IBM recently announced the availability of the latest release of Cognos Analytics, release 11.0.11(R11). It has been less than 8 weeks since the last release, which was R10, so this is a small release in terms of content, but it addresses some of the key functionalities that Cognos users have been asking us for related to Portal Page support, Custom Polygons and Dashboard Caching.

Release Highlights – R11

Portal Pages – Now displayed within the glass

Custom Polygons – Ability to define your own regions for use with Maps in reports and dashboards

Improved Dashboard performance – Option to allow data to be cached at the dashboard level

Allow BI 10.x portal security option – Previously done via system.xml in Cognos Connection in C10.x

Here are more details on each of these highlights in the new release:

Mapbox hosted custom polygons in reports and dashboards – ability to add custom shapes to geographic locations in your dashboards and reports with support for Custom polygons in Mapbox.

• Create custom polygons using Mapbox Studio, a free web-based tool
• Upload polygon definitions (GeoJSON) or define your own regions for use with Maps in reports and dashboards
• Use them in reports & dashboards – reference the custom polygons via properties of the visualization
• Polygon will load at rendering time with the Mapbox map

Portal pages in Cognos Analytics – At last, you can access all the portal pages you created in Cognos BI (10.x) within the Cognos Analytics experience. This was an important Request for Enhancement (RFE) that was raised by the Cognos community.

• Each Portal Tab will have a shortcut in My Portal Pages folder
• Located on the side panel for easy access
• Portal Page will open and render in the Glass in a new perspective
• Portal Page should run and behave just like C10.2.x
• No new authoring capability introduced – intended for migration of existing content

Better Dashboard performance with support for caching – the ability to control data caching at the overall dashboard level

Reduce risk of un-authorized modification of Report details – Enables a BI Administrator to override the default visibility settings for objects. This was another popular RFE.

Upgrading Cognos Analytics releases installs on top of your current release and therefore preserves your settings and configuration.

Contact NewIntelligence today to get help migrating to the latest release of Cognos Analytics.

Stay tuned for news on Cognos Analytics R12!