lab center – hands-on lab 5667...discovery and analysis immediately as soon as he uploads this...

Lab Center – Hands-on Lab

Session: 5667

Session Title: Fast-Track Your Data Discovery:

Introduction to Modern Self-Service Business

Intelligence

Julie Antry, Client Success, IBM Analytics ( [email protected] )

Matt Denham, Global Enablement Leader, IBM Analytics ( [email protected] )

IBM Software

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: GETTING STARTED ................................................................................................................................. 5

INTRODUCTION TO COGNOS ANALYTICS ........................................................................................................ 5

OBJECTIVES: .............................................................................................................................................. 5

GETTING STARTED WITH IBM COGNOS ANALYTICS ........................................................................................ 6

WORKSHOP 1 DATA DISCOVERY WITH DASHBOARDS ................................................................................................ 7

1.1 UPLOADING EXTERNAL DATA FILES ................................................................................................ 8

1.2 WORKING WITH TEMPLATES ......................................................................................................... 10

1.3 ASSEMBLING A DASHBOARD......................................................................................................... 11

1.4 ADDING CALCULATIONS ............................................................................................................... 14

1.5 PINNING CONTENT FOR REUSE .................................................................................................... 17

1.6 USING SMART SEARCH TO FIND DATA FOR ANALYSIS ..................................................................... 19

1.7 USING THE DATA TRAY TO VIEW DATA VALUES ............................................................................... 21

1.8 SELF-SERVICE DATA DISCOVERY ................................................................................................. 22

1.9 USING SORTING AND TOP/BOTTOM ANALYSIS ............................................................................... 26

1.10 NESTING MULTIPLE COLUMNS IN DATA SLOTS ............................................................................... 27

1.11 WORKING WITH FILTERS .............................................................................................................. 29

WORKSHOP 2 COMMUNICATING INSIGHTS THROUGH STORYTELLING .................................................................. 35

2.1 STORYTELLING EXAMPLES ........................................................................................................... 36

2.1.1 STORY SLIDESHOW LAYOUT .......................................................................................... 36

2.1.2 GUIDED JOURNEY LAYOUT ............................................................................................ 37

2.1.3 ANIMATED PATH LAYOUT (KIOSK MODE) ......................................................................... 37

2.2 SELECTING A SCENE TEMPLATE ................................................................................................... 38

2.3 ASSEMBLING A SCENE ................................................................................................................. 39

2.4 CHANGING THE TIMELINE OF A SCENE ............................................................................................ 43

2.5 USING PINNED CONTENT IN STORIES ............................................................................................ 44

2.6 ADDING ANIMATION EFFECTS ........................................................................................................ 46

2.7 COMPLETE THE STORY ................................................................................................................ 47

Introduction: Getting Started

Introduction to Cognos Analytics

Cognos Analytics is Modern Self-Service Business Intelligence Platform that provides a sleek and intuitive User Interface. Whether Users are looking for Personal Data Discovery, or to leverage their full enterprise data platform for analysis, IBM Cognos Analytics provides the capabilities to empower everyone in the organization with the insights needed to positively impact decision making.

This workshop designed to give you an opportunity to discover the ease of use of IBM Cognos Analytics V11, IBM’s Modern Business Intelligence solution that enhances the efficiency and capabilities of business users, report authors, and administrators alike.

During the workshop you will be shown some of the newest capabilities included in IBM Cognos Analytics, and you will be able to try out some of this functionality for yourself. The new interface was designed in collaboration with existing analytics users and reflects both their experience and expectations for the future. Consumers now have access to interactive reports, dashboard creation is as easy as dragging-and-dropping and power users can perform lightweight data modelling online.

After this workshop you will have a sense of the way in which IBM Cognos Analytics empowers business users to perform data discovery and to create dashboards.

In this workshop, you will experience the following capabilities in IBM Cognos Analytics:

• Uploading Personal Data Sources

• Data Discovery

• Dashboard Assembly

• Storytelling

Objectives:

Today you will be analyzing information regarding profitability of various product lines over a period of time followed by a more detailed review of disrupting factors in the sales cycle. You have recently learned about how you can listen to what your customers are saying in real time on Social Media and would like to include their opinions in the analysis.

Your goal at the end of the lab sessions will be to investigate why sales have declined for a particular product at a certain point in time, identify the factors that have caused the decline and create dashboards to present your findings..

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Getting Started with IBM Cognos Analytics

__1. Open Chrome (preferred) or FireFox to launch IBM Cognos Analytics and bring up the login page.

__2. Use the pull-down arrow next to “Select Namespace” to select IBMDemo.

__3. User ID: administrator

__4. Password: IBMDem0s

__5. The NEW User Experience brings you directly into the completely redesigned Cognos Analytics User Interface (UI). All Cognos Analytics Users begin their navigation here.

__6. Once you begin working with content, the canvas will update with your recently used items. In your workshop instance, you may see recent content on the canvas.

Workshop 1 Data Discovery with Dashboards

IBM Cognos Analytics provides Users with data discovery capabilities to visually explore and interact with their data to identify the key insights for improving data driven decisions. Cognos Analytics also allows Users to perform data discovery and then quickly assemble that information which is most relevant to them into interactive, visually appealing dashboards without the need for IT assistance or formal training and without leaving a single User Interface.

Workshop Duration: 45 Minutes

Audience: Line of Business

Capabilities: Dashboard Assembly Interface

Prerequisite Workshop(s) Content: None

In this workshop, you will:

● Upload an external data file

● Assemble a dashboard to answer questions about business performance

● Perform data exploration to make data discoveries and find insights

You have just received the following email from one of the Product Managers asking for assistance:

Nickolus, As you know, we just finalized the acquisition of CAWS, Inc. I know during conversations with our executives, there was some concern over performance of a few of their products and product lines that will become part of this new division here at Great Outdoors. We are in the process of integrating systems, but it is not yet complete. However, I have just obtained the attached file that has some sales history.

Eventually, we need to provide the executives with some sort of performance dashboard, but I’m not sure if we can do that quickly and easily. In the meantime, could you take a look at the data and see if there is any useful information here that would provide us some insight into product performance for this new division? Thanks, Jennifer

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1.1 Uploading External Data Files

Dashboards provide Users with a line of sight into their business that allows them to easily monitor KPIs and metrics. As a starting point, Nickolus would like to do some

data discovery and assemble some key findings so he may easily monitor the pulse of the new division at a glance from a dashboard. Cognos Analytics allows Users to upload external data files quickly and easily so Nickolus will be able to begin data

discovery and analysis immediately as soon as he uploads this file.

