Interested in hearing your experiences using the Cognos AI Assistant. What version of Cognos are you on? How do you use the Assistant? Is it helpful and how is the response time?

We are currently experimenting with Cognos 11.2.4. We have clients on multiple versions of Cognos and will be testing with version 12 soon. We have very large Framework Manager packages that can have 100+ sql tables and probably 60,000 total columns. What we are experiencing now (when it works) is a large lag from when you start typing in the Assistant's prompt to when the initial analysis is complete. You might type "What is the Average Balance" and only "Wh" will show and then after many seconds the entire prompt will display with the Assistant's generated possible prompts - which really seem to be mostly table columns that start with WH. The lag is awful. Is this due to the number of columns? Is there a way to turn off the active analysis and have it wait until you click on the right arrow to start the analysis?

Interested in hearing your experiences using the Cognos AI Assistant. What version of Cognos are you on? How do you use the Assistant? Is it helpful and how is the response time?

We are currently experimenting with Cognos 11.2.4. We have clients on multiple versions of Cognos and will be testing with version 12 soon. We have very large Framework Manager packages that can have 100+ sql tables and probably 60,000 total columns. What we are experiencing now (when it works) is a large lag from when you start typing in the Assistant's prompt to when the initial analysis is complete. You might type "What is the Average Balance" and only "Wh" will show and then after many seconds the entire prompt will display with the Assistant's generated possible prompts - which really seem to be mostly table columns that start with WH. The lag is awful. Is this due to the number of columns? Is there a way to turn off the active analysis and have it wait until you click on the right arrow to start the analysis?

------------------------------
brenda grossnickle
BI Programmer Analyst
FIS
------------------------------

We're operating on v11.2.3 and we've abandoned both the AI Assistant and the Exploration tools.   We could not get either one to work consistently - and barely even predictably.

We have a complex SQL database modeled in Framework Manager with a few dozen tables.   We wanted to use Assistant/Exploration over our existing legacy database.

Going into our demonstration project, I suspected we would have problems with (at least in AI Assistant) the fact that many of our data items all across our database have similar names.  Even when I was careful to type an exact data item name so as to (hopefully) mitigate Assistant's confusion, it still rendered visualizations with the wrong data items almost every time.

In at least v11.2.3, Assistant supports a poorly designed "synonyms" function.  I tried to define less complicated, more unique synonyms for each of the data items which had names which looked redundant.  That helped a little.  The problem there is that we have a commercial application sitting on top of Cognos which we resell but with a standard database schema.  So, it would be reasonable to want to provide the same set of synonyms to our clients.  V11.2.3 doesn't support that option - no way to share the significant work that we intended to do to mitigate Assistant's data item confusions.  We also couldn't leave it up to our clients to manually rebuild the same set of synonyms because v11.2.3 doesn't have any corrective features - you fat-finger the spelling of a synonym or the associated actual data item name and you are stuck with it.  Simply not practical.

I also found the interactive editing that occurs when I typed just about any Assistant request to be burdensome.  It slowed me down significantly, and it too often made mistakes in its predictions of where I was going.  

Our results of testing Exploration where repeatedly just as dismal.

I will say that when I first tried both Assistant and Exploration on a small sized database - exact same schema as our commercial product just with a few test records in each table - results were different and very encouraging.  Months later, place v11.2.3 on top of a production system - again, same database schema but with hundreds of thousands or more records - the two tools seem to actually behave differently. I'm not talking about response time, I mean the application's results were materially different...and, not different in a better way.

As I've said, we've given up on both of those tools and won't look back unless we learn that some of these specific issues are resolved.

------------------------------
Ferd Halamuda

Original Message:
Sent: Mon June 30, 2025 03:22 PM
From: brenda grossnickle
Subject: Your experiences with Cognos Analytics AI Assistant

Interested in hearing your experiences using the Cognos AI Assistant. What version of Cognos are you on? How do you use the Assistant? Is it helpful and how is the response time?

We are currently experimenting with Cognos 11.2.4. We have clients on multiple versions of Cognos and will be testing with version 12 soon. We have very large Framework Manager packages that can have 100+ sql tables and probably 60,000 total columns. What we are experiencing now (when it works) is a large lag from when you start typing in the Assistant's prompt to when the initial analysis is complete. You might type "What is the Average Balance" and only "Wh" will show and then after many seconds the entire prompt will display with the Assistant's generated possible prompts - which really seem to be mostly table columns that start with WH. The lag is awful. Is this due to the number of columns? Is there a way to turn off the active analysis and have it wait until you click on the right arrow to start the analysis?

