I can't imagine what "credential" would be helpful in this area.  Pick up some books by Ed Tufte.


Possible causes of confusion:

Low information resolution.  This is basically what people do in PowerPoint.  Data is so highly summarized it's meaningless because there is insufficient context.

Choosing the wrong visualization to present the information.  If basic sorting doesn't show patterns, maybe a heat map is not the appropriate visualization.  For example, looking at Cognos report usage counts, I see that my busiest times are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., usage ramps up at 6 a.m. and drops off at 5 p.m., and Friday afternoons are really slow.  This pops out quickly on a heat map with day of week along the top and hour of day along the left side.  You'd get the same thing with traffic volumes, electricity usage, water usage -- with the same axes.  There are several versions of a visualization that looks basically like https://dataschool.com/assets/images/how-to-design-a-dashboard/find_the_best_chart_for_your_metrics/visualizationWeb.png that shows which type of viz to use when.  But you must not follow such a recommendation blindly.  You should also consider the outputs your data presents through these options and whether or not the viz you have chosen tells a clear story.

Confusing colors.  Does blue = hot and red = cold?  Do some of your report viewers suffer from some form of colorblindness?

There is a "Rows per page" property on a list or crosstab.

CA 12.0.2

I want to set the default delivery options for a single report to always be:

• Output - Excel
• Burst - Yes
• Save to File System - Yes (with appropriate defaults)

Note: The report has prompts - I want the user to enter these, but never have to enter the delivery criteria.

In searching the web, I am seeing references to "Under the Report options section, check the box to Override the default values".
However, I am not seeing this checkbox anywhere!

Assuming this is possible, am I missing something straightforward or is there something needed to configure this option?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Adam.

I see your intended example output.  Just want to ask if this kind of similar (but not same) output might be acceptable as it's easy to produce in a List report.

Field A       Field B
-----------   -----------
A1             B1
                 B2
-------------------------
A2             B3
-------------------------
A3             B4
                 B5
-------------------------

The above can be done by Grouping the first column.

I can also image a way it might be done (or at least influenced) with a long Case statement but I don't know if all of the values/variables in both columns are always known to you.

I have a report with a heat map visualization which is causing very serious confusion across much of the intended audience.  I did not create the report - a peer did.

I'd like to explain to my peer why the report might be causing confusion.  I believe there is at least one and likely two design flaws.

Is there any forum user with relevant credentials (so I can substantiate that the input is valid and external) who is willing to take a gross look at one example of the heat map and provide input?

I know there is a risk to report run time and/or rendering time is the number of rows per page is set too high.  So, I no plans to change setting to 100 rows for example.

However, I have many user who complain that the default of 20 rows is too few and causes unnecessary Paging Up/Down.

I am aware this default row limit can be change at least on a per report basis.  But, is there either a per-user or Cognos instance-wide override?

Thank you.

That worked beautifully in 2025 - thanks! :-)

If I right-click on the package name, I have an option labeled "Manage external data..."  This allows me to include a xlsx or csv file (maybe others) in the report.  Then the resulting package is saved to an arbitrary location.

In Cognos 10.2.1 I could have Cognos ask the user for the location of the file.  I still have a package or two that do this.  It's super helpful.

In Cognos 12.0.4 (and 11.1.x and 11.0.x) this is not possible.  The feature still exists -- I can include a spreadsheet with the source package -- but I can't make Cognos ask the user for the spreadsheet.  I seem to remember this was more of a browser issue related to security.  IE could do it because IE was, by definition, a security flaw.

So, now I have a report or two that ask the user for an arbitrary spreadsheet.  This is super helpful because if two users want to run the report at the same time but with different data, they don't clobber each other.

And, yes...  I responded to https://www.cognoise.com/index.php/topic,38363.msg125926.html#msg125926 with a possible way to do this.  But it turns out it doesn't scale well.  Once the data is more than trivial, my proposed solution fails.

Is there a good way to incorporate arbitrary data, provided by the user running the report, into a report developed in a modern version of Cognos Analytics running on a modern web browser?

@dougp thank you for your response. I'll try and get this working.

Query:  Query1
data items:
[itemnumber]
[htscode00]
[htscode01]
[htscode02]
[htscode03]
[htscode04]
[htscode05]
[htscode06]
[htscode07]
[htscode08]
[htscode09]
[htscode10]


Query:  Query2
data items:
[itemnumber]


Query:  num
SQL =
with
a as (
  select 0 as num
  union all
  select num + 1
  from a
  where num < 10
)
select *
from a(or equivalent for your RDBMS)
data items:
[num]


Query:  Query3
Query2 inner join num on 1=1
data items:
[itemnumber]
[num]


Query:  Query4
Query3 inner join Query1 on itemnumber = itemnumber
data items:
[itemnumber]
[num]
[htscode] =
case [num]
  when 0 then [htscode00]
  ...
  when 10 then [htscode10]
endfilter:  [htscode] is not null