Implementation Tips for Cognos Analytics
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IBM released the newest version of their flagship business intelligence software, IBM Cognos Analytics, at the end of 2015. The redesigned Cognos BI has since gotten a lot of buzz, but not all press has been good press. Rumored upgrade challenges have left many current Cognos customers skeptical of the benefits to upgrading to the latest software. In this webinar, Norm Goddard put these rumors to the test by identifying key differences and demonstrating live upgrade examples. Learn about installation and configuration differences between Cognos BI v10 and Cognos Analytics and discover some of the benefits or challenges that will affect your upgrade decisions.
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Implementation Tips for Cognos Analytics
- 1. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Implementation Tips, Tricks & Gotchas Presented by Norm Goddard
- 2. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com • Introductions • Cognos Analytics Installation Considerations • Breaking Down Configuration Differences • Demonstration: Report Upgrades • Q & A Agenda
- 3. Analytics empowering clients to see farther & go faster BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: It’s Who We Are and What We Do. Business Value – Improve business processes via analytic solutions Vendor Agnostic – Data & analytics focus with leading technology expertise Partner Approach – Trusted advisor and evangelist, change cultures Our People are the Best – Experienced, passionate, professionals
- 4. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Senior BI Architect, CCG 19 years Consulting Experience Previously worked for IBM and Cognos for over 10 years IBM Certified Cognos Analytics Developer Meet Your Speaker Norm Goddard ngoddard@ccgbi.com P: 813.968.3238
- 5. Background • One of the first to IBM Cognos Analytics v11 Installations • IBM Cognos Analytics on IBM SoftLayer Challenges • Large enterprise for a national company • Four environments (Dev, QA, UAT, Production) • Load balancers Benefits of Cognos Analytics • Ease of use for business • Reduction of manual data processing • Reduced on-site infrastructure costs
- 6. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Architecture • 2 Gateways • 4 Application Servers • 1 Content Manager • 1 Standby Content Manager • 2 Load Balancers
- 7. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Installation Differences • “Glass” interface hosted on application tier allows gateway to be optional • Gateway only required for: • Single signon • Third party portal integration • Serve static content on the web server • Publicly available web server outside firewall
- 9. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Installation Differences cont’d • Easy install (Ready to Run! In previous versions) • Full version of IBM Cognos Analytics • Informix installed/configured for content store • Apache directory server • Custom install • Choose components as in previous releases • Recommended for existing customers as it enables legacy components by default • Legacy switch can be done after install but it’s difficult
- 10. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Installation Differences cont’d • Easy install then gives 2 choices • First install • Easy install option installs all components needed for single server • Create administrator credentials for environment • Connect and install • Expand on a running environment • Provide url and administrator id
- 11. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Installation Differences cont’d • Custom Install also give 2 choices • First install • Content manager required on first install and other components can be selected
- 12. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Installation Differences cont’d • Connect and Install (Expand) • Add additional components to an existing environment (standby cm, application server(s), optional gateways) • Need to have at least the primary Content Manager configured and running to use this • Different than typical installs where you could run multiple installs at the same time with just the components needed for that server. Now need to have the CM running at minimum
- 13. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Configuration Differences • Load balancer required now if more than one application server • Persistence “Sticky session” needs to be set on the application load balancer • Configuration server property • Identifies server that manages configuration values • Found under Environment settings in IBM Cognos Configuration • Runs on the active Content Manager • Automatically set in Easy install using Connect and install • On active Content Manager can use the Reset to Default option • If using the new Data Modules feature and the environment is distributed the setting ‘Location of directory for data file’ must be changed to a network path • Set under Manage -> Configuration in the browser, not in IBM Cognos Configuration • JDBC file path has changed -> install_locationdrivers
- 14. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Configuration Differences cont’d • Web server configuration • IIS configuration • http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21976435 • Apache configuration • http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21978208 • URL Rewrite on the web server • Redirect web requests from the web tier to the application tier
- 15. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Upgrade Considerations • Upgrading 11.0.x to future versions can be installed in same path • Images • Different default path (..webcontentbisamplesimages) • Reside on the application server(s) • 11.x will require a load balancer if more than 1 application server, 10.x did not require this • Have network path for Data Modules if required, 11.0.3 stores data sets in the content store now, previously were stored in file system • User interface very different from 10.x • No IBM Cognos Connection, replaced with Welcome • One Reporting tool, user interface profiles not available, yet • Customized files may not work
- 16. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Report Upgrades • Images • Different default path (..webcontentbisamplesimages) • Reside on the application server(s) • May need to update images depending on path used in previous version • Upgraded many complex reports without issues • Reports containing HTML or javascript will need to be checked as in any other upgrade of IBM Cognos • Reports created by users in Query, Analysis Studio and other legacy tools will need to be converted to Reports
- 17. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Demo – Using IBM Cognos Analytics
- 18. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Review • Installation differences and options • Configuration changes • Upgrade considerations
- 19. SEE FARTHER. GO FASTER. 2502 North Rocky Point Dr. Suite 650 | Tampa, FL 33607 | O: 813.968.3238 | www.ccgBI.com Coming Next… [LIVE WEBINAR] The Power of Predictive – Integrating Weather into Your Data 12pm EST | Tuesday, September 27th • Ahmed Sherif will demonstrate business use cases for integrating third party weather data into your BI for more powerful predictive analytics. Register at: go.ccgbi.com/weather.html
- 20. Questions?
