Display a Single IBM Cognos Analytics Dashboard Visualization

Display a Single IBM Cognos Analytics Dashboard Visualization

Question

Within an IBM Cognos Analytics dashboard, there is a single visualization that is needed to complete a Digital Hive data story. Following this knowledge base document, https://support.digitalhive.com/portal/en/kb/articles/select-visual-from-powerbi, a lone PowerBI visualization was added to the data story. Is it possible to obtain the same results using IBM Cognos Analytics?


Answer

The following technique only applies to IBM Cognos Analytics version 12.0.2 and higher
There is no direct way to access individual dashboard objects, like there is with PowerBI or Qlik Sense, but starting in IBM Cognos Analytics version 12.0.2, there is a technique to accomplish the task. Access to the physical IBM Cognos Analytics server file system will be required.

  1. Launch the desired Cognos dashboard as a user with EDIT capabilities for the desired dashboard
  2. Enter edit mode by clicking on the Edit toggle  
  3. Click on the required visualization to select it

  4. In the toolbar,  click on the Embed icon 
  5. Copy the code snippet from the Embed window by clicking on the copy icon 
  6. Close the Embed window
  7. Open a text editor
  8. Press the Enter key a few times to move the cursor down the file
  9. Paste the copied code snippet
  10. Move the cursor to the beginning of the file and add this code to the document
    <!DOCTYPE html><html><body>
    <div style="height:400px">

  11. Go to the bottom of the document, AFTER the pasted Cognos 12 code snippet from step 8, and add this to the document
    </body>
    </html>

  12. The document should now look something like this:

  13. Save the file with a .html extension (in this example, the files was saved as embed_sales_by_day.html)
  14. Copy the embed_sales_by_day.html file and paste it into the <install_directory>\ibm\cognos\analytics\webcontent\bi\samples folder
  15. Launch Digital Hive and open the desired Hive
  16. Open the Hive Designer
  17. Navigate to the desired Hive page
  18. From themenu drag a   tile onto the page
  19. In the Properties panel, locate the Webpage Properties section
  20. Enter the URL to the embed_sales_by_day.html file. Based on the previous steps, this URL should be something similar to: https://cognos12server.domain.com/ibmcognos/bi/samples/embed_sales_by_day.html
  21. Press LOAD
  22. If the URL is correct, the visualization will load. If the  icon appears, then something is either incorrect with the URL, or there is an issue with the code that was entered as part of steps 8-13
  23. Once the visualization has successfully loaded, save the changes and exit the Hive Designer
Now when that Hive page is loaded, Digital Hive will load the embed_sales_by_day.html page and the IBM Cognos Analytics code will be launched, which will display the solitary dashboard visualization.