__1. From the navigation bar on the left, select New , then Upload Files .

__2. For the first exercise, we will be using the file “CAWS Sales History .xlsx”. You may either drag and drop this file into the drop zone, or may click browse in the drop zone to navigate to where the file is saved, Select the file and open. (Your instructor will advise you on the location of this file.)

__3. A series of status bars will appear as the file uploads into Cognos Analytics.

__4. Once the upload is complete, a preview will render. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen to navigate through the preview of the file.

__5. From the preview, you may select which columns will be visible by using the checkboxes on the left panel. We will use all the columns so we will leave them all selected (the default). Click OK to accept the upload and save the content.

The ability for Business Users to leverage their personal/external data for discovery dramatically broadens the landscape of Users who can make new data available for analysis. Users may

upload an external data file and immediately begin self-service data discovery, ad hoc analysis and building dashboards.

__6. You will now see your uploaded file as the first entry into the Recent files on your home screen.

__7. The uploaded data file has been saved into your My Content folder. This data file is now available for you to use to for your analysis. From the Navigation panel, click on My Content to see your uploaded data file.

__8. Click on More to open the options. From the options, users can update the file to refresh with their latest version, create dashboards, see the properties on the file, copy/move the file to another location, create shortcuts to the file or delete the file.

__9. Select “Create Dashboard”.

TECH TIP: USERS MAY ALSO SIMPLY CLICK ON AN UPLOADED FILE FROM THE RECENT LIST, OR

FROM THE MY CONTENT FOLDER TO AUTOMATICALLY LAUNCH THE DASHBOARDING CAPABILITIES.

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1.2 Working with Templates

__10. The Template window appears allowing the user to select the type of dashboard and the template style. Select the tabbed dashboard style. This will allow you to have multiple pages for your dashboards. Select the template with the four (4) small panels on the upper right, and three (3) larger panels around them. Click OK.

Each panel on the template acts as a placeholder for dashboard objects, known as widgets. Templates are device aware and will auto-size to the screen of the device being used.

Cognos Analytics provides many “out of the box” templates to choose from. This library of templates is based on dashboard design best practices. The templates are simply guidelines

that allow quick and visually appealing layout of widgets onto the dashboard. However, users may still customize layouts to suit their preferences and may also choose to start from

a freeform (blank) template.

__11. As we build the dashboard, we will reference the location placement for widgets in the dashboard template using the following panel numbers:

__12. The dashboard template will open in the canvas along with the data source open in the data source panel. Notice that the navigation panel buttons on the upper left have now updated to show the dashboard toolbox capabilities available for assembling a dashboard. The main toolbar has also updated exposing the dashboard editing functions available.

__13. To rename the dashboard tab, click on the tab name “Tab 1” to bring up the On-Demand

Toolbar. Select the Edit icon to rename the tab. Rename it to “Historical Sales”.

1.3 Assembling a Dashboard

To begin, Nickolus would like to understand how CAWS revenues are tracking to plan. He’ll begin with building a few key KPIs on a dashboard.

__14. From the Navigation bar, select Sources to open the data source panel, if it is not already open. The Data Source panel displays the Selected Source “CAWS Sales History.xlsx”, the

uploaded file. Click on the Expand arrow to view the data items in the file. Scrolling through the data items, you will see all the columns from the uploaded file.

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__15. Click on “Revenue” and drag it to panel 1 until you see the blue box pop up with the message “Drop here to maximize”. Release the image object when the blue box appears for the drop zone. This will automatically resize and stretch your object to fill the entire widget panel

__16. Your dashboard will now appear with revenue in the upper left corner (panel 1) of the template.

__17. Click and drag “Planned Revenue” into panel 2. Both widgets have been maximized to fit the template panel. Your dashboard should appear as follows:

Cognos Analytics recognizes that a single data item was selected and automatically creates a sum. Sometimes the numbers are large and difficult to read easily on a dashboard. We can easily reformat them to make them easier to consume. In the NEW Cognos Analytics UI, all content objects become interactive and utilize On-Demand Toolbars to expose capabilities to the User in context with how they are

currently interacting with the widget.

This Guided Analytics approach was developed to provide Users the capabilities they need when and where they need them.

__18. Click on the Revenue widget in panel 1. This will open the On-Demand toolbar for the widget.

__19. Select the Format icon to open the data format properties.

__20. Click on Abbreviate. Cognos Analytics will automatically abbreviate the number with no additional defining of the data format. Repeat on the Planned Revenue widget in panel 2.

__21. Additional formatting properties for the widget are available. Click on the Revenue widget in

panel 1, then click on the Properties button on the upper right of the toolbar. The Properties panel opens to the Visualization Properties Details tab. Here you can change your color palettes, Text color, show/hide item labels and set the widget to refresh automatically based on the frequency you set. We will keep all defaults on this tab.

__22. Click on the General tab. Here we can change the background color and border color, choose to show/hide the widget title, and set the opacity and to show/hide title. Click on Border Color and Select a border color for your object (the example in the workshop uses dark blue).

__23. With the Properties panel still open, click on the Planned Revenue widget and add the same border. Click on the properties button again to close the panel. These data items are now much easier to read at a glance:

TECH TIP: USERS MAY SET THE PROPERTIES FOR MULTIPLE WIDGETS AT ONCE BY USING THE

CONTROL + CLICK METHOD FOR SELECTING MULTIPLE OBJECTS. THE FORMATTING WILL APPLY

TO ALL SELECTED WIDGETS SIMULTANEOUSLY.

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Having both Revenue and Planned Revenue are great metrics to monitor. But even better is to have an additional measure which shows how the revenue is tracking to plan. This measure

was not in the original data file received, but Nickolus can easily add a simple calculation to his data source for “Revenue Attainment” for use in his analysis.

1.4 Adding Calculations

__24. From the Sources panel. Control + Click on Revenue and Planned Revenue, then click

on More to open the options. Select Create Calculation .

