Your SpotOn the IBM Cognos Edge

Black and white; day and night, etc... 

When it comes to using Gantt charts (i.e. MS Project) as a management tool, there likely are two distinct camps.  If I’m any indication, the two sides are quite wary of each other, to say the least – “I don’t care what it says, there are more than 8 hours in a day!” 

Google “love” + “gantt” and you will see that there is a [eerie...] yin to my yang.

This 2-sided paradigm seems to extend to Cognos BI deployments: those that care about Gantt charts; and those that don’t. For those that care, they really care, to the point where some crazy attempts have been made to satisfy their Gantt-love desires.  Life just isn’t the same without those horizontal bars being there for help manage complex projects.

Outside of the “interesting” crosstab technique referenced above, Gantting (I just made that word up) has not been supported within Cognos BI.  However last month, SpotOn engineer Mark Mallany wrote (read: prematurely announced, but what the heck) about the introduction of Gantt charts in a Cognos 8 environment through SpotOn Vantage.  Since then, we have whipped up prototype Gantt charts for Fortune-type clients and others – with the interactive Gantt visual inside the Cognos 8 Viewer, driven by the report queries.  They now have a manageable and effective way of distributing their critical Gantt charts to thousands of users throughout their worldwide Cognos deployment.

On top of all this, the charts are functional.  That means:

• Data driven styles where specific styles and colors appear for “critical” tasks.
• Interactive task tree on the left side of the chart.
• Display of other tabular data in a list on the left of the chart.
• Drill up and down on timelines.
• Zoom in and out of various elements of the chart.
• Task rollups.
• And much more...

Are Gantt charts in your Cognos 8 environment important to you?  We are definitely looking to understand this space (Gantt charts in BI reports) better. Let's you and I have a chat!

CO