IBM Cognos Dashboard integrates reporting, modeling, analysis, stories, and event management so you can understand your organization’s data, and make effective business decisions. With IBM Cognos Dashboard you can explore your data and easily communicate the analysis and insights that you discover.

Dashboard objects created in Real-time Monitoring Dashboard are shared with the IBM Cognos Workspace. When you change a dashboard object in Real-time Monitoring Dashboard, the change appears in the IBM Cognos Workspace. This flexibility, combined with the single sign-on between Real-time Monitoring and IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, allows you to work in both environments easily and seamlessly.

Procedure

• On the home page, tap the New icon at the bottom of the window.
• Tap Dashboard.
• You see predefined templates that contain the grid lines for easy arrangement and alignment of visualizations and other elements in a dashboard. Select the template with the four panes and then tap OK.
• Let’s add a data asset to this dashboard so that we can explore the data.
  1. In the Data panel, select the Add a source icon.
  2. Go to My content folder and select IBM_HR_Training_2014-17.csv. Select Add.
  3. Expand the data asset to see what’s available.
• Now let’s explore the data by adding a visualization to the dashboard.
  1. Drag the Department to the top left pane and drop it on the square that appears in the pane.
  2. Drag the External hires to the canvas and drop it on the Department list. Under the column visualization, you see that the Sales departments hire the most external people followed by the Finance departments.
• Let’s change the visualization type.
  1. Tap any white space in the column visualization. A toolbar appears.
  2. Select the Change visualization icon in the toolbar.
  3. Tap the Packed bubble icon.
• Now let’s add a second visualization, using a different way to create a visualization.
  1. Tap the Visualizations icon in the side panel.
  2. Select the Tree map icon. An empty tree map is created with empty data slots on the side, indicating where you need to add data.
  3. Tap the Data icon.
  4. Drag Organization to the Area hierarchy data slot.
  5. Drag the Course cost to the Size data slot.
  6. Close the visualization. You can also close the Data panel if more room for the visualizations is needed.
• Now let’s hide the legend to have more room for the tree map.
  1. Select the tree map visualization.
  2. Tap the Properties icon.
  3. Clear the Display legend check box. Take a look at the visualization. The size of each box in the tree map tells you the amount of training spent by each organization.
• You have two more panes where you can create more visualizations or add the widgets such as text or shapes.
• Let’s add a filter to see the impact of the duration of the courses on the visualizations.
  1. Tap the Data icon.
  2. Drag the Course days to the This tab filter area.
  3. To define the filter, Select Course days in the filter area.
  4. Move the slider to show the courses with a shorter duration, or type a new end point. We have picked 14.5 as the end point but feel free to select a different one. Tap OK.
• Another way to filter the data is to select one or more data points in a visualization and see the impact on the other visualizations. Tap Finance in the packed bubble visualization. Take a look at the tree map visualization. It does not include the Department column so it is filtered by the Finance department.
• Save the dashboard, then use the switcher in the app bar to close it.

Dashboard Formatting

You can customize a dashboard, story, or the visualization by changing its visual properties.

• Working with the legend
• Changing colors
• Changing the axis
• Improving the visibility of labels
• Adding labels in the visualization
• Changing the label orientation
• Connecting data points with smooth lines
• Using a different symbol
• Changing the size or color of bubbles
• Changing the orientation of a word cloud
• Showing or hiding grid lines
• Working with objects

You can enhance the dashboards that you created. Here are a few ideas:

• Use text widgets to annotate the dashboard with descriptions.
• Provide more info by adding the media and the links to web pages.
• Format the dashboard, such as changing the colors or the theme.
• Add images and shapes to add visual appeal.
• Create a story in your dashboard. A story consists of the visualizations and an over-time narrative.
• Build sophisticated, multi-page, multi-query reports against multiple databases.
• Use the data modeling to access and shape data from data servers or uploaded files.
• Schedule activities.
• Manage content and manage the account.

Locus IT can help you to plan and design a solution using proven tools that meet your specific needs and streamlining operations. We provide services like IBM Cognos Dashboard training, IBM Cognos Dashboard migration and support and IBM Cognos Dashboard customization. For more details please contact us.