__25. The Create Calculation definition box will open. Change the Column Name to “Revenue Attainment”. In the function box between the two field names, use the pulldown arrow to select “%” as shown below:

__26. The create calculation window allows users to setup simple calculations for performing basic mathematical functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentage and percentage difference using the pulldown menu. Users may also change the order of operations by using the toggle button to Switch left and right. The data items appear in the order they were selected. For this calculation, use the toggle button to create the calculation as follows:

__27. Click OK.

TECH TIP: USERS MAY ALSO CREATE CUSTOM CALCULATIONS FOR USE IN THEIR

DASHBOARDS. RIGHT CLICK ON THE REVENUE ATTAINMENT CALCULATED ITEM AND SELECT

EDIT CALCULATION. SELECT USE CALCULATION EDITOR. THE CALCULATION EDITOR

SCREEN OPENS. HERE, USERS MAY CREATE CUSTOM CALCULATIONS IN THE EXPRESSION

WINDOW. THE EXPRESSION SHOWN IS THE CALCULATION WE CREATED IN THE PREVIOUS

STEPS. ONCE USERS CREATE THEIR CALCULATIONS, THEY MAY USE THE VALIDATE BUTTON

TO VERIFY THERE ARE NO SYNTAX ERRORS IN THEIR CALCULATION. CLICK ON VALIDATE TO

VERIFY THE CURRENT EXPRESSION. WE WILL NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES TO THIS

CALCULATION FOR THIS EXERCISE.

To learn more about using the expression editor for custom calculations, click the Help icon in the upper left of the Calculation editor to open the IBM Knowledge Center.

__28. Click OK. The Revenue Attainment calculated data item is now added in the data sources panel and is available for use in analysis.

__29. Drag Revenue Attainment to the drop zone of Panel 3.

__30. Click on the Revenue Attainment widget to open the on-demand toolbar. Select Format and choose the format using one decimal place.

__31. Open Properties and go to the General Tab. Add the same border color as used on the widgets in panel 1 and 2. Click on the Properties button again to close the panel.

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__32. The dashboard’s three key KPIs should now appear as follows:

__33. When using templates, Users can still customize their layouts. Since there are only three KPIs, but four panels, we can resize the revenue attainment measure to fill both panel 3 and panel 4 to make this KPI stand out even more. Click on the revenue attainment widget in panel 3 to bring it into focus.

__34. Use the sizing button on the right center, drag the right edge of the widget to the right to cover both panels 3 and 4.

__35. The KPIs section of the dashboard should now appear as follows:

__36. Click on the arrow next to the Save icon on the dashboard toolbar. Click “Save As”. Navigate to My Content. Save as “[Lastname] CAWS Dashboard.

From just these KPIs, Nickolus is immediately able to see that that the company is tracking almost 5% below plan. This is a key insight that he wants to present to management. Cognos Analytics allows Users to “Pin” content as they work through their analysis. Pinned content is saved and may be used again later in new dashboards, Stories and Guided Journeys. We will

learn more about Stories and Guided Journeys later in this workshop.

1.5 Pinning Content for Reuse

Pinning content provides the User with a library of insights that become “reusable parts” for later analysis. You can pin individual objects, or groups of objects to reuse later in your

analysis. Calculations and data sources are included with a pin. A Pin essentially acts as a snapshot of your analysis as all applied filters at the time the object is pinned are retained.

Pin boards are personal, not shared between users.

__37. Click on the Revenue Attainment widget to again open the On Demand Toolbar.

__38. From the On-Demand tool bar, click on the Pin icon to save this KPI for later use.

__39. Cognos Analytics will verify your Pin has been saved.

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__40. Click on the Pins icon in the dashboard toolbox. Saved Pins will appear in a list with the name, dashboard source and a thumbnail image next to them.

__41. Pin the Revenue widget and the Planned Revenue widget.

__42. Click the Pin button again to close the Pins panel.

You’ve seen how Cognos Analytics self-service capabilities allow us to start interacting with your data immediately and gaining insight simply by selecting a data source. But what if you

were not sure on which data source to use, or where the data we are seeking resides? Cognos Analytics’ provides Users with a smart search capability to identify data sources with

the content we are seeking.

1.6 Using Smart Search to find Data for Analysis

In the event we do now know which data source contains the type of data we are seeking, we can use the Smart Search in Cognos Analytics to find it. When using the Smart Search,

we can type in our search criteria in Natural Language. Cognos Analytics will analyze available data sources and render a list of these that have matches to the search criteria.

__43. Click on the search icon from the toolbox on the left. In the search bar field, type “CAWS revenue by country” and Enter. Cognos Analytics’ searches all content in the environment to match the User’s intent for analysis against the available data. It provides the Top 10 matches and renders the data source and location of where the data was found in the environment.

__44. Click on the arrows by Last Modified to sort the results with most recent on top. Notice that the file we uploaded earlier is included in Cognos Analytics’ suggestions. Click on CAWS Sales History.xlsx. A visualization suggestion will render.

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__45. Click Use button for the chart to be added to the dashboard. The chart widget will be placed in the first available panel, which is panel 5. Your dashboard will now look similar to the one below:

__46. Click on the Search icon again to close the search panel.

In just a few minutes, Nickolus was able to upload the data for the new company and build out a dashboard with KPIs and relevant information regarding the historical revenue performance of

the new company. And, since Cognos Analytics dashboards are fully interactive, he’s now ready to dive in deeper into his analysis.

__47. From the map, click on the United States. The entire dashboard updates as each widget on the dashboard is responding to the User’s selection, and applying the filter to all widgets simultaneously. Click on the United States again to remove the filtering.

__48. Move your cursor over Europe. Zoom in over Europe on the map by using the scroll wheel on your mouse, or by clicking on the +/- zoom buttons. Zoom in over the country showing the highest revenue as indicated in the legend to be dark blue.

__49. Once zoomed, you can see that the country with the highest revenue is Switzerland. Click on Switzerland to update the entire dashboard.

__50. Click on Switzerland again to remove the filtering. Zoom out to restore the full world view of map if desired.

__51. Click on the map to open the On-Demand toolbar. Pin the map.

__52. Save the Dashboard.

Cognos Analytics’ partnership with Mapbox® and Pitney Bowes® provides world class mapping capabilities at the Users fingertips. Users can drill down to street level and exact longitude and latitude coordinates for their analysis. And, Users can toggle between multiple map views. For instance, in the example below the User has zoomed in to see Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay using the Satellite view. The User then toggled over to the street view. Mapbox® maps provide such detail, that the User

can see the ferry route to the island, the landing dock and all building footprints AND even see the where the restroom facilities are located on the island. (And now you know too!)

1.7 Using the Data Tray to view data values

__53. There are two ways to access the data from the data source. The first is through the Data

Sources panel as we saw earlier. To open this panel, click on the Sources icon on the top left of the toolbox. To close the panel, click the icon again.

When using data from the Sources pane, it only shows the data items, but not the actual values. Since this is new data to Nickolus, it would be helpful for him to be able

to see the actual data values for each data item without having to refer back to the original file in another application or window. Cognos Analytics provides Nickolus the

ability to see the actual data values using the Data Tray at the bottom of the Work Area.

