Cognos Proven Practices on Youtube

Check out the Cognos Proven Practices on Youtube, including some good BI report studio tips:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ibmbusinessanalytics

Active Form Calculation mode

I would recommend reading this article on IBM if you work with active forms on a regular basis:

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?mynp=OCSS9RXT&mync=R&uid=swg21500429&myns=swgimgmt

Controlling the calculation mode will improve performance and prevent some screen flickering.

Some Active Form quirks in Cognos Express (9.0) TM1 (941)

-          In data validations, if you want to display a message make sure you have a title otherwise it will display null at the front of the message

-          If you have action buttons that navigate between sheets and leave the workbook name blank then the navigation will work but the workbook name will be lost from the tab bar. You can set the workbook name to be a named range if this is an issue

-          In the action button process options, don’t delete the messages, only untick them to not display anything

Active Form Top Ten Tips

In no particular order but hopefully a useful list for people to check through to ensure good performance:

1. Delete any Named references with #Ref in them, do an Excel find to see if there are any #Ref in cell formula, check for external links and change/delete
2. Delete any unused columns or rows. Use the slider as an indicator as to how many rows/columns are saved with the sheet
3. Keep SUBNM, ELCOMP formula to a minimum
4. Before publishing the Active Form delete all rows below the tm1rptrow formula
5. Any lookups to cube that are used in other formula’s need to be a DBR rather than DBRW
6. Workbooks perform best when uploaded to TM1 Server (copied to TM1 server through Add File route), subsequent navigation options via action buttons should then have “Look In: TM1 Applications” selected
7. Try to minimise the number of worksheets in a workbook. Definitely less than 8
8. Try not to use Action buttons formatted as hyperlinks
9. Don’t use dynamic named ranges e.g. ranges that are not visible to objects within the workbook
10. Use named ranges in action button properties rather than cell references e.g. =rngTM1Server not =’Sheet1’$A$1

EV Sizing

Proven Practice document for sizing executive viewer deployments:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/performance/cognos_specific/page560.html?ca=drs-

TM1 and virus scan software

Link to official recommendations:

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?mynp=OCSS9RXT&mync=R&uid=swg21458762&myns=swgimgmt

Virus scan software can negatively impact the performance of TM1 and can cause corruption if it is checks TM1 files while TM1 is running. For that reason, virus scan software should be set to skip checking the following:

• The TM1 data directory
• The TM1 logging directory (if not in the data directory)
• The directory where the tm1s.cfg file is located (if not in the data directory)
• The directory where any Excel sheets (or other docs) are located and uploaded to the TM1 server as a reference
• The directory where any flat files may be written to (output from a TI process, for example) or pulled from (import into a TI process, for example)
• Any other databases being used by a TM1 process (Oracle, SQL Server, MSAS, etc.)
• The TM1Web/TM1WebEx files - by default located at: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\

Integrating Cognos Express into Sharepoint 2007

Step by step instructions found on proven practices:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/cognos/infrastructure/cognos_specific/page559.html?ca=drs-

What to do when you have a bug with Cognos/TM1

Use the following link for detailed instructions:

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?mynp=OCSSPURP&mync=R&uid=swg21389775&myns=swgimgmt

TM1 Active Reports - Alternative Row shading

Alternative row shading is a good techniques for visual reporting.
With Active forms you can easily achieve it by using a formula in column A such as:

=IF(TM1RPTELISCONSOLIDATED($B$20,$B20),"C",MOD(ROW(),2))

This formula will then return a result of C, 1 or 0 and your format range just needs to cater for these with 1 and 0 being different shading.

Cognos Express 95 Online Mnauals

Useful to keep in your bookmarks:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cx/v9r5m0/index.jsp