With the Cognos Analytics (CA) 11.1.5 release came also the option to include "Schematics" with your reports (dashboards will follow soon) - look at it as images with data points...
In order to use Schematics / non-geo mapping with CA, it’s necessary to find/create SVG files and tag them with the “data-cv-key” tag before using them with CA. It's a very easy process and it doesn't require any coding!
Example: Create a US Cartogram
Search for US Cartograms – here is an example of various formats: http://bl.ocks.org/veltman/c7bfb3d4a3817f7ee0bf2dd19ff058c1
Copy the last SVG – the WSJ example out in a notepad and save the file as WSJ.SVG
The file currently only consists of the boundaries of the 50 individual states:
For CA to connect any data to the states, we would need the “data-cv-key” tag for each state. This can be done either in a text editor:
Or by opening the SVG file in an image editor like Inkscape (http://inkscape.org)
Steps:
- Open the SVG file in Inkscape
- Bring up the XML Editor, if not already visible – CTRL+SHIFT+X
- Select each node/state in the panel
- Add “data-cv-key” as attribute and state abbreviation as value – click set
- Repeat for each 50 state
- Save the SVG file
Within Reporting in CA:
- Add the “Schematic Preview” object into the report
- Switch report to “Page preview” so it will ask for a file
- Select the SVG file and it will display the US map in black (since we have no values yet)
- Using a data source with the format:
We can now add “Abbreviation” to Locations and one of the measures to Location Color.
In order to make this map available to other users with CA, you would need to create a Schematics package.
- Click the pencil in the lower right corner of the Schematics Preview object.
- On the Package tab you can change the name of the packages (which can contain a single map or several maps like different layouts of the US Map). You can also add a description and an icon.
- On the Content tab you can add 1 or multiple “maps” and change the Key and Caption for each.
- When the package is done, you can download it via the download icon on the Schematics Preview object – this will download a zip file which you can upload as a CA Schematics package either via Manage-Customization-Custom Visuals or via the “Visualization” object in Reporting – upper right corner have a “Add a custom visual” button.
If you created all 5 different maps from the example, you can upload all 5 SVG files to the same package and thereby switch between the 5 views in the same report
#datavisualization
#authoring#classicviewer#CognosAnalyticswithWatson#Customvis#home#LearnCognosAnalytics#visualizations