__54. To open the Data Tray, click on the Data Tray tab located at the bottom center of the screen.

TECH TIP: YOU MAY CLICK ON THE TAB TO AND DRAG IT UP OR DOWN TO INCREASE OR

DECREASE THE AMOUNT OF ROOM IT USES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORK AREA.

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__55. Once open, the available data sources are listed along the top of the data tray. If more than one data source is available. the active data source shown in the data grid is identified by a blue underline. The data grid shows the data items and values rendered in grid form. Hover the mouse over the data grid to scroll up and down through the values in the rows. You may also use the scrolling tool below the data tray to scroll left and right through the data columns.

__56. Click on the Data Tray tab again to collapse it.

TECH TIP: DATA ITEMS MAY BE USED FROM EITHER THE SOURCES PANE OR DATA TRAY VIA

THE SAME DRAG AND DROP METHOD FOR BOTH. THE DATA SOURCE PANEL AND THE DATA

TRAY ARE ONLY AVAILABLE WHEN THE DASHBOARD IS IN EDIT MODE.

1.8 Self-Service Data Discovery

Now that Nickolus has determined sales are tracking behind plan, he wants to explore how the various product lines are performing. Cognos Analytics will help him by visually representing his data for him as he selects data for his analysis. He will start by exploring historical revenues by

product line.

__57. Cognos Analytics will automatically create a visualization based on the data items selected. Using control + click to multi-select Revenue and Year.

__58. From the Data Source panel, drag the data items into the drop zone of panel 6.

__59. Cognos Analytics recognizes the data as a time series and generates an appropriate visualization to illustrate the historical performance.

__60. As additional data items are added to the widget, Cognos Analytics will automatically update the visualization to optimize how the data is presented. From the Data Source panel or data tray, drag Product Line and drop it on top of the widget in Panel 6. The visualization updates to show the additional data item.

__61. Users can also change the visualization on the fly by using the on-demand toolbar. Left Click the widget to expose the on-demand toolbar.

TECH TIP: THE ON-DEMAND TOOLBAR ONLY RENDERS WHEN THE ENTIRE WIDGET IS IN VIEW IN

THE BROWSER. IF YOU DO NOT SEE AN ON DEMAND TOOLBAR, RESIZE YOUR BROWSER WINDOW, OR USE THE PANEL SIZING TOOL (DOUBLE VERTICAL LINES AT THE CENTER OF THE WINDOW

PANEL EDGE BETWEEN THE DATA SOURCE PANEL AND THE DASHBOARD CANVAS).

__62. Click on Change Visualization button to open the Visualization library. The visualization library renders for user to select their desired visualization.

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__63. Select Heatmap . The heatmap provides us with a highly visual, and easy to interpret overview of revenues by product line. The intensity of the color represents the revenues, with the darker the color, the higher the revenue.

__64. Click on the widget to bring it into focus. Click on the expand button on the upper right of the widget to open it in focus mode. In Focus Mode we see the data slot panel on the left, and the visualization on the right.

The data slots are used to set up the definitions for the widget. The Data slot options presented will vary for each type of visualization. Users have flexibility to set the

definitions for the axes, colors, repeaters and local filters. The Properties panel may be used in conjunction with Focus Mode to provide the user all capabilities needed to build

their visualization.

__65. Cognos Analytics makes it easy for you to set the data definitions and toggle the data items around to optimize the display for our dashboard. For this exercise, you will toggle the data for the rows and columns to place our years on the x-axis. From the Column data slot, click on Product line. Drag it on top of the Year in the Columns data slot. Drop it once you see Year change to blue indicating the drop zone for replacing the data item as shown below. This will swap the two data items and update the heatmap based on the how the new row and column data slot shave been defined.

__66. Click on the Collapse button on the upper right to return the widget to the dashboard.

__67. Pin the Heatmap.

__68. Save the dashboard.

The heat map provides Nickolus with a tremendous amount of insight. He immediately notices that Mountaineering Equipment had no sales in 2014. He makes a note to verify

that this was a new product line introduced that year. He also notices that Outdoor Protection has repeatedly been the lowest revenue generator of all product lines. But the most compelling insight he gains is that after three years of increasing revenues, Camping Equipment appears to have dropped in 2017 more than any of the other product lines. He

needs to explore this product line further. But first, he will look to gain insight on the product types and products that are the bottom revenue performers.

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1.9 Using Sorting and Top/Bottom Analysis

In just a few minutes of ad-hoc analysis, Nickolus has built a dashboard that contains the three KPIs, Revenue, Planned Revenue, and Revenue Attainment as well as yearly

product line revenue contribution and a map showing regional revenue performance. With just this information, he’s already identified the 5% revenue shortfall for the company. He’s also identified that the Camping Equipment appears to have the

largest revenue shortfall of all the product lines. He’s off to a great start. In addition to the revenue performance by Product Line, Nickolus would like to identify the top and bottom performing Product Types and Products. This information would give him a

deeper understanding of the opportunities and risks for this new division.

__69. Open the data source panel. Select Product Type and drag and drop it into panel 7. A list of Product Types renders. Now, select Revenue and drop it on top of Product Type. Cognos Analytics recognizes that it has an attribute and a measure and updates to render a visualization for the data.

__70. Since we are interested in finding the top or bottom performers, lets modify the visualization to

optimize the display for sorting to see the ranking order.

__71. Change the visualization to a Bar Chart . __72. Right Click on the X-axis title “Revenue (Sum)” to open the On Demand Toolbar for the axis.

TECH TIP: NOTICE THAT THE ON-DEMAND TOOLBAR FOR THE AXIS IS DIFFERENT THAN THE

ON DEMAND TOOLBAR FOR THE WIDGET. ON-DEMAND TOOLBARS ARE CONTEXT SENSITIVE

TO ALLOW THE USERS WITH THE EXACT CAPABILITIES AVAILABLE BASED ON WHAT OBJECTS

THEY ARE WORKING WITH AT THE TIME.

__73. Click on the Sort icon and select “Descending”.

__74. The chart is now easier to interpret, but for this analysis we want to focus on just a few of the top products.

__75. Right Click on the X-axis title “Revenue (Sum)” to again open the On-Demand Toolbar for the

axis. This time, select “Top or Bottom” icon .

