Example - Create a Portal Page

You can customize the IBM® Cognos® Connection portal by creating your own portal pages. You can choose the information that is most important to you and make it available from your page. Choose from different types of content and organize the pages in a way that works for you.

This exercise shows how to

  • Create a page
  • Add content to a page
  • Define the appearance of a page
  • Enhance the content of a page

You want to create a personal page that includes all of the reports and content that you worked on in the previous exercises so that you can easily view the content each time you log on to IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.

Things to notice:

  • In a portal page, you can add IBM Cognos content (such as business intelligence reports), utilities (such as URLs and bookmarks), and third-party portlets.
  • You can make a portal page available to a group in your organization, such as to the sales team, or you can create a portal page for your personal use.

Procedure

  1. Open IBM Cognos Connection:
    1. Start your Web browser.
    2. In the address bar, type the URL supplied by your administrator, and then press Enter. The URL looks something like this: http://servername/cognos
  2. In the IBM Cognos Welcome page, click IBM Cognos content and then click New Page New Page icon.
  3. Type the name My Sample Outdoors page, click Select My Folders as the location for the new page, and click Next.
  4. Specify the page layout:
    1. Under Number of columns, select two columns.
    2. Change the width of the first column to 40% and the second column to 60%.
  5. Add content to your page:
    1. Under the first column, click Add.
    2. Click IBM Cognos Content.
    3. Select the IBM Cognos Navigator, IBM Cognos Search, and IBM Cognos Viewer portlets. Click Add Add icon to move them to the Selected entries box. Tip: You can preview the content of the portlets by clicking View This Portlet View This Portlet icon.
    4. Click OK.
    5. In the first column, click IBM Cognos Viewer and click the right arrow Right Arrow icon.
      A screen capture of the new page wizard showing Cognos Viewer in the right pane.
    6. Click Next.
  6. Define the appearance of the page:
    1. In the Title box, type My Sample Outdoors page. Tip: You can change the formatting of the text.
    2. Click Next.
    3. Select the Add this page to the portal tabs check box.
    4. Click Finish.
    The My Sample Outdoors page that you created appears as a tab in IBM Cognos Connection.
  7. Enhance the content of your page:
    1. Click the My Sample Outdoors page tab.
    2. In the IBM Cognos Viewer portlet title bar, click Edit Edit icon.
    3. Under Entry, click Select an entry. Click Public Folders, Samples, Models, GO Data Warehouse (analysis), and Query Studio Report Samples. Select the Return Quantity by Product Line Chart sample report and click OK. Tip: You can also use any other sample report.
    4. Under Height (pixels), type 600.
    5. Click OK.

      The report now appears in your portal page.

      If the report was not previously run and saved, click the run button in the IBM Cognos Viewer portlet. In the Run with options page, click Save the report and then click Run.

    A screen capture of a portal page showing the embedded report.

Example

Try on your own:

  • Set the My Sample Outdoors page as your home page.
    Tip: Next to the home icon Home icon, click the arrow, and click Set View as Home.
  • Delete the page.
    Tip: From the tab menu Tab menu icon, on the left side of the tab bar, click Remove this tab.

What to do next

For information about creating portal pages, see the IBM Cognos Connection online help.

Parent topic: IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Examples