I am trying to do a gradient color for the background on a COGNOS H360 report.  
I created a conditional format selecting the New Conditional Style for the Amount field in my list.
It showed a range from Highest to Lowest with a single option to set the style.
Clicked on the Pencil and then went to the Advanced Tab.
Under Background effects, checked the FILL option and then setup the 2 colors.
Green at 0 and Red at 100.
Clicked OK for each panel that was open.  Ran report. Background was still the value on the Basic tab.
As a test, set this to Yellow ran again and all were Yellow.

So, how do you get it to use the Advanced setting for the condition???

For the advanced background effects to be applied you normally have to set the size properties.

Here is an (awful) example of a gradient being applied to a list cell :

It only works if I set the size on the list column body Size &  Overflow property :  

This is because the server needs the size to create the graphic that is used to fill the cell.

The same is true for any of the advanced bacckground effects :