Building Interactive Reports with TCR 3.1

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1 Building Interactive Reports with TCR 3.1 Dan Krissell, March 8, 2013 Today we will look at a new feature in TCR v.next to build interactive reports. If you have Cognos 10, then you already have this feature, called Active Reports. Active Reports are self-contained reports, with built-in interactivity. All the data and images are built into the output, and no coding is required. Users can interact with the report while disconnected because all interactions take place on the local client browser. Because Active Reports are completely self-contained, they fit a certain use case. For example, you would not want to add one hundred thousand rows of data, or add ten thousand charts in a single Active Report, because the resulting file will be too large. Internet Explorer will read the output.mht file natively. For Firefox, you will need a multipart html plug-in. You can read more about Active Reports here: 01.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/business-intelligence/active-report.html Objective Today we'll build a simple active report. For a deep dive into all aspects of building Active Reports, have a look at this cookbook: 1

2 We'll start with a standard report built with Omnibus data and convert it to an Active report with interactive features to explore the data. Our standard report is simply a chart followed by details in a list: We will update the report to: 1. Filter the list to show only the server selected in the chart 2. Select the server in the chart when the corresponding server is selected in the list 3. Add client-side sorting on the list columns 4. Add a button to show all data in the list. This is useful after the list has been filtered. To get started, with the report open in Report Studio, click file->convert to active report. To be safe, now is a good time to save the report as a new name, just to be sure we don't overwrite the existing standard report. 2

3 Notice a few new icons next to each chart or list: The first icon shows the current interactive behavior (we don't have any yet). The second icon is used to create a new connection between controls in this report. We'll use this a little later. Client-side Sorting Since we plan on adding sorting to our list column, lets remove the current grouping. Otherwise it will sort only within the grouping. Since our Active Report will filter a selected server, the grouping is not needed anyway. Enable sorting by clicking on each 'list column body' and enable the sorting property: 3

4 If we run the report now, we'll see each of the columns are sortable: Filter the list by clicking the chart Next we'll connect the chart to the list in a way that will filter the server in the list to show only the server clicked in the chart. Tip: It's good to give controls (charts, lists, etc.) useful names since we'll be referencing them often with Active Reports. Click the icon next to the chart to create a new connection: 4

5 Next, the source will be the chart (1), the behavior will be to filter (2) the target, which is the list (3). When the chart is clicked it will set the node value clicked in the variable vnode (4). Note: the 'public' checkbox. This is to allow the controls to interact outside this report, for example in a Workspace. This will allow these variables to be passed to another Active Report, even in another package. But that is a whole other session. 5

6 If we run the report now, we can click on a system and the list will show only that system's details: 6

7 Reset the list Next we will add a button below the list that will reset the list to show all data again. We just need to drag a button into the report, and set the value of our variable to empty, thus removing the filter for the list that is already acting on this variable. Highlight a selected a server in the chart Lastly, we'll connect the list to the chart. The outcome will be when we click a server in the list, the corresponding server will be highlighted in the chart, making it easy to spot the trend relative to other servers. To add this interaction, create another connection: 7

8 Tip: Which ever control's icon you use to create the connection, that control will default to the source. The resulting behavior can be seen here: That's all there is to it. You've created an interactive report users can explore while offline. Conclusion The possible reports produced with Active Reporting are endless. You can basically build a complete application in the report output. Here is an overview of a more complex Active Report I built. It is a three page report on Linux system resource utilization. 8

9 The first page is the summary. When we click a system in one chart, the same system is highlighted in other charts to quickly correlate across charts: 9

10 On the comparison page, we can scroll through the system disk usage by either selecting a sever from the dropdown, clicking the iterator icons on the sides, or a swipe of the finger when on the Cognos Mobile ipad application: 10

11 On the details page, we can select a server from the dropdown, dynamically select columns to add to the list, and toggle highlighting for high or low values: Download sample report specifications, screenshots, and the resulting interactive report output: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/sw-library/cognos/mobile/all/index.html 11