In July, Cognos released 11.1.3 and last week they released 11.1.4. I must have been snoozing during the release of 11.1.3 because something totally slipped by me and I didn't notice it until it was pointed out by IBM at Data and AI Forum.
In 11.1.3, they made a significant change to the filter dialog that you use in the viewer (what your consumer would see).
I did read the release notes but here is what they said:
The filtering dialog on a visualization (Create custom filter) has been improved. There is a new search functionality and you can manually input items.
You can also filter on string, numeric range, and dates, as well as empty, null and whitespace strings. For more information, see Creating a filter based on one data item.
Total snoozefest. No wonder I didn't even try it out.They really should have held a press conference. What they changed is HUGE. Enormous.
Rachel Su (offering manager for reporting) showed it at Forum this morning. As she was demoing (Have you ever seen her demo? She's my absolute favorite presenter. So smart. So funny.) and she shows this. I did not understand why people didn't start clapping. Maybe they paid more attention than me and they weren't surprised at all. Maybe they haven't been teaching reporting classes for almost 20 years and haven't had to answer the same three questions over and over:
1) What does before and after aggregation mean when filtering on a measure?
2) Can I copy and paste in a list of values to filter on?
3) Can i manually enter a value for text values? (This one became an issue when they super simplified the filter dialog (over simplified) and you lost the ability to type in text - at least in the business user dialog box.)
In the viewer, when a user clicks on the filter icon on a number, here is what they see now:
That is SO much easier to understand. I have entire modules on this. I've lost hours of my life trying to describe this to users.
Manual list of values? Yes, please.
It's ok to cry. I cried. Notice no quotes - honestly. Cried. Happy tears.
Also, check out the search options:
See. They need a press conference. AI is nice. But pasting a list of values to filter on? Magic.
What do you think? Now I'm wondering what else I have missed.