Listed below are new features since the last release. Links to directly-related topics are included.
Administrative tasks are now located in one central management interface named Cognos Administration. The new interface will help you make quicker, more informed decisions, and simplify the overall management of the Cognos environment.
You can access supplementary documentation from More Documentation on the Help menu of Cognos Connection. This new link opens a dynamic Cognos Documentation page that contains one or more readme files and additional guides, depending on the products you have installed and the language in which you installed them.
A more granular approach to securing administrative functions is now available. Administrators can be granted some administrative permissions, but not others. For example, an administrator can have access to tasks associated with managing data sources, but not to the tasks associated with maintaining the security namespaces.
For more information, see Securing Functions and Features.
You can view metrics related to different servers, dispatchers, and services. The metrics provide you with insight into the status of the environment.
For more information, see System Performance Metrics.
You can get a snapshot of the status of all servers, server groups, dispatchers, and services in the Cognos topology. All system metrics are found on the System tab in Cognos Administration. When you see statistics in their proper context, you can make better decisions regarding performance, scheduling, and capacity planning.
For more information, see System Performance Metrics.
Cognos Administration provides specific views and tools to identify the report, job, or application currently in the queue or being processed. These views also reveal who is running the item, regardless of whether it is a background or interactive task. You can better understand what is happening in your environment and take action to resolve issues. For example, you can cancel a job for a user.
For more information, see
An administrator can specify the level of deployment details logged to the content store. By default, the deployment history will contain only summarized information. This will save memory space, improve performance, and require less maintenance. For more information, see Deploying Selected Public Folders and Directory Content.
You can learn the current status of a deployment by viewing periodic
updates in the Monitor Service.
You can set a priority, from 1 to 5, on a schedule. Setting a priority ensures that if two reports are waiting in the queue to be run, the report with the higher priority is run first. You can override and reset the priority on any schedule.
For more information, see Manage Entry Run Priority.
You can now disable interactive features in addition to drill-up, drill-down, and package drill report options. Administrators can control access to all interactive features, including drill-up and drill-down, package drill, authored drill, Go! Search, and notifications.
This feature gives you more control of interactive activities. Hiding these functions may reduce the need for user training in large deployments.
The new capabilities are exposed as run options in Cognos
Connection .
Sample audit reports have been added for metric threshold exceptions, agents, failed reports, and presentation service.
For more information, see Setting up Logging.
You can now publish packages from Framework Manager into any folder in Cognos Connection. In previous versions, packages could be published and maintained only in the single root folder. These packages can also be moved from the root folder to any folder in Cognos Connection. In Framework Manager, any target folder can be used for publishing.
For more information, see Models and Packages.
Report Studio now accommodates two distinct types of report authors:
This user can access the Report Studio Professional authoring mode and the Express authoring mode.
This user can access the Report Studio Express authoring mode for financial report authoring to create and maintain statement style reports. Financial authoring requires many, but not all, of the features that exist in Report Studio and interaction with live data.
In Cognos Administration, you can restrict users to have access to only the Express authoring mode in Report Studio. For more information, see Set Access to the Report Studio User Interface Profiles.
Server administration is enhanced with new capabilities. You can now:
set PDF file character encoding, font embedding, and compression types and levels
set the maximum execution time
limit hotspots that are generated in an Analysis Studio or Report Studio chart
set watch list output retention time
Settings for the maximum number of processes and connections has been improved. For some services, you can now set the maximum number of processes and the maximum number of high affinity and low affinity connections that the dispatcher can open to handle requests. For other services, you can set the maximum number of connections.
For more information, see Server Administration.
Transformer is now fully integrated into Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. This includes the ability to leverage Cognos 8 metadata, support for cube building on Cognos 8 platforms, and integration with Cognos 8 security.
For more information, see the Transformer User Guide.
A new utility is available that can be used to update PowerCubes in a way that best suits your production environment. You can now enable or disable data sources, and stop or start the report and batch services to update PowerCubes. You can also change the data source properties of a PowerCube, which does not require stopping or starting the batch services.
For more information, see the Transformer User Guide.
You can now manage Cognos 8 activities from My Activities and Schedules in Cognos Connection.
You can view a list of your activities that are current, past, upcoming on a specific day, or scheduled. You can filter the list so that only the entries that you want appear. A bar chart shows you an overview of activities.
You can set run priority for entries. You can also view the run history for entries, specify how long to keep run histories, and rerun failed entries.
For more information, see Activities Management
Use the My Watch Items area of
the portal to view and manage alerts for new report versions and
rules that you have set for conditional report delivery . The My Watch
Items functionality enables end users to monitor and
manage business information that is critical to them from a single
location.
As a report owner, you must allow report users to receive alerts and create watch rules for the reports. For information about how to enable these features for reports, see Enable Watch Rules for a Report.
By enabling an alert on a report, you can now be notified when a new version is available. Whenever a report is run and saved due to a scheduled or manual run, all subscribers receive an email that a new version is available.
