Katie McCray - MIS Project Analyst, Bush Industries Furniture Mfg

[Kattrix]

Hello Everyone! My role as a project analyst covers many topics, including that of our one-and-only Cognos developer/modeler/end-user/etc within the company. We are a furniture manufacturer located in Jamestown, NY, and we use Powerplay for Windows with cubes created via Transformer with Impromptu .iqd files. We have just recently started the ball rolling in our company with this software and adding on additional end users.

I look forward to this website gaining some ground to help all of us 'newbies' out there... and in turn, we can learn and help others along the way.

[COGNOiSe administrator]

Great stuff, Kattrix.

How's the user feedback been like on the COGNOS tools?

[Kattrix]

Skeptical, at first. We have actually had these products for two years now. However, the developer before me created one huge, cumbersome, over-populated cube using terms that the users were not familiar with... thus leaving the cube slow and non-user friendly...not to mention the garbage that went in to it. At the time, the users had a bad taste of it. When I took over, I created many smaller, more customized cubes. After I trained the first two users, they put out a good word on the ease of use & accuracy... and the ball has been rolling since. Now, we have approx 10 cubes and more users coming on board all the time.

Formatting, however, is by far the biggest complaint. The inability to format individual cells within Powerplay is an issue. Also, the lack of printing adjustments/formats is a complaint - mainly the margin size minimum of .50.

[COGNOiSe administrator]

It's amazing how common that storyline is. ..Company finally invests in much needed BI tool...Consultant/Internal IT goes nuts building datawarehouse/cubes from hell...Performance grinds to halt and overnight builds take 2 weeks to complete...Users get shirty..cognos deemed unuseable.

Good thinking on training your two initial 'power' users. Got some viral marketing happening.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Thanks for signing-up Kattrix, hope you find COGNOiSe useful.

Cheers