Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Planning

Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Planning

Overview of this book

Business planning is no longer just about defining goals, identifying critical issues, and then mapping out strategies. In today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment, companies with complex business models want their abstract strategies turned into discrete, executable plans. They want information from the field to reach decision makers in real-time so that they can fine-tune their plans as events unfold. IBM Cognos 8 Planning offers just that. This book provides you with everything you need to know for building planning models using IBM Cognos 8 Planning. After reading this book, you can begin your journey into model building bringing with you a perspective that comes from three of the most seasoned IBM Cognos Planning consultants in the business. In this book, you will learn how to build planning models using IBM Cognos Planning's modeling tool, Analyst. We introduce you to key objects in Analyst that let you define, store, and move data. Then we show how you can deploy the model to hundreds or thousands of users using IBM Cognos Planning's web-based tool, Contributor. We demonstrate some of the things you can do as an administrator and as a user. Finally, we show the automation tools that you can use to maintain and support your models. As we go through this, we will share with you tips and tricks and insights from our experience with real implementations.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
IBM Cognos 8 Planning
Credits
About the Authors
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
Preface
5
Defining Data Structures: D-List
Index

Entering data into D-Cubes


There are several ways of entering data into a D-Cube. The simplest way is to type the data directly into the cell. But you can also enter data in several other ways: you can copy and paste data from a spreadsheet, you can enter data into a range of cells using the data-entry command function, or you can link data from a source outside of the D-Cube.

Data color conventions

Analyst displays data in a variety of colors. Non-calculating data entry cells display data in blue. Calculated cells display data in black. When you type into a data entry cell, the data first appears in green. When you press Enter, the data turns purple and any calculated data will turn red. When you save the D-Cube, the data that you entered turns blue. These colors represent stages in the way the D-Cube processes data. Green means that the data has been typed. Red means the data has been stored in memory and the D-Cube recalculated. Blue means the data has been stored in the file.

Data entry...