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FIVE Facts About G-Cloud That Will Make You Think Twice We understand that the G-Cloud is an invaluable tool for UK public service organisations, helping to make procurement for public service IT easily accessible. Read on to discover the benefit of ...

Data: Going back to basics to stay ahead of the curve. Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and automation are three of the most advancing technologies many organisations are looking to adopt. However, savvy business leaders know that in ...

Accelerated Graduate Development at Simpson Associates Over the past 25 years, Simpson Associates have worked tirelessly to curate a Graduate Development scheme that provides each and every one of our graduates with the best possible mix of hands-on client experience, paid-for ...

According to Greg Adams, Vice President Developer, and Distinguished Engineer, IBM Business Analytics, a number of IBM competitors are trying to sow doubt about IBM’s commitment to IBM TM1 and IBM Planning Analytics. Being one of the longest-serving IBM consultancies in ...

If you find Snapshot to Excel appears to hang at the ‘Currently Publishing…’ stage, consider the length of the element names in the title dimensions you have selected to import. The critical dimension is the last dimension on the list which ...

IBM has announced the official end of support for Cognos Planning 10.1.1 as the 30th April, 2018. This may have different implications depending on a variety of circumstances. Due to this we are available to discuss your individual queries and needs, ...

Following the success of its Power BI service, Microsoft has unveiled a new licensing option for Power BI, ‘Power BI Premium’ that offers organisations more user licensing flexibility along with performance-tuning options. Power BI Premium is based on the capacity-based licensing ...

This month Microsoft are delivering a number of great capabilities. They are introducing Quick measures, which is a huge update to the Quick Calculation experience. They have some very exciting updates in both data connectivity and query editing, including allowing you ...

IBM has announced the official end of support for Cognos BI 10.2.x versions as the 30th April, 2018. This may have different implications depending on a variety of circumstances. Due to this we are available to discuss your individual queries and ...

Microsoft is ever changing its Power BI product capabilities with monthly releases. Our monthly Microsoft Power BI roundup provides information regarding key updates to the tool. Microsoft release several highly-requested features in this month’s Desktop release We have a very exciting Power ...

Last December IBM introduced us to the new face of TM1, IBM Planning Analytics. This announcement introduced a cloud based self-service, Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting tool into the IBM Tool set. Up until now though the new face of TM1 had ...

Within all TM1 environments 9.5.X environments through to 10.2.2, Fix Pack 6, client (Performance Modeler, Cognos Insight, Architect, Perspectives) to server communications are encrypted by default using IBMs ‘Applix’ certificate chain of trusts and corresponding private keys. When all TM1 ...

This blog describes how to deal with the TM1 error message occasionally received when you are trying to deploy an application (TM1 version 10 onwards). Full error message and details: The error occurs when you are trying to re-deploy an application from ...

*Please note that you can click on the images to enlarge them* The Excel add-in is one of BOARD’s most user-friendly features. It allows the end user to edit data and execute familiar formulas whilst still benefitting from the exceptional reporting ...

There are some really great updates to OneDrive for Business from an IT Administrators/Managers point of view in the Office 365 stack recently; One of main ones is that you can now restrict Onedrive sync to domain joined only machines. This ...

We are often asked by client’s VMware and Hyper-V administrators, where Cognos BI is hosted within a virtualised environment for confirmation on how Cognos deals with CPU cycles and the result/requirement this has on the Hypervisor platform. This blog will ...

*Please note that you can click on the images to enlarge them* I was recently working on deployment of SQL Server PowerPivot 2014 integration with SharePoint 2013. Once the components were successfully installed and configured, I created a sample PowerPivot Report within ...

  I was recently carrying out work for a client to upgrade their existing TM1 10.2.2 environment to Fix Pack 1. Once I installed Fix Pack 1 for TM1 server components on top of the existing 10.2.2 environment, I proceeded to starting ...

Recently we’ve encountered issues with Cognos Express whereby the CXMD (TM1) service stops almost immediately after starting. No error messages are presented except the Express Manager page indicates something is wrong, with other components complaining that Manager is in an unhealthy ...

{Remember you can expand the images below by clicking on them} In TM1 Architect in Express 10.2.1, when you select a Server and right click to select View Transaction Log You receive the following error The issued is caused by the fact that ...

The TM1 server crashes after the SaveDataAll process is scheduled to run as a chore. This can results in loss of data/changes made since the last successful SaveDataAll process was run, and will require the express services to be restarted ...

