Planning Analytics and Cognos Analytics Integration Tip:

Change PA member caption for CA reporting

The combination of Planning Analytics and Cognos Analytics is more powerful than ever before. Planning Analytics hierarchy structure is useful in traversing data within a Cognos Analytics interactive report. As a result, users can drill into actionable details behind summary analytics. One of the most noteworthy ways to help users is by making descriptive member captions.

The way users create and present metadata has changed in Planning Analytics and Cognos Analytics. Consequently, no longer does a package creator have the ability to select an alias to publish as the member caption. Instead of defining aliases at the creation of a package, a Planning Analytics modeler can create an alias called Caption. This, then, becomes the default member caption in Cognos Analytics.

Implementation Steps:

First of all, this is the report as it exists today. In this example, the budget versions underneath the quarters needs a better description.

To start, we will want a Planning Analytics modeler to open the PA model. This example will use Architect.

After Architect opens, the modeler will want to open the dimensions section.

Right click on the dimension that needs the new captions. The modeler should select Edit Element Attributes… from the pop-up menu.

The Attributes Editor appears as pop-up window with various attributes of the dimension.

Select the Edit menu at the top, left corner of the window. Select the Add New Attribute option.

Give the attribute the name “Caption.” IT MUST BE EXACTLY “Caption.” If there is a difference in case or spelling, then the dimension will not recognize the alias as the caption.

Set the type as “Alias” and select OK.

By default, the Caption (Alias) values will be the same as the element.

Change these cell values as desired. In this example, the user needs to change the budget version alias for Caption as follow.

Original Budget
Q1 Revised Budget
Mid Year Revised Budget

Select OK.

Architect automatically saves changes to the model. The modeler can now disconnect and close Architect.

Finally, report users can rerun the report. As a result, the values should now reflect the changes in the PA model to pull the new Caption alias values.