Auto Rows and/or Columns Headings in Crosstab

[bozobozo]

Data:  Relational  (NOT DIMENSIONAL)
Version: 10.2
Hello-
I posted a similar question in the WorkspaceAdvanced Forum, but this would apply to RS as well and I see this forum is more active.

I am relatively new to Cognos but I believe the best practice to create Crosstab Rows/Columns headings is to drag crosstab space(s) into the report and manually type in the item names (or change the crosstab space source type property to Data Item Label and then specify the data item that has the desired label to display to have the name appear without typing).  Is this the generally accepted best practice for a crosstab?

My related question is:  Does anyone find this very annoying?  We are migrating from another BI application which has a toggle option to show/not show column and/or row headings automatically.  You never have to type or create anything manually.  And if you move the items around in the report, the headers automatically follow.  So, with Cognos, we find this very frustrating especially when users are creating their own reports in WorkspaceAdvanced and wish to flip data for any given need.  When I tell them they have to create the headings manually, they look at me in disbelief.  I know it may seem trivial, but the headers are very important to the context of the data and creating them manually is an ongoing pain (especially when moving items around in a report causes you to rearrange the headers).  Any similar feelings out there?  Thank you.

[Gollapudi]

Hi Bozo,

Its neither strange nor annoying, your doing the right thing (must say whc is the only way) that's how Crosstab is since version CRN 1.1/Cognos8 (since 2006/2005 I remember).
But otherwise I really don't see a need of Rows/Columns heading in Crosstab, it looks much better without them, typical business users should feel the same  :D

You may wanna tell them, that's how it works in Cognos even if they cant believe it, when they got used to another BI tool they tend to find similar functionality, but Cognos has got its own amazing feature which other BI tools doesnt, they should probably stop comparing and start learning Cognos.

Cheers,
Venu.

[Lynn]

Data:  Relational  (NOT DIMENSIONAL)
Version: 10.2
Hello-
I posted a similar question in the WorkspaceAdvanced Forum, but this would apply to RS as well and I see this forum is more active.

I am relatively new to Cognos but I believe the best practice to create Crosstab Rows/Columns headings is to drag crosstab space(s) into the report and manually type in the item names (or change the crosstab space source type property to Data Item Label and then specify the data item that has the desired label to display to have the name appear without typing).  Is this the generally accepted best practice for a crosstab?

My related question is:  Does anyone find this very annoying?  We are migrating from another BI application which has a toggle option to show/not show column and/or row headings automatically.  You never have to type or create anything manually.  And if you move the items around in the report, the headers automatically follow.  So, with Cognos, we find this very frustrating especially when users are creating their own reports in WorkspaceAdvanced and wish to flip data for any given need.  When I tell them they have to create the headings manually, they look at me in disbelief.  I know it may seem trivial, but the headers are very important to the context of the data and creating them manually is an ongoing pain (especially when moving items around in a report causes you to rearrange the headers).  Any similar feelings out there?  Thank you.

What was the other BI application?

[bozobozo]

To Lynn-
Hyperion Explorer (formerly Brio and now Oracle).  Explorer is pc based vs. web based RS/CWA so not sure how much of a difference that makes.  But in any event, IMO, auto headers should be a given for any tool.

To Gollapudi-
With respect, I completely disagree.  Unless you are working with a very simple crosstab where you can guess at the fields or are just making a quick and dirty throw-away report, any report looks better with columns/rows headings and they certainly add value and meaning to the data.  Especially with the side area where you can 4, 5 or 6 items in there.  Everyone I work with has these auto headings turned on in our current application.  A crosstab without headers is a shoemaker job.
I do tell them that this is how Cognos works and I am happy I have at least uncovered the best practice so I can relay that.  And certainly there are pros and cons from app to app, but IMO auto headings should definitely be standard.

[hikerbiker]

I agree with bozobozo and Lynn.  I work in a planning area where we run queries daily.  In fact, most of our time is spent running queries and analyzing data.  Many of the reports we run and data we extract is pages long... row after  row, and we often have 12 - 20 columns of data across.   Without column headings, we have to spend much time trying to figure out which column we are looking at.  We can do the crosstab space thing to get our column headings but that is extremely inefficient.  If our company wants us to spend time creating headings each time we have to rerun/edit a report .... so be it.  I know the answer I will give for our inefficiency.     
I hope that the column headings would appear automatically so that we can be more efficient at our jobs.  I do not care for some posts that want to speak for all business users.  I have  been a business user in planning for over 20 years and have a pretty good idea of what business users need/want in our area.

[bdbits]

If you have an enhancement request, please submit it to IBM. If they hear from enough of us, there is a chance they will change the product. If not, it may never surface with the developers.

I share the frustration. I would note it is with crosstabs but not other types like lists. For non-dimensional data sources, you may find better performance avoiding crosstabs anyway as I believe it has to essentially build it in memory, which could be resource-intensive. Of course there are times you really do need a crosstab with relational data, but for now at least we just have to live with the limitation.

[Lynn]

Here is the link to request functional enhancement (RFE): http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21692679

I didn't make a statement one way or the other about the matter. On a spectrum ranging from nice-to-have functionality to omg-my-world-is-ending-without-it functionality I'd come in well over on the nice-to-have end of the spectrum.

Of course every user environment and their requirements are different. We all form opinions based on our experiences and I appreciate that Cognoise is a place where people can learn from each other and openly share opinions without things turning unpleasant when opinions and experiences differ.

[bozobozo]

First of all, thank you for your opinions on this topic and please keep them coming.  I GUARANTEE you I will get this in front of the Cognos development team and the more ammo we have the better.

Fundamentally, I would agree this is not 'end of the world' functionality, but rather than 'nice to have' I would characterize it as 'should be part of a standard offering'.  Coming from a different world, we expect that column and row headers are created automatically AND move accordingly as we shuffle data items around.  Anything less is silly.  I certainly do recognize the pros and cons between various applications and in this case I hope you appreciate a perspective coming from a different application.    PS - I'm glad I found COGNOiSe  :)

[astroboy44]

Hi,
I agree with Bozobozo and Hikerbiker! To me, report column headers should be automatic. We shouldn't even need to be having this conversation. Why wouldn't any report software create headers automatically?? To think we have to do this manually for cross-tab reports now for all columns and all reports blows my mind. My area has been using Hyperion (Brio) reports for 15+years. We run many reports daily (we have hundreds of reports for each team and about a thousand across the organization) and our reports can be very long & very wide so not having headers is not an option and having to do it manually is very inefficient, especially up-front while we're transitioning from Hyperion to Cognos. Thank you Bozobozo for raising this concern! As has been said, although not a sev1 critical issue, it is an important one and needs to be prioritized with Cognos development as an iterative improvement, since IMO, it should have been a no brainier to include in the original release.