------------------------------
brenda grossnickle
BI Programmer Analyst
FIS
------------------------------

Based on my experience with Cognos 11.2.4 and also with version 12.0.4 in testing, the Assistant and Exploration features only work with modeled datasets (flat tables). We tested DMR and dimensional models, but they did not work either.

Best regards

Thomas

We're operating on v11.2.3 and we've abandoned both the AI Assistant and the Exploration tools.   We could not get either one to work consistently - and barely even predictably.

We have a complex SQL database modeled in Framework Manager with a few dozen tables.   We wanted to use Assistant/Exploration over our existing legacy database.

Going into our demonstration project, I suspected we would have problems with (at least in AI Assistant) the fact that many of our data items all across our database have similar names.  Even when I was careful to type an exact data item name so as to (hopefully) mitigate Assistant's confusion, it still rendered visualizations with the wrong data items almost every time.

In at least v11.2.3, Assistant supports a poorly designed "synonyms" function.  I tried to define less complicated, more unique synonyms for each of the data items which had names which looked redundant.  That helped a little.  The problem there is that we have a commercial application sitting on top of Cognos which we resell but with a standard database schema.  So, it would be reasonable to want to provide the same set of synonyms to our clients.  V11.2.3 doesn't support that option - no way to share the significant work that we intended to do to mitigate Assistant's data item confusions.  We also couldn't leave it up to our clients to manually rebuild the same set of synonyms because v11.2.3 doesn't have any corrective features - you fat-finger the spelling of a synonym or the associated actual data item name and you are stuck with it.  Simply not practical.

I also found the interactive editing that occurs when I typed just about any Assistant request to be burdensome.  It slowed me down significantly, and it too often made mistakes in its predictions of where I was going.  

Our results of testing Exploration where repeatedly just as dismal.

I will say that when I first tried both Assistant and Exploration on a small sized database - exact same schema as our commercial product just with a few test records in each table - results were different and very encouraging.  Months later, place v11.2.3 on top of a production system - again, same database schema but with hundreds of thousands or more records - the two tools seem to actually behave differently. I'm not talking about response time, I mean the application's results were materially different...and, not different in a better way.

As I've said, we've given up on both of those tools and won't look back unless we learn that some of these specific issues are resolved.

------------------------------
Ferd Halamuda

Original Message:
Sent: Mon June 30, 2025 03:22 PM
From: brenda grossnickle
Subject: Your experiences with Cognos Analytics AI Assistant

Interested in hearing your experiences using the Cognos AI Assistant. What version of Cognos are you on? How do you use the Assistant? Is it helpful and how is the response time?

We are currently experimenting with Cognos 11.2.4. We have clients on multiple versions of Cognos and will be testing with version 12 soon. We have very large Framework Manager packages that can have 100+ sql tables and probably 60,000 total columns. What we are experiencing now (when it works) is a large lag from when you start typing in the Assistant's prompt to when the initial analysis is complete. You might type "What is the Average Balance" and only "Wh" will show and then after many seconds the entire prompt will display with the Assistant's generated possible prompts - which really seem to be mostly table columns that start with WH. The lag is awful. Is this due to the number of columns? Is there a way to turn off the active analysis and have it wait until you click on the right arrow to start the analysis?

------------------------------
brenda grossnickle
BI Programmer Analyst
FIS
------------------------------

Interested in hearing your experiences using the Cognos AI Assistant. What version of Cognos are you on? How do you use the Assistant? Is it helpful and how is the response time?

We are currently experimenting with Cognos 11.2.4. We have clients on multiple versions of Cognos and will be testing with version 12 soon. We have very large Framework Manager packages that can have 100+ sql tables and probably 60,000 total columns. What we are experiencing now (when it works) is a large lag from when you start typing in the Assistant's prompt to when the initial analysis is complete. You might type "What is the Average Balance" and only "Wh" will show and then after many seconds the entire prompt will display with the Assistant's generated possible prompts - which really seem to be mostly table columns that start with WH. The lag is awful. Is this due to the number of columns? Is there a way to turn off the active analysis and have it wait until you click on the right arrow to start the analysis?