IBM Cognos Report Studio

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.2

IBM Cognos Report Studio is a Web-based report authoring tool that professional report
authors and developers use to build sophisticated, multiple-page, multiple-query reports against
multiple databases. With Report Studio, you can create any reports that your organization
requires, such as invoices, statements, and weekly sales and inventory reports.
Use Report Studio for reports that

are intended for a wide audience

exist long enough to require maintenance for changing requirements and data

require detailed control over the appearance

Your reports can contain any number of report objects, such as charts, crosstabs, and lists, as
well as non-BI components such as images, logos, and live embedded applications that you can
link to other information.

IBM Cognos Report Studio

Workshop Objectives
In this workshop, you will explore some of the new Report Studio 10.2.2 features including:

An enhanced user interface for selecting colors

Tabbed reports in HTML output

Reusing styles from one report in another report

Data-driven worksheet names in Excel output

Getting Started
1.

On the welcome screen, click

2.

In the List of all packages, navigate to Samples > Models and click the Go Sales (query)
package.

3.

Click the

4.

In the New window, select the List template, then click the OK button.

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button.

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Next steps
Create a report and style it using the new color interface
1.

In the Source pane on the left of the screen, expand Sales (query) > Products

2.

Double-click Product line to add it to the List object.

3.

Double-click Product type to add it as well.

4.

Right-click on Product and click Insert to add it to the list.

5.

Expand Sales in the Source pane, then click and drag Revenue to the right side of the
Product column in the list, adding it as a fourth column.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

6.

Hover the mouse cursor over the Page Explorer bar in the middle of the screen to open it,
then click the Classes folder.

7.

In the Global Class Extensions pane, scroll down to locate the List column title cell entry
and click on it.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

8.

In the Properties pane in the bottom left, scroll down to the Color & Background section,
then double-click the Background Color property.

9.

In the Background Color window, click the Custom Color tab.

10. Note that the interface has been enhanced to allow for selecting a color from a graphical
interface in addition to manually entering color values. A report author can also click the
Set as favorite link to store the selected color in the Favorites at the top of the window,
allowing for quick access to commonly used custom colors.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

11. Select a color of your choice using the new interface, then click the OK button to apply it to
the column headers.

Create a tabbed report

1.

Hover the mouse cusor over the Page Explorer bar in the middle of the interface to bring
up the Page Explorer window, then click the Report Pages folder.

2.

Click and drag the Page object from the Toolbox pane on the left side to the Report Pages
pane on the right side.

3.

Double-click the newly-created Page2 page to open it.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

4.

In the Toolbox pane on the left-side, click the Chart object and drag it to the page

5.

In the Insert Chart window, select the Fill with data from: option in the Query section,
then click the OK button in the bottom right.

6.

Click the File menu, then click Report Properties...

7.

In the Report Properties window, change the View pages as tabs setting to Top left.

8.

Click the OK button.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

9.

Click the Run menu at the top of the window, then click Run report HTML

10. The report runs in a new IBM Cognos Viewer window. Click on the Page2 tab in the top-left
to see the second page you created with a Chart object.

11. At the top of the screen, click on the X in the IBM Cognos Viewer tab to close the tab.

12. In the bottom-left of the screen, click the Firefox icon in the taskbar, then click the New* IBM Cognos Report Studio entry to bring the Report Studio window back up.

13. Click the File menu in the top-left, then click Save.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

14. In the Save As window, type in Tabbed Report for the name, then click the Save button in
the bottom right

Reuse a style from an existing report

1.

Click the File menu in the top-left, then click New...

2.

Select the List template, then click OK.

3.

In the Source pane on the left side, double-click Revenue to add it to the list.

4.

Click the Tools menu at the top of the screen, then click Style references...

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

5.

In the Report Style References window, enable the Apply style from report option, then
click the ellipses to choose the report.

6.

In the Open window, click the Tabbed Report report object to select it, then click the Open
button in the bottom right.

7.

Note that it may take several seconds for the styles to be picked up. When the styles are
finished being read, the Preview pane updates to show the new column title color, and the
OK button is enabled.

8.

Click the OK button and observe that the report title now shows the same color for the List
Column Title objects as the referenced report.

Review the data-driven tab names in Excel

1.

Click the File menu in the top-left, then click Open...

2.

In the warning popup about unsaved changes, click the No button.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

3.

Select the Region Metrics report, then click the Open button.

4.

This report has been authored with a page break based on Sales Region. When executed,
it generates one page for each region and displays the metrics for each city in that region.
In previous versions of Cognos 10, when executing a report like this to Excel, the worksheet
names in the report output would be based on the name of the Page object in Report Studio
and would not reflect the data value which the worksheet corresponds to.

5.

Click the Run menu at the top of the screen, then click Run report Excel 2007.

6.

When prompted by the browser to open or save the report output file, choose the Open
option, then click the OK button.

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IBM Cognos Report Studio

7.

Excel launches and displays the report output. Note that the tabs along the bottom showing
the worksheet names display the sales region value which corresponds to the data on that
worksheet.

Note that this feature is not enabled by default in 10.2.2. Your Cognos BI administrator will
need to use an advanced setting to enable this behavior. In our lab environment the setting has
been preconfigured. You will be able to find steps to enable this feature in the New Features
sections of the Report Studio User Guide and the Business Intelligence Administration and
Security Guide in the 10.2.2 documentation.

Time to log off

Click the X in the top-right of the Excel window, the Report Studio window, and the Welcome
to IBM Cognos Software window to close them out. Click the X in the top-right of this
document window to close the workshop and return to the Smarter Support Hands-on Products
Lab home screen.

You have completed this workshop.

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