the widget self-populates. Now you have the data you need and can present it the format you would like. The widgets are designed so that both technical and business users can start getting the insights they need in seconds.

If you missed it, Tip 1 explained how to easily avoid query overload and empower users with “Monitor this.”  Tip 2 covered how to set-up direct, permissioned access for business users. Check out the blog tomorrow for Tip 4.

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