Subscriptions are saved to the Alerts tab
of My Watch Items and can be maintained from that location.
For information about how to subscribe to a report, see Add Yourself to or Remove Yourself from an Alert List for a Report.
A new watch rule action is available in Cognos Viewer. You can use watch rules to control when users are notified about the availability of new report versions. When a report is run and saved, a user-defined threshold condition is checked. If this condition satisfies a user's criteria, the report can be e-mailed.
To create a watch rule , a saved report must be viewable in HTML
format. You can select the data to be monitored and enter the threshold
condition that will trigger the delivery of the report. Watch rules
are saved to the Rules tab of My
Watch Items , and can be maintained from that location.
This feature lets users maintain their own report distribution preferences and avoid information overload.
Drilling through is now more powerful and flexible.
You can pass multiple items, such as products or countries, to a
target report . You can now use this feature regardless
of the type of drill-through path that was created. Drilling through
is automatically enabled when you select multiple values.
In previous versions, passing multiple values was available only within drill-through paths created in Cognos Connection.
When there is only one target report available, you can now go directly to the target report when you click the drill-through link in Cognos Viewer. If there are multiple target reports available, you see the Go To page. This behavior is automatic and works the same way whether the drill-through is defined in Report Studio or in a drill-through definition in Cognos Connection.
For more information, see Drill Through to Another Target.
Cognos 8 supports Microsoft Excel 2007 native spreadsheets as a report format, in addition to the existing Microsoft Excel HTML formats. The Microsoft Excel 2007 XML format, also known as XLSX, provides a fast way to deliver native Excel spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel XP, Microsoft Excel 2003, and Microsoft Excel 2007.
The use of a native Microsoft Excel format means that the spreadsheets are smaller and more usable. Because the new Office Open XML format is a recognized industry standard supported by ECMA International, the new format provides the added benefit of an open, documented integration format that extends an open systems solution.
The new format appears in the run report user interface. Users of Microsoft Excel XP and Microsoft Excel 2003 must install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, which provides file open and save capabilities for the new format.
For more information about Excel format support, see Excel Formats.
You can now export report results directly to a server file system using Cognos Connection. You decide which formats to export, and select from a predefined set of directory locations. This feature makes it easy to integrate Cognos content into other external applications.
Cognos 8 does not keep a record of the exported reports, but does prevent and resolve name conflicts that arise when the same file is saved multiple times to the same directory. You are responsible for managing the reports after export. An XML descriptor file with the same file name prefix is created, which can be used by an external application to locate and manage the exported reports.
The export options appear as run options for a report, provided you were granted access to this feature. For more information, see Save Report Output.
You can resubmit a failed job or report . For example, you
discover that 20 reports in a job containing 1,000 reports fail
due to an invalid signon. The problem is corrected and the job is resubmitted
so that only the 20 failed reports are rerun.
In previous versions, if you submitted a report and it failed, the run options associated with the report were lost. Now the report can be resubmitted without having to reset the run options.
Failed reports, jobs, and agent tasks can be resubmitted from the run history, accessed from the Past activities page of Cognos Administration, or accessed from the Actions page of the item.
Failed agent tasks can now be resubmitted with their
original data values . In previous versions, if a task failed,
the data passed to the task was lost. Rerunning the agent may not
solve this problem if the task is set to process new events only.
You can now choose a default action to use when an agent
item is selected in Cognos Connection, rather than automatically
opening the agent in Event Studio . The new choices are:
show the most recent event list
run the agent
open the agent in Event Studio
The default action is defined on the Agent tab of the item properties in Cognos Connection.
You can now create pages with multiple tabs that are easy to navigate. The new type of pages is also referred to as dashboards. Dashboards are created by using a new portlet named Multi-page. For more information, Create a Dashboard with Multiple Tabs.
You can select the dashboard context in the portal with one or more global filters. A global filter may be a prompt, a drill-up or drill-down action, or a report that is based on drill-through content. For example, you can add a prompt control to a portal page to automatically pass the selection to all reports on the page. When a prompt answer is changed, all related reports will refresh accordingly. So, if you answer a country prompt with Brazil, all related reports on the page will be filtered to show the data for Brazil.
When these techniques are used on a tabbed dashboard, the context is passed to all corresponding sections of the dashboard. This functionality allows for a single selection to drive a number of reports at once.
For more information, see Adding Interactivity to Pages and Dashboards.
A Cognos Connection page or a dashboard can now display more types of Metric Studio metrics and a history chart. This new content can be added by using the following new portlets:
Metric List
Use to add a watchlist, an accountability list, a scorecard metric list, or a strategy metric list to the page.
Metric History Chart
Use add a graphical chart that illustrates the historical performance of a metric to the page.
For more information, see Pages and Dashboards.
SharePoint Portal 2003 and 2007 is now supported in Cognos 8. You can use this portal with the Cognos Navigator, Cognos Search, Cognos Viewer, Metric List, Metric History Chart, and Cognos Extended Applications portlets.
For more information, see Deploying Cognos Portlets to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and 2007.
