Can I Access Report Objects as Graphics?

[charlopo]

I've been designing a high-level dashboard for executives in my company. We try to display most of our metrics through graphs and visualizations so that management can understand it, but I think we've reached the limit on what Cognos can do.

We're exploring alternatives to create more advanced visualizations (such as flow-charts in D3.js), and injecting javaSript into an Active Report seems to be impossible.

Ideally, I'd like to create my own web-page with custom content, as well as chart graphics from an existing Cognos Active Report.

Is there any way to put Cognos charts into a custom webpage? (i.e. generate a link or some embed code to a specific chart from a report).

Has anyone tried this or faced the same challenge of needing to add custom visualizations? Please share how you solved it.

EDIT: (In case it's relevant)
Cognos Version: 10.2.1 FP5
Most of the reports for this dashboard are Active Reports, but I could convert them to normal reports if necessary.

[bdbits]

If you really want custom, there is always the rave engine. It's not for the faint-of-heart and is anything but drag-and-drop - you'd need someone who knows how to code. There are some rave visualizations you can download - for example see http://www.ibm.com/web/portal/analytics/analyticszone/downloads/filter/?cV=/AnalyticsZone_Content/AZCatalog/Visualization/.

Pulling live Cognos content into other applications is generally pretty straightforward, actually. There are action URLs (basically a REST API), portlets for SharePoint and Websphere, and SDK-based methods. One of our developers did a POC using java, and it is pretty easy to pull out any individual piece of a report if desired. Authentication can be an issue when embedding content, depending on how Cognos authenticates versus the environment the user is coming through. If you have the same provider and credentials, it may be transparent, it just kind of depends on your infrastructure.

But this is for Cognos reports. I don't know how well this all works (if at all) with an Active Report, since that is essentially disconnected from Cognos. Of course you can save the Active Reports, or export the Cognos reports as PDFs, saved to a filesystem and pull those into your web pages without involving Cognos at all.

We have used most of these methods at one time or another to merge content on web pages. It's not hard, other than (potentially) authentication if connecting with Cognos.

[charlopo]

Thanks, bdbits. There aren't any RAVE Visualizations that match what we need yet unfortunately, although it would be the ideal solution for us.

I found some useful info about using the REST API to extract elements from the link below, and that may be the most likely route we'll take.
dW article in case anyone is curious: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1001cognosmashup/

[MFGF]

There aren't any RAVE Visualizations that match what we need yet unfortunately, although it would be the ideal solution for us.

IBM have a RAVE Tiger Team who create custom visualizations - it might be worth contacting your IBM account manager and asking if he/she could organise this for you. I guess it depends what you need and when as to whether it might be a viable option - possibly worth considering, though.

Cheers!

MF.