Cognos Analytics

I set up an action drop down that allowed users to select different reporting periods and that would apply that filter to all objects in my dashboard.Its basically a flag with Y/N outcome so I would use the actions to set this to Y or clear depending on which period was selected. This worked just fine in 11.2.0 but in 11.2.4 the options you can apply have changed. The issue is that I can no longer use actions to set a local filter in a chart. This is completely ignored now. In the dashboards that were set up before we moved to 11.2.4 the action to set the periods still works but we just cant edit or create new one's in the same way using this method. The requirement I have is to have some sort of button / control that allows people to click on different periods i.e. LTM, YTD, Last Quarter etc. and for the objects to update accordingly. Ideally I'd like to create a button based control using images so I have more control about the look and feel. I managed to get this to work using year, quarter, month etc. so when you click on a date level it updates my time based charts. Looking for guidance on how to achieve something similar to set reporting periods. Would appreciate any insights on how to achieve this. Many thanks in advance.

Hi Eric, 

I don't get what you mean with actions, I assume from some kind of extension? 

Just some ideas for out-of-the-box: 

You can use the prompt-macro in the data module or dashboard but that's not so nice to control in the dashboard. 

Another approach is to union the data on each aggregation level, add a column/calculation the identifies the aggregation level and implement a click-visualization with a widget-connection to your real visualizations (that actually filters the selected aggregation level). 

Further, if you have assistance on database level, you can use the advanced properties of the database schema in the data module to switch tables with different date aggregation levels (e.g. in combination with one of the approaches above). 

Best regards, 

Philipp 

I set up an action drop down that allowed users to select different reporting periods and that would apply that filter to all objects in my dashboard.Its basically a flag with Y/N outcome so I would use the actions to set this to Y or clear depending on which period was selected. This worked just fine in 11.2.0 but in 11.2.4 the options you can apply have changed. The issue is that I can no longer use actions to set a local filter in a chart. This is completely ignored now. In the dashboards that were set up before we moved to 11.2.4 the action to set the periods still works but we just cant edit or create new one's in the same way using this method. The requirement I have is to have some sort of button / control that allows people to click on different periods i.e. LTM, YTD, Last Quarter etc. and for the objects to update accordingly. Ideally I'd like to create a button based control using images so I have more control about the look and feel. I managed to get this to work using year, quarter, month etc. so when you click on a date level it updates my time based charts. Looking for guidance on how to achieve something similar to set reporting periods. Would appreciate any insights on how to achieve this. Many thanks in advance.

Hi Eric, 

I don't get what you mean with actions, I assume from some kind of extension? 

Just some ideas for out-of-the-box: 

You can use the prompt-macro in the data module or dashboard but that's not so nice to control in the dashboard. 

Another approach is to union the data on each aggregation level, add a column/calculation the identifies the aggregation level and implement a click-visualization with a widget-connection to your real visualizations (that actually filters the selected aggregation level). 

Further, if you have assistance on database level, you can use the advanced properties of the database schema in the data module to switch tables with different date aggregation levels (e.g. in combination with one of the approaches above). 

Best regards, 

Philipp 

I set up an action drop down that allowed users to select different reporting periods and that would apply that filter to all objects in my dashboard.Its basically a flag with Y/N outcome so I would use the actions to set this to Y or clear depending on which period was selected. This worked just fine in 11.2.0 but in 11.2.4 the options you can apply have changed. The issue is that I can no longer use actions to set a local filter in a chart. This is completely ignored now. In the dashboards that were set up before we moved to 11.2.4 the action to set the periods still works but we just cant edit or create new one's in the same way using this method. The requirement I have is to have some sort of button / control that allows people to click on different periods i.e. LTM, YTD, Last Quarter etc. and for the objects to update accordingly. Ideally I'd like to create a button based control using images so I have more control about the look and feel. I managed to get this to work using year, quarter, month etc. so when you click on a date level it updates my time based charts. Looking for guidance on how to achieve something similar to set reporting periods. Would appreciate any insights on how to achieve this. Many thanks in advance.