Listed below are new features since the last release.
Links to directly-related topics are included.
My Activities and Schedules
You can now manage IBM® Cognos® 8 activities from My Activities
and Schedules in IBM Cognos Connection.
My Watch Items
Use the My Watch Items area of the portal to view and
manage alerts for new report versions and rules that you have set
for conditional report delivery. The My Watch Items functionality enables
end users to monitor and manage business information that is critical
to them from a single location.
Report Alerts
By enabling an alert on a report, you can now
be notified when a new version is available. Whenever a report is
run and saved due to a scheduled or manual run, all subscribers receive
an email that a new version is available.
Watch Rules
A new watch rule action is available in Cognos Viewer. You can use watch
rules to control when users are notified about the availability of
new report versions. When a report is run and saved, a user-defined
threshold condition is checked. If this condition satisfies a user's
criteria, the report can be e-mailed.
Drilling Through on Multiple Values
Drilling through is now more powerful and flexible.
You can pass multiple items, such as products, countries and regions,
to a target report. You can now use this feature regardless of the
type of drill-through path that was created. Drilling through is automatically
enabled when you select multiple values.
Go Directly to Target Report When Only One Target Report Exists
When there is only one target report available,
you can now go directly to the target report when you click the drill-through
link in Cognos Viewer. If
there are multiple target reports available, you see the Go To page,
which allows you to select the target report that you want. This behavior
is automatic and works the same way whether the drill-through is defined
in Report Studio or in a drill-through definition in IBM Cognos Connection.
Saving Report Outputs to a File System
You can now export report results directly to
a server file system using IBM Cognos Connection. You decide
which formats to export, and select from a predefined set of directory
locations. This feature makes it easy to integrate IBM Cognos content
into other external applications.
Resubmitting Failed Jobs and Reports
You can resubmit a failed job or report. For
example, you discover that 20 reports in a job containing 1,000 reports
fail due to an invalid signon. The problem is corrected and the job
is resubmitted so that only the 20 failed reports are rerun.
Default Actions for Agent Items
You can now choose a default action to use when
an agent item is selected in IBM Cognos Connection, rather than
automatically opening the agent in Event Studio.
Resubmitting Failed Agent Tasks
Failed agent tasks can now be resubmitted with their
original data values. In previous versions, if a task failed, the
data passed to the task was lost. Rerunning the agent may not solve this
problem if the task is set to process new events only.
Tabbed Portal Pages
You can now create pages with multiple tabs that are
easy to navigate. The new type of pages is also referred to as dashboards.
Dashboards are created by using a new portlet named Multi-page.
Global Filters and Enhanced Portal Interactivity
You can select the dashboard context in the
portal with one or more global filters. A global filter may be a prompt,
a drill-up or drill-down action, or a report that is based on drill-through
content. For example, you can add a prompt control to a portal page
to automatically pass the selection to all reports on the page. When
a prompt answer is changed, all related reports will refresh accordingly.
So, if you answer a country or region prompt with Brazil, all related
reports on the page will be filtered to show the data for Brazil.
Metric Studio Content in Portal Pages
An IBM Cognos Connection page or a dashboard
can now display more types of Metric Studio metrics and a history
chart.
Support for Microsoft Excel 2007
IBM Cognos 8 supports Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software 2007
native spreadsheets as a report format, in addition to the existing Microsoft Excel HTML formats.
The Microsoft Excel 2007
XML format, also known as XLSX, provides a fast way to deliver native
Excel spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel
XP, Microsoft Excel 2003,
and Microsoft Excel 2007.