We recently encountered the following bug in SQL 2012 with the import export wizard. The problem occurs when you are using a query as the source for the import.  This cause’s data type mapping issues with any varchar datatypes, it changes ...

If you have upgraded recently to use the latest versions of Internet Explorer 10 or Internet Explorer 11 you might notice some issues when using Cognos BI Studio. Issues include:- * Icons not displaying in Cognos Studio * Blank page when opening a ...

Error when trying change the format of a data Item (HAL Error – rs_fm_dta_frmt_props_en.xml) In report studio when you try to change the format of a data item either by using the Properties pane and selecting Data Format or selecting the ...

Did you know Microsoft has recently announced the general availability of Power BI a cloud-based business intelligence service for analysing data with Excel and Office 365? Our easy to digest infographic explains some of the core features to this product. ...

SQL Server 2012 introduced a new range of features all aimed at improving delivery of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. This included some improvements to T-SQL which could easily be overlooked, but are extremely useful, particularly in the development of BI ...

How can I log into the portal? - Email help@simpson-associates.co.uk and provide your email address, they will create a new userid and set your password. I have forgotten my password? -  Email help@simpson-associates.co.uk and request a new password. I have forgotten my login details? ...

Cognos create many temporary files when performing many activities such as generating reports and creating cubes. These are stored in the temp location which is specified in Cognos Configuration, under Environment.   By default this is <Cognos Installed directory> temp If you have Transformer ...

IBM has released the new version of Cognos Business Intelligence this week – version 10.2. The latest release contains welcomed updates as well new features across the suite of BI applications. Business Workspace Instantly the first thing that you'll notice is that ...

A useful feature for importing an existing Contributor Application within the Cognos Planning Contributor Administration Console, if you haven’t taken a deployment using the export wizard is the ‘Link to Existing Applications’ option. This is available when right clicking on ...

  For help debugging Cognos 10 Active Reports, it's possible to select a run option that shows the state of active report variables in the report as you click various controls: With the Active Report open in Report Studio, select the ...

Earlier this year whilst installing Cognos Planning 10.1.1, I uncovered a fairly major bug (or "known issue" as IBM like to call them). The environment consisted of a single Windows 2008 Cognos Planning server and a SQL Server 2008 SQL Server ...

As part of on-going internal infrastructure projects, we have recently implemented new Endpoint security across our network namely Microsoft Forefront 2010. As part of the prerequisites for Forefront we needed to install Microsoft SCCM 2007. The configuration of SCCM and Forefront ...

Following a recent support call I found a nice way of changing the overall look and feel of a Cognos 8 report that has been imported into a Cognos 10 environment. When I looked at the XML of a new (blank) ...

If you receive this error message after installing IBM Cognos BI or Planning on a Windows 2008 64bit server: HTTP Error 500.0 - Internal Server Error The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred. Then it is more than ...

During a recent site visit we found that IBM Cognos 10.1.1 could not print PDF Cognos reports. We received the following error: Failure RSV-DST-0014 Unable to deliver the output of the report. See the run history details for more information. Ensure ...

Have you ever wanted to add database specific functions into Report Studio for easy access? Here’s how: 1. On your Cognos server navigate to the following directory: <C10 INSTALLATION DIRECTORY>c10configurationfunctions 2. Open the FileList.xml which contains definitions and descriptions of vendor specific functions. ...

During a recent Cognos BI and Planning, 8.4.1 to 10.1 upgrade I experienced issues around using port 443 for HTTPS access to the gateway. After successfully completing the installation of 10.1, I was able to access Cognos connection via the ...

During an installation of Cognos 10.1 on a distributed environment, I ran into Windows Firewall issues. The environment consisted of 2 failover Content Manager servers, 2 Dispatcher servers and 1 Gateway server. I successfully started the first Content Manager server; ...

A known issue has arisen in the latest versions of IBM Cognos Planning when installing on 64bit servers as detailed here: https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21472649. On developing a new production environment in our own infrastructure I was hit by the issue myself, but ...

I have recently been working with a client to implement a corporate style/theme incorporating their company's logo, which will be displayed across the client's Cognos Connection. After we successfully implemented the style, it would usually be the case that the individual ...

I have lost count of the amount of occasions we see clients in a pickle due to a corrupt Content Store database. On many instances the only option is to revert to a working backup of the Content Store. However, IT may not ...

I was