__76. Users may set the value for the number of results to be returned (from 1 to 100). Set the number of results to “10” and select the radio button next to bottom count. The visualization updates to show the Bottom 10 product types. Notice that there is now a filter icon on the widget indicating that there is now a filter applied. This filter is only for this widget and does not impact the other widgets on the dashboard.


1.10 Nesting Multiple Columns in Data Slots

Cognos Analytics allows you to use multiple data items per data slot. With product type already charted out, you can add in product names and nest it to create a more

detailed visualization in the same amount of space.

__78. Click on widget in panel 7 and then the Expand button to open in Focus Mode.

__79. Drag Product over to the categories data slot and drop below of Product Type (a horizontal blue bar will render when you’ve hit the correct location for the drop zone).

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__80. Product is now nested under Product Type.

__81. A title needs to be added to the widget to put it in context for those who view the dashboard. Open the Properties panel to the General tab. Check the box next to Show title. The cursor is now in the widget to add in the title. Type “Revenue: Bottom 10 Products”.

__82. Right click on the X-axis title “Revenue (Sum)” to open the axis on-demand toolbar. Select Format, then abbreviate. This abbreviates the axis labels making them much easier to read.

__83. Since you have added titles to the widget, you can remove the axis labels to maximize the space used for the chart. From the Properties Details tab, uncheck the boxes next to “Show item axis title” and “Show value axis title”.

__84. Close the Properties panel.

__85. Click the Collapse button to return the widget to the dashboard.

__86. Pin the widget in Panel 7.

__87. Your dashboard should now look similar to the following:

Nickolus identified the new company was tracking nearly 5% below planned revenue. He also noticed that Camping Equipment seemed to have the largest revenue shortfall from the prior

year. After filtering the dashboard for Camping Equipment, he found that the Revenue Attainment for this Product Line is falling nearly 7% below plan, a larger shortfall than that of

the company overall. Within Camping Equipment, he found that Lanterns account for seven of the Bottom 10 ranking Camping Equipment products.

__88. Click on Camping Equipment in the Heatmap as Nickolus did to identify these same insights:

__89. Pin the filtered Bottom 10 list and Revenue Attainment widgets. The filters will be preserved when these widgets are reused from the Pin library.


In just a few minutes of ad-hoc analysis, Nickolus has built a historical sales dashboard that contains the three KPI measures, and key information in regards to product line performance, and top/bottom performance. With just this information, he quickly identified a specific product type and products which are underperforming. Before he presents his findings to Jennifer, he

wants to dive in a deeper to get additional insights into the performance of the individual products in Camping Equipment that may be contributing to the decline. He decides to create

another dashboard focusing on Camping Products.

1.11 Working with Filters

__91. Click on the to the right of the Historical Camping Equipment tab to add a new tab.

__92. The Select a Template screen will appear. Select the template that has a four (4) panels across the top, and one (1) panel below. We will reference the location placement for widgets using the following panel numbers.

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__93. A new tab is created. Click on the new tab to edit the title . Change the name to “Camping Products”.

__94. From the data source panel, drag Year into the This tab section of the Filter dock.

The Cognos Analytics Filter dock allows you to Focus on one area of your data or to see the impact of a specified data item. The filter doc allows Users to set filters on all tabs, or on individual tabs. Applying a filter across all tabs will act as a global filter across all content on tabs. Applying a filter to “This tab”, will apply the filter to all content on that tab, widgets and filter lists, without impacting other tabs in the workbook. These filters

may be used in place, or added as a widget directly onto the dashboard.

__95. To add the filter on to the dashboard canvas, click on the options button next to Year. Select Add to canvas. The filter has been placed in panel 1 of the dashboard. Click on the widget and resize to show complete picklist if desired.

__96. Select 2017 on the filter and click Apply. Notice that the filter is checked in the picklist on the canvas, and is also shown in the filter dock.

__97. From the source panel, CTRL + click on Month and Revenue. Drag and drop them to the drop zone of panel 5. A visualization now appears and shows the filter icon. Click on the filter

icon . The new visualization detects the existing year filter as identified by the filter icon in the upper right corner of the widget. Adjust the size of the widget if desired.

__98. Click on widget to open the on demand toolbar to Change visualization. Select Line . Notice that the visualization changes, but all filters are still applied.


In addition to using filters in the Filter dock and individual widgets, filters may be placed on the dashboard. Any data item, when added to the dashboard canvas will render as a list that may be

used as a filter.

__100. This chart shows the overall revenue trend for all products. To interact with our data more, we will add more filters to the dashboard. From the data source panel, select Product Line and drag it to panel 2. Resize if desired.

__101. Open the Properties panel to the General tab. Click Show Title. Type “Select Product Line”.

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__102. Click on any of the Product Lines. The product line selected will highlight and you will see the visualization change to reflect revenues by month for your selection.

__103. To remove the filter, click on the selected Product Line again.

__104. In panel 3, create a filter for Product Type and add a title of “Select Product Type”.

__105. In panel 4, create a filter for Product Brand and add a title of “Select Brand”.

__106. Using the Control key, click on the white space of the Product Line, Product Type and Brand

filters to multi-select. Open Properties and go to the General tab to add a border. Click on the Properties button again to close the panel.

__107. Feel free to Resize the filters to the same size. Your dashboard may now look similar to the following:

When multiple filter lists are placed on the dashboard, Cognos Analytics will recognize the relationship between them and they will behave as “Smart” or “Cascading filters”, meaning that as one value is selected from a filter, the other filters will update the list of items to respond to that filter. This makes exploration easy for the User as narrows down the pick lists to only the

valid data items

For instance, as you filter to select a specific Product Line, the Product Type and Product Brand filters dynamically update to only show the selections relevant for that Product Line. Likewise, if you select a Product Type or Product Brand, the other Product filters will update to only show the

related data items from the other pick lists. Remember, the filter from the filter doc will not update, those filter types are designed to render all available data items at all times and therefore

do not respond to other filters.

__108. Select items from Product Lines, Product Types and Product Brands to see the filter lists dynamically respond to one another. Click on the selected items again to remove the filters.

__109. From the previous dashboard, we identified that Camping Equipment was the bottom performing product line. Within Camping Equipment, Lanterns had several of the Bottom SKUs. From the Product Line Filter, select Camping Equipment. From the Product Type filter, select Lanterns.

__110. Filter on each of the Product Brands individually.

__a. What Insight does this give you?

__111. Keep the Product Brand filtered on Firefly. From the data source panel, select Product and drag and drop onto the line chart. We can now see the individual products under FireFly Lanterns.

