The Research and Development industry revolves around schedules and timing of deliverables. We are constantly looking for ways to visualize extremely complicated timeslines. The biggest challenge we encounter in getting clients to use the Cognos product line is that it does not support Gantt charts.
Every time a client finds a vendor that has any Gantt chart functionality, that portion of reporting moves away from our Cognos environment.
I tend to find the visualization part of Cognos a bit wanting. They are getting better with Active Reports, but I suspect you're looking for a solution for live reports.
There are a few solutions.
1. SpotOn has a very nice looking Gantt solution. http://www.spotonsystems.com/products/spoton-vantage/demos/gantt-chart-business-intelligence-demo/ (http://www.spotonsystems.com/products/spoton-vantage/demos/gantt-chart-business-intelligence-demo/). I've never had the chance to use it, but it does look impressive.
2. FusionCharts has a Gantt chart available in their FusionWidgets line. It's a bit complicated to use it, as it involves some JavaScript, but it works well. I've written previously on how to embed FusionCharts into Cognos reports, here (http://cognospaul.com/2011/06/09/fusion-charts-in-cognos-links/), here (http://cognospaul.com/2011/06/02/fusion-charts-in-cognos-volume-1-part-1-3d-column-charts/), and here (http://blog.fusioncharts.com/2011/07/embedding-fusioncharts-into-cognos-reports/).
3. You could probably do something nice cool acceptable using a crosstab and conditional formatting.
Thanks, I was not aware of fusion charts. The cross tab solution may also work out. Thanks again.
With the introduction of the new Visualizations in 10.2.1 you can now have Gantt charts. They are available for download here:
https://www.analyticszone.com/homepage/web/visualizationsDownload.action
You must be on 10.2.1 to be able to use them.
Or if you install 10.2.1.1 (10.2.1 FixPack 1) - then you can have Gantt Charts available in your report studio reports and workspaces.
Enjoy !.
:) Thanks, I did get a walkthrough of 10.2.1 and it looks like there will be Gantt charts there. We are looking at the upgrade. Rave is going to be a challenge, but at least there are Gantt charts.
In the meantime, the crosstab Gantt chart solution from 8.4 is workable and filters nicely in Active reports.