The Cognos Analytics 11.1.5 release is packed with a lot of modeling enhancements! Both for our experienced modelers as well as the self-service business users. Let’s take a look:
Smarter Intent-based modelling
The size of the words reflects the confidence level which the Smarts engine determined on how much the user's data is related to the keyword. Hovering on a word should also tell you the confidence score as well as which source the key word is coming from.
This allows you to get a quick head start on creating your model as this would bring in the appropriate tables and as well will automatically join the tables.
Members in the metadata tree
Members are now shown in the data tree, everywhere. Including in reports, dashboards, explorations, stories and much more. Authors can now expand fields in their metadata tree to see individual values or members. This is available for both OLAP and Relational sources.
Within the tree, you can use "Search for members" to find members that you may be looking for. Once you see the member you are looking for, you can directly drag and drop it directly onto your canvas to create a new visualization or add it to an existing one. It saves you time from having to use the column first and then filter down to the value you want. Try it out and you can see how it makes authoring more time efficient for you!
Data Modelers can also control the default behavior at the data module level. Deciding if members should be shown vs a search link by default, what should be the default number of members to load, and as well, the behavior to load more members – if we load more (equal to the limit) vs Search.
Enhanced UI for viewing Custom tables
Data modules are very extensible and allow you to create complex views if you’d like. The functionality to join tables and create views existed in previous releases. It can get complex real quick and hence why we added an enhanced UI to view the custom tables you create. This is similar to the query flow diagram we are used to from Reporting.
The added Custom tables view gives us a visual breakdown of how the different views and tables were created and which components they are composed of. You can easily see the impacts of what could happen if you were to change a field or possibly remove a table.
Query Information (aka Show the SQL)
While you are modeling, it is very possible you might want to see the SQL to understand things. The query information feature allows a modeler to see the SQL behind a table/view without having to leave the modeling UI. It is also helpful to debug your model - joins, unions, views, etc by looking at how they convert into the SQL statements.
You can also copy this SQL if you wish to create your own tables using SQL.
Specify the default file upload location
We have heard of several admins wanting to change the default file upload location for several reasons. You can change it per role or for the whole system to streamline the location of files. Eg: all HR files go in the HR folder, all Finance files go in the Finance folder, etc. If you frequently build and share content on excel files, this would help change the default location to a folder in Team Content rather than the current default of My Content where only you have access. It allows for higher shareability of files.
The control for Default upload location is now available in role customizations.
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