__a. What Insight does this give you?

Nickolus observed that after a dip in May, both EverGlow and Extreme Lanterns were trending solidly upward. However, Firefly Lanterns appeared to remain relatively flat after the May dip.

Once he brought in the individual product detail, he could immediately see that one product in particular, the Flicker Lantern, has been extremely volatile in performance this year. This is exactly the type of insight he needed to understand which products may be contributing most to the revenue shortfall.

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__112. Your dashboard may look similar to the one below:


__114. Return to your home screen.

Nickolus quickly and easily took data that he was completely unfamiliar with and derived meaningful insights into the product performance of the new division. He uncovered specific products in Outdoor Protection that are extremely low revenue generators and may be further evaluated for discontinuance. Further, he identified a specific product type and brand within Camping Equipment that has experienced extreme volatility in revenue performance. When looking at the revenue attainment detail, he identified which brands are most contributing to

the overall revenue decline in the product line. These are some great insights and he’s eager to share his findings and the dashboards with Jennifer.

Workshop 2 Communicating Insights through Storytelling Storytelling provides a new set of capabilities to help create compelling stories that communicate your message and findings with (or without) you having to be being present.

A story is a type of view that contains a set of scenes that are displayed in sequence over time. Stories are similar to dashboards because they also use visualizations to share your insights. Stories differ from dashboards because they provide an over-time narrative and can convey a conclusion or recommendation. For example, each slide in a story contains an analysis, insight, or piece of information that is revealed as the viewer runs a slide show. The slides build upon each other until the final slide, which provides a conclusion or summary. You can also create the effect of animation by having visualizations and objects appear and disappear during a scene in a story.

At any point during the story, the Presenter can fully interact with the widgets, just as they do in dashboards. So, as the audience asks questions, the Presenter can pause at any point and interact with the data in real time to answer. This is a tremendous advantage over traditional presentation slide decks and briefing books, where the data presented is a static snapshot, with no ability to provide content not already prepared in advance.

Workshop Duration: 45 Minutes

Audience: Line of Business

Capabilities: Storytelling

Prerequisite Workshop(s): Data Discovery with Dashboards

In this workshop, you will:

● Reuse visualizations from your collection of pins

● Add text, media, web pages, images, and shapes

● Use a background image for branding

● Change the timeline of a scene to create an animation effect

Nickolus is very interested in presenting his findings in an engaging and modern format. Nickolus thinks Storytelling is an ideal way to communicate his findings. He

knows Cognos Analytics provides many options for building out business stories, so he reviews some samples to get some ideas for layouts, content and flow.

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2.1 Storytelling Examples

2.1.1 Story Slideshow Layout

__1. In Story layout, each scene is presented on a different canvas. This layout is the most similar to a traditional slideshow presentation such as PowerPoint®.

__2. For an example, go to Team Content > Samples > Stories and click on “More Valuable Customers” to open.

__3. The story opens at the start of the first scene. Click the play button on the control bar to play the current scene.

__4. While the story scene is playing, you may pause/play at your discretion from the control bar. A timer shows the progression of the scene playback. To progress the story to the next scene, click the Next scene button to advance

__5. Advance through each scene of the story. Notice the use of background images, visualizations, various transition styles, types of information presented, and how the narration has been added to guide the audience through the analysis and discovery of insights.

__6. Once the Story ends, click on the down arrow on the switcher menu. Click on the Remove button to close the Story.

2.1.2 Guided Journey Layout

__7. A Guided Journey is a selection of scenes on a single canvas. When you run/play this type of story, the presentations zooms and pans on each individual scene in sequential order. This differs from a slide show layout where each scene is presented on a new canvas. This layout and transition method will seem very familiar to modern presentation tools such as Prezi®.

__8. For an example, go to Team Content > Samples > Stories and click on “Guided Journey template” to open.

__9. The Story opens with the Guided Journey on the canvas showing the initial frame for each scene, and a control bar at the bottom of the screen. Click on the first scene to launch the Story playback.

__10. To progress the story to the next scene, click the Next scene button to advance.


2.1.3 Animated Path Layout (Kiosk mode)

__12. Animated path allows users to have elements from their story move and/or resize as the story transitions from one scene to another. The advantage of this is that items can remain on the screen for reference, but be placed off to the side or bottom where they will be visible but not the focal point. This helps to maintain context and provide reference as users progress through a story.

__13. For an example, go to Team Content > Samples > Stories and click on “Animated Path Scene Transition” to open.

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__14. Like the Story slideshow, the animated path opens to the start of the first scene. Click the play button on the control bar to start the playback.

__15. In the animated path mode, the story will automatically advance to the next scene, creating a “movie” type experience for the audience. Notice that the control bar still allows the User to pause/play as well as jump to the next scene at their discretion.


After getting some great ideas from these examples, Nickolus decides a Guided Journey is the best format to communicate his analysis by building a story that follow’s the train of thought for his analysis and showcases his findings. He will end his story

with a Call to Action for proposed next steps.

2.2 Selecting a Scene template

__17. From the Navigation panel, click New , and select Story .

__18. The Select a template window will appear. For Story type, select Guided journey. For the Guided Journey layout, select the template shown below:

__19. Click OK. As the Story template opens, it will open your Pin library by default. You will use the pins you collected throughout your analysis to build this story, then add in narratives explaining your findings. At the bottom of the screen is the scene selector showing the scenes in the story. Scene 0 shows an overview of all scenes, followed by individual scene templates. The User may add more scenes to the story as needed.

2.3 Assembling a Scene

You can quickly assemble a story by reusing analysis, insights, and visualizations, that you set aside in your collection of pins. You can also add new visualizations, media, web pages,

images, shapes, and text to your story.

We will begin by building out each scene for our story. Then, we will add in animations and transitions to create an engaging experience for our audience.

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__20. Scene 1 is in focus and ready for you to start building your story. To begin, let’s add a background color for scene panel. The background may use an image such as your standard corporate slide presentation background image, a logo, pictures or simply a colored background, which is what we will use for this workshop. From the navigation panel, select the widgets icon. From the Shapes section, click on the Square icon. This will automatically bring the shape into the scene panel and expand to fit the entire panel.

__21. To change the color of the background, click on the scene panel and open the properties panel.

__22. Go to the General tab. Click on fill color and select dark blue.

TECH TIP: You may also change the opacity to vary the color saturation. When used on images, this provides a watermark effect for the background. We will work with opacity on subsequent scenes of the story.

__23. From the Basic section on the Widgets panel, drag the Text icon over to the top portion of the scene panel. Resize the Text box to span the width of the scene panel.