- 21. Thank you! www.ccgBI.com 813.265.3239 info@ccgBI.com Convergence Consulting Group @ccgbi A copy of the recorded webinar and presentation will be emailed to you shortly. Please feel free to email any remaining questions to Caroline Wright at cwright@ccgbi.com
Editor's Notes
- Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. A few housekeeping things before we get started: All of your lines will remain muted throughout the webinar. We will work to reserve time for a Q & A session at the end of the webinar so please submit your questions via the chat window at any time and we will address them at the end. This webinar is being recorded. The recording and slides will be available to you after the webinar.
- Here’s a quick look at what we’re driving to get accomplished over the next 45 minutes. First I’ll give a brief introduction to my fellow speaker. Then we’ll talk through some of the business challenges behind user adoption barriers and how technology is evolving to help you overcome some of these challenges. That will lead us straight into your step-by-step guide for our recommended method for counteracting user adoption barriers when delivering a dashboard to a business unit followed by a demonstration that shows you a real life example of our speaker developing a dashboard for me, the Marketing team. Finally, we’ll save any remaining time for Q & A. Again you are welcome to begin submitting any questions throughout the webinar in the chat box.
- Before we get started, I wanted to give you a brief introduction to our company so you understand where our knowledge comes from throughout this webinar. Norm and I are both members of the Convergence Consulting Group (CCG) Team. We are based out of our headquarters in Tampa Bay. CCG is a Data & Analytics Consulting Firm that helps customer organizations overcome business challenges by transforming data into valuable insights. We are a vendor agnostic firm that specializes in helping companies of across the US achieve real business outcomes. We were one of the first to implement IBM Cognos Analytics earlier this year, so everything that you are hearing today is a result of true experience from multiple customer engagements.
- 1. Intro Norm Goddard As a Senior BI Architect in the IBM Channel at Convergence Consulting Group, Norm Goddard has over 16 years of experience in the business intelligence & advanced analytics arena. Previously a Solution Architect and Senior Consultant at RealPage Inc. and an Education Delivery Manager for North America, Norm has utilized IBM Cognos for over 13 years with technical proficiency. Over his Cognos BI career, Norm as served as an instructor, a Technical Manager and a Delivery Manager. Norm is well valued within our CCG team for his implementation tips and tricks for an array of Cognos systems. Hand it over to Norm
- One of the IBM Cognos Analytics Installations we did was a bit tricky, so we wanted to bring it to your attention.
- Diagram of Production environment QA is a mirror UAT just 2 application servers and 1 content manager Development 1 application server/content manager and 1 gateway
- The legacy switch is implicitly set during the install process. If the Custom install is used it is assumed this is an existing customer and enables the legacy components. Under the New, Other menu is where the legacy studios appear but only if a user has the capabilities for 1 or more of these studios. IE or FF needed to see all the legacy tools. Chrome only displays some. If the Quick install is used it is assumed it is a new customer with no need of the legacy components and disables the legacy switch. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21973909&aid=1
- Persistence needed for request routing in Cognos (affinity) The use of install_location\webapps\p2pd\WEB-INF\lib for locating JDBC drivers is not supported. For the IBM Cognos Analytics 11.0.x release, the JDBC drivers must be copied to install_location\drivers folder.
- There are two different ways that IIS can be configured depending on the need: Method 1: IIS and Application Request Routing (ARR) Extension configuration This method is used only if an external gateway is needed for any IBM Cognos Analytics Server architecture where the web server is publicly available or external to a firewall. Method 2: IIS and Application Request Routing (ARR) with Cognos Analytics Server gateway configuration This method is used if SSO, integration with 3rd party portals and/or serving up static content is needed.
- Upgrading 11.0.x to future versions can be installed in same path I still prefer to do side by side or new boxes. Found in working with support that there were file differences between versions when they had me modify a file to fix a bug. In newer releases that file didn’t exist anymore. Future release should not require application load balancer but don’t know when.
- Hand it over to Caroline after this page
- Hand it over to Caroline after this page