Cognos Analytics

Hi Will,

One option is restricting some Features for a selected User Role/Group ( Query Studio Users).

@Will Phillips

We created a template to help users transition from QS to ReportStudio.  

We added a template to the standard set of Report Studio templates. When users create a new report the "simple list"  template give them a starting point close to what they would get when starting up QS.

The Simple List Query Studio template creates a report that looks like :

The report has

• a list already in place ready for them to drag and drop data items onto, just like the default QS view,
• A header and footer already on the page
• a place holder title for them to just double click to type a title into
• query filter text as a sub title, so that any filters they add to the list will appear in the title - just like QS did.
• Page number and date time in the footer
• Basic standard formatting applied

This gives QS users a much better experience than just getting a blank page as they would with a report,

@Marc Reed

• query filter text as a sub title, so that any filters they add to the list will appear in the title - just like QS did.

What are you using to show Filters? Is it a dynamic expression or just a static text?

Thank you!

@Andrei Istomine

There is an option for "Insert Filter Text". See screenshot.

This gives you a text object you can put anywhere in your report. I have put it in the header.

This is dynamic if using the basic filter functionality. In its default state against a data module report it is pretty ugly:

But if you edit the data item to remove the path:

It looks a lot nicer:

I have flagged up this bug to IBM.

I always recommend that anyone who write reports against data modules removes the path from any expression for two reasons:

1. It makes the filter text understandable to the user
2. I can repoint the report to a different data module that has the same queries and it still works

I found this feature out when using creating a report against a data module that has standalone calculations. When you add these calculations to a report it doesn't include the path in the expression so I have no idea why the report editor sometimes includes the path to make things worse.

Add more filters and the filter text expands. It also works in the interactive viewer.

It will only explain filters that are added using the filter interface. If you add a filter directly to the query you may see something like this:

But its good enough for 90% of my ex QS users.

@Marc Reed

Nice feature. It seems working better with an FM package - it does not include the path.

Though, disabled Filters are shown as they are applied

I think how you add this to the canvas means that most people don't know about this bit of functionality. I wonder if anyone else can think of any other report object you can add to the canvas that isn't actually in the toolbox.

@Andrei Istomine Get that logged as a bug. I have logged a few against this functionality but not that one.

I forgot to mention yesterday that there are very few properties of filter text:

So if you want to format it you need to place it in a container, such as a block, and format the container.

Hi @Marc Reed and @Andrei Istomine, 

If you add a name to the property label of the data element, that is filtered by the ODTB, the ID/path will be replaced by it in the output. 

Another thing I found is that these filters are detail filters and if you like to filter aggregated measures, then you need to use a derived query such that the detail level of this query will be the aggregation of the base query.