__24. Type “CAWS Acquisition: Sales Analysis”. Notice that as you type, the text will autosize to fit the text box. This occurs due to the default setting of the text box being set to “Auto”. This setting may be manually set to a fixed text size if desired.

__25. Open the Properties panel, if not still open. Highlight the text. From the Properties panel, format the text as follows:

__a. Font Size: Auto (default)

__b. Text Color: White

__c. Alignment: Center

__d. Styles: Bold

__26. Your scene should now appear with a title as follows:

__27. Scene 1 will be used as a “cover page” for your story presentation. To do this, you will create a introduction from you to your audience. Next, you can add in a picture to personalize the presentation. A quick way to get a photo of yourself is to open your Linked In profile. To do so, open another browser window and go to your Linked In profile. Right click and select Copy Image Location. This will copy the URL for your profile picture which is a .jpg so it may be used as an image in your scene. (You may skip this step and proceed to the next step).

__28. Return to your Cognos Analytics session.

__29. From the widgets panel Basic section, select Image and drag it over on to the scene.

__30. Paste the URL you copied for your profile picture.

TECH TIP: TO USE IMAGES FROM THE WEB IN COGNOS ANALYTICS, ENSURE THAT IT

CONTAINS AN IMAGE EXTENSION OF .JPG OR .PNG.

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__31. Click enter to bring in the image. Position the image to the left side of the scene. Resize as desired.

__32. To add a narrative, from the Widgets panel, drag in a text box to the right of the picture. From the Properties Panel, go to the General tab. Select a Fill color.

__33. Enter text to introduce your analysis. Highlight the text. From the Properties panel Text details tab, select a Text color. Set Alignment to Center. Resize the text box as needed. Notice that the text will automatically resize to fill the size of the text box. You may also manually set the text size, set the alignment and style. Format the text and reposition on the scene as desired. An example of this scene is shown below:

__34. Now that the scene is built, it can be renamed for reference. In the scene selector, the scene number is shown in the lower right corner of the thumbnail. Click on Scene 1 in the scene

selector. Click on More to open the on-demand toolbar. Then select the Edit icon to rename the scene.

__35. Rename the scene to “Introduction”.

__36. Click on the arrow next to the Save icon on the application toolbar. Click “Save As”. Navigate to My Content. Save as “[Lastname] CAWS Story”.

2.4 Changing the timeline of a scene

You can control the pace of the story by making widgets appear and disappear during a scene. By default, all objects in a scene are visible for the full duration of the scene. To make an object appear and disappear, you change the start time and end time that

the object is visible anywhere along the timeline. The default duration for a scene is five seconds, which you can change.

__37. Click the Open timeline icon in the upper-right corner of a scene thumbnail.

__38. At the bottom of the window, a timeline is displayed for each visualization or object in the scene.

The Scene selector at the bottom of the window contains the widgets in the story. Click and hold the scene selector and drag the panel to up or down to increase or decrease the size of the timeline section as needed to show all four widgets.

__39. On the both edges of each widget, there is a selector icon to use to adjust the start and end time of each scene. For the story, we would like keep the blue background (named “square”) visible at the start of the story playback. Make no changes to the timing of this widget. For the remaining three widgets, set the timings at 1.0 second intervals. All widgets will default to end at the same time. Make no changes to the end time.

__40. The timeline should appear as follows:

__41. Click the Play button to playback your story. As the story plays, the Time scrubber provides a timer with a red line that indicates a point in time in the scene. You can drag the time scrubber along the timeline to jump to a specific time in the scene.

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__42. To close the timeline and return to the scene selector, click the Close timeline icon button in the upper right of the timeline panel.

__43. Save the Story.

2.5 Using Pinned Content in Stories

To fully engage the audience in the story, you will build it in such a way that it allows the audience to follow the train of thought you had during your analysis. The scene will

start by asking a question. Then add in the content you pinned as you gained your insight. Each scene will conclude with narrations regarding the findings.

__44. Click on Scene 2 in the Scene selector panel.

__45. Click on More and select Edit to change the title to “Top Markets”.

__46. You can change the layout template of a scene by opening the scene selector and clicking on the more icon for a scene. From the scene on-demand toolbar, click change template.

__47. Select the template with the one (1) small panel on top, and one (1) larger panel below. Click Use.

__48. As we build the dashboard, we will reference the location placement for widgets in the dashboard template using the following panel numbers:

__49. Open the widgets panel from the navigation bar. Select Text box. Drag the Text box to panel 1 in Scene 2 and drop it in the drop zone.

__50. Type “What Regions have the highest revenues?”

__51. From the Properties panel, format all the text to Dark grey. Then, change “Regions” and “highest revenue” to another color to make them stand out.

__52. Open the widgets panel. Click on the Square icon. This will automatically bring the shape into panel 2 and expand to fit the entire panel. From Properties, change the fill color to dark blue and set the opacity to 75%.

__53. Open Pins from the navigation panel. Drag in the Country Map Pin to the left portion of panel 2.

__54. Resize the pin to 2/3 the width of the panel, leaving a small border to the top, bottom and left to allow the blue background to show through.

__55. Since the narrative you placed at the top of the scene puts the scene in context of revenue performance, you can remove the legend on the map to maximize the visualization. Click on the map to bring it into focus. Open the Properties panel. Deselect the checkbox next to Display legend.

__56. Drag in a text box to the right side of the map. Resize to fit the space available, again leaving a small border around the textbox.

__57. Type “The Top Market is Switzerland, followed by the US, then Japan.”

__58. From the Properties panel, format all the text to Dark grey . Then, change “Switzerland”, “US” and “Japan” to another color to make them stand out.

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__59. Scene 2 should now appear similar to the following:

__60. Click on the Map widget. Use the zoom buttons, or your mouse wheel, to zoom in and out on the map. You have full interactivity with the widgets in a story, just as you did in your dashboards

__61. Open the timeline for Scene 2. Set the timing as follows:


2.6 Adding animation effects

You can control how visualizations and other objects enter and exit a scene in your story by using the same type of animation effects you have used in slide Presentations.

__63. From the timeline, click on the first text box widget. Click on the Open animation properties

icon.

__64. From the Animation properties, use the pull down list for animation options. For the Animation, select Slide in. For the Direction, select From top.

__65. Select the last text box from the timeline. Set the Animation for the text box to Slide in, and the Direction to From right.

__66. Play the story to see the new animations.

__67. Close the timeline.


2.7 Complete the Story

You’ve got a great start to your story. You’ve created an introduction slide and created the first scene of the story revealing the insight into the Top Markets with a fully interactive map.

Now you’ll complete your story with a scene for each of the insights you discovered.

__69. From the Scene selector, click on Scene 3.

__70. Click on More and select Edit to change the title to “Revenue History”.

__71. Click on More to open the on-demand toolbar for the scene. Select Change template. Chose the same template as scene 2.

__72. Drag a text box into panel 1. Type “How are Actual Revenues tracking to Plan?”.

__73. From the Properties panel, format all the text to Dark grey. Then, change “Revenues” and “Plan” to another color to make them stand out.

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__74. Open the widgets panel. Click on the Square icon. This will automatically bring the shape into panel 2 and expand to fit the entire panel. From Properties, change the fill color to dark blue and set the opacity to 50%.

__75. Open the Pins panel.

__76. Drag over Revenue Attainment summary value to the left side of panel 2.

__77. Drag over Product Line by Revenue heatmap to the right side of panel 2.

__78. Since the narrative you placed at the top of the scene puts the scene in context of revenue performance, you can remove the legend on the heatmap to maximize the visualization. Click on the heatmap to bring it into focus. Open the Properties panel. From the Details tab, deselect the checkbox next to Display legend and Show axis titles.

__79. Resize the widgets as needed. Your scene will look similar to the following:

__80. To enhance the scene further, we can add in additional images to help tell the story. From the Widgets panel, scroll down to select the Target shape. Drag to panel 2 over the top portion of the Revenue Attainment widget. Use the Properties panel to change the fill color as desired. Resize and reposition the target as desired.

__81. Again, from the Widgets panel, scroll down to select the Right Arrow shape. Drag to panel 2 pointing to Camping Equipment label in the heatmap. Use the Properties panel to change the fill color to Red. Resize the arrow as desired.

__82. Finally, you’ll add in the narrative explaining the insight. From the widgets panel, drag in a text box and drop it in the area between panel 1 and panel 2. Change the fill color to Light grey. Type your narrative and format the text as desired. Resize and position as needed. Your scene may now look similar to the following:

__83. Open the timeline for Scene 3.

TECH TIP: NOTICE THAT THE WIDGETS ARE IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY WERE ADDED TO THE

SCENE. IF YOU WISH TO CHANGE THE ORDER OF OBJECTS IN A SCENE, TAP AND DRAG TIMELINES UP

AND DOWN TO REORDER THEM. YOU CAN ALSO TAP AND DRAG TIMELINES FROM SIDE TO SIDE.

__84. Drag Target beneath Revenue Attainment summary value. This makes it easy to set the start times the same for both so they appear simultaneously in the playback.

__85. Set the timings as follows:

__86. Close the timeline.


In the analysis, Nickolus discovered that Camping Equipment had the largest revenue shortfall for the most recent year. Since all widgets are interactive during playback, the presenter could pause the story and filter on Camping equipment to allow the scene to update. However, this can also be built into the story by simply duplicating the scene

and placing the filter in the next scene.

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__88. Click on Scene 3 and click on More to open the on-demand toolbar. Select Duplicate.

__89. Scene 4 opens. The scene will appear blank since the time scrubber is set at 0:00, before any widgets are set to appear. Open the timeline. Move the Time scrubber all the way to the end to expose all widgets in the scene.

__90. Notice that the new scene is named Revenue History-2, which indicates it was created as a duplicate. Click on More and select Edit to change the title to “Camping Equipment”.

__91. Click on the background (square). From Properties, change the fill color opacity to 75%.

__92. Click on Camping Equipment label in the heat map. Both widgets will update.

__93. Click on the first text box in the scene. Change text to read “How is Camping Equipment tracking to Plan?”.

__94. Click on the last text box in the scene. Change the text to read your narrative about the camping equipment performance.

__95. Format the text to highlight the insights.

__96. Resize as needed.

__97. Your scene will appear similar to the one below:

__98. Close the Timeline


__100. Click on Scene 5 in the Scene selector panel.

__101. Click on More and select Edit to change the title to “Findings”.

__102. Select the same template used in previous scenes (one (1) small panel on top, and one (1) larger panel below). Click Use.

__103. From the widgets panel, select Text box. Drag the Text box to panel 1 and drop it in the drop zone.

__104. Type “What did we find? And what should we do?”. Format the text as desired.

__105. Open the widgets panel. Click on the Square icon to add to panel. From Properties, change the fill color to dark blue and keep the opacity at the default 100%.

__106. From the Pins panel, drag over Revenue Bottom 10 Products bar chart to the bottom left portion of panel 2.

__107. From the widgets panel, select Text box and drag over to left side of panel 2 above the bar chart. Type “Finding 1: 7 out of bottom 10 revenue generators are Lanterns”

__108. Click on the text box to bring up the on-demand toolbar. Select Duplicate.

__109. Move the duplicate textbox below the original. Type “Finding 2: The Firefly Brand had extreme revenue volatility in 2017”.

__110. Drag in a new text box below the previous. Type “Recommend working with the following departments to get additional data for analysis:”. Do not change the fill color. Change the text color to White.

__111. Based on the insights you found in your analysis, what recommendations would make?

__a. ____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

__b. ____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

__c. ____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

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__112. An example of the Findings and Recommendations are shown below:

__113. Once you have entered your recommendations, set the timings for 0.5 start intervals.. Extend the stop time as needed. Timings for the sample shown above are as follows:

__114. Set animations if desired.

__115. Close timeline.

__116. In the scene selector, if there are any extra unused scenes, they may be deleted. Click on the unused scene, click on more, and select delete.

__117. Save the story.

Nickolus sends the following email to Jennifer:

Jennifer, Thanks for the opportunity to review the sales history for the new division. I used our NEW Cognos Analytics to build out a couple dashboards and found some interesting insights:

1. The new company has been falling short of planned revenue for the last 4 years. 2. The Camping Equipment product line had been growing for three years, but is down for the past year. 3. Within Camping Equipment, Lanterns are significantly smaller than the other product lines and also

has several of the bottom performing products.

I’ve built these findings into a narrated Story presentation along with my recommendations for next steps. Bot the dashboards and story are fully interactive so please take them for a test drive and let me know if there are any other insights you find that you would like to investigate further before we share with the other departments and executive team. Thanks, Nickolus

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Thank you for attending this Cognos Analytics Workshop!!

We hope you enjoyed your time with us today and are excited to continue working with Cognos Analytics.

If you are interested in additional workshops and formal training, please reach out to your IBM Sales or Tech Sales Representative or your IBM Business Partners.

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