Reports for workspaces in Cognos Workspace

To create effective reports for use in workspaces in Cognos Workspace:

• Ensure that all the objects and pages within the report have meaningful names.

  For some objects, such as data containers, Report Studio gives the object in a report a default name such as List 1, List2, and so on. In Cognos Workspace, these names appear in the Content tree. To help business users recognize the report objects, rename them to something more meaningful (Properties pane, Name property).

  If you do not want an object to be added in a workspace, clear the Name property for that object. The object will not appear in the Content tree. However, you cannot clear the name of data containers. Report Studio requires that data containers have names.

  Note: Cognos Workspace does not support tables and blocks. Unsupported objects do not appear in the Content tree in Cognos Workspace, even if you specify a name for the object.
• Create a container report that includes all the report objects that workspace users might want to add in a report. Such a report is not meant to be run and does not need to show report objects in a proper layout. It is only used as a container for the various report parts. Each page of a report appears as a folder within the Cognos Workspace Content pane.

  For example, on one page named Prompts you can insert all the possible prompts that users might want to add to a workspace, and give each prompt a useful business name, such as Value Prompt for Region. On a second page named Charts, you can insert a number of charts useful for workspaces.

• Ensure that the titles and labels used in your report are understandable by business users.
• Ensure that you use report objects that are well suited for dashboards. They convey the most information in as little space as possible. For example, if you include a chart, use bullet charts, microcharts, line charts, or column and bar charts. Use conditional blocks to show business indicators.
• If your report includes charts, customize the font sizes so that the charts appear correctly in a dashboard. You may need to reduce the font sizes.
• If your report includes embedded objects, such as a list with an embedded chart and crosstab, the embedded objects do not appear in the Cognos Workspace Content pane, unless the embedded objects are in a table object. When you insert an object that contains embedded objects, the embedded objects will be inserted in the workspace.

  When embedded objects are in a table object, the embedded objects appear in the Content pane. Table objects do not appear in the Content pane because Cognos Workspace does not support Report Studio table objects. Consequently, you can insert the embedded objects in a workspace, but not the table.

• If your report includes a map, customize the colors of the map in Report Studio so that they match the color palette of the dashboard. You cannot edit the color palette of a map from within a workspace in Cognos Workspace.
• If your report is using a dimensional data source and you enable drill-up and drill-down, in the Drill Behavior window, specify that the column title uses member caption values.

  Cognos Workspace does not support drill up and drill down with level label values as the column titles. Cognos Workspace always uses member captions.