Reporting gives you access to a complete list of self-serve report types, is adaptable to any data source, and operates from a single metadata layer for a variety of benefits such as multilingual reporting.

With the reporting capability, you can personalize the style and quality of BI delivered to your key stakeholders; and you expand the community of BI users.

New features in version 8.4

• Increased visual appeal includes new background designs and colors. Users can add gradient colors and behind charts.
• IBM Cognos 8 v4 New chart types: Merimekko, Stepline, Sparkline, Sparkbar, Spark Win/Loss
• Report annotations: Users can add comments directly within the body of HTML-rendered reports.
• Enhanced suppression: Suppress all types of reports against relational, dimensionally-modeled relational, and OLAP sources. Also, users can also suppress rows, columns, or rows and columns based on "zero" values, "divide by zero" values, missing values, and overflow values.
• Extended filters now include wildcards, range, and between operations.
• Associated frames now drill together.
• Strategy Maps and Impact Diagrams now available as portlets that can be integrated into IBM Cognos Connection, IBM WebSphere, and MS Sharepoint portals.
• Data lineage: Users can access and view major transformations to data as it moves through the system.
• Expanded data access: Use data from IBM Cognos Now! and IBM Cognos TM1.

More targeted information

• Use tabbed portlet pages to navigate across multi-style, multi-page reports with critical information.
• Use briefing books to maximize your professional report presentation with customized page orientation, horizontal pagination, multiple tables of content, and personalized 'no data' scenarios.
• Schedule and burst multi-page reports to ensure that stakeholders receive relevant, consistent, and timely information.
• Save and store reports to any LAN location to save time, increase convenience, and facilitate easy access to reports and information.
• Use global filters to update the content across multiple objects in a portal page.

More user communities

• Allow business analysts to quickly and intuitively create and format statement-style reports with live data with the express authoring mode.

Complete reporting coverage

• User interface supports 10+ languages; reports delivered in 25+ languages.
• Multiple export formats: Excel, PDF, XML, HTML, and CSV.
• Flexible distribution methods: centralized access, email, application integration, and Office.
• A single architecture for viewing, querying, analyzing, and authoring for collaborative contributions to any report including dashboards.
• Report against any heterogeneous data source.
• Web-based deployment.

  Advanced authoring capabilities

• Intuitive and accessible self-service report authoring.
• Federated queries.
• Adaptive layout adjusts automatically when objects are added, moved, or removed.
• Embed live applications, Web sites, and non-BI content within a report.
• Drag-and-drop authoring incorporates data, text, charts, graphs, and images.
• Edit reports with prompts and toolbar commands.
• Interactive visualizations and charting abilities.
• Work with data using familiar business terms.
• Use a variety of charts: crosstabs, bar/3D bar, pie/doughnut, line, gauge, funnel, scatter, dot density, waterfall, and more.
• Create complex, multi-page layouts using different data sources without programming or workarounds.
• Conditional suppression and automatic calculations