The Cognos Analysis for Microsoft Excel user interface

IBM Cognos Office adds a custom toolbar to each of the supported Microsoft Office applications. When you click the IBM Cognos button on the toolbar, the IBM Cognos Office commands become available as buttons on the toolbar or ribbon of your Microsoft Office application.

The IBM Cognos Analysis pane contains the source tree that lists hierarchical data. You add objects to a report by dragging them to the work area. The pane also contains controls for opening packages, searching metadata, adding lists and crosstab explorations, and accessing the online help.

The source tree is for the package that you selected. For packages based on DMR and OLAP data sources, it presents a dimensional view of your data and the tree is organized into dimensions, hierarchies, levels, and measures. For packages based on relational data sources, it presents query subjects organized into lists of data items. TM1® packages are based on OLAP data sources.

The names of the levels and members in a dimension come from the model. It is the responsibility of the modeler to provide meaningful names that you can use when authoring your report.

Use the controls on the exploration bar to work with different areas of an exploration report or open the report in either IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced, or IBM Cognos Analysis Studio.

The overview area is shown only if you are viewing a worksheet with a crosstab or a list. You can use the overview area as a convenient place to quickly explore and change the contents of the Excel worksheet.

The overview area shows any applied filters. In a crosstab, you can rearrange rows and columns, drill up or down, and provide context for the worksheet. In a list, you can rearrange columns.

You can select a set in either the Excel workspace or in the overview area.

Each box in the Rows and Columns areas represents one or more sets in the crosstab. You can use the objects to drill up or down. The context that you specify in the Context box is used to filter the values. The crosstab shows the results only for the selected item.

The overview area caches the state of the last crosstab or list that you created. This means that when you open a saved workbook, the overview area does not reflect the context of the saved crosstab or list. To synchronize the overview area with the active crosstab or list, you must clear the cache of the overview area. You can do this by either closing the workbook and opening a new worksheet or restarting Microsoft Excel.

The work area, which appears when creating crosstabs or lists, is a Microsoft Excel workspace where you place data items for the crosstab or list reports that you design. After placing items in the Rows, Columns, Measure, and, optionally, Context of the crosstab, or Columns of the list, the data appears in the cells of the worksheet. The crosstab version of the work area is pictured here.

You can change, limit, or expand the items that you see in the crosstab, using techniques such as filtering and drilling, to quickly focus on the most significant items on your worksheet.

You can also drag and drop DMR and OLAP items directly into the cells of a worksheet. This is referred to as cell-based analysis or cell-based mode.

When using the exploration method, there are distinct drop zones where you can insert a new data item. The drop zones that you choose define the relationship between the data item and the column. When using the list mode, there is a single column drop zone where you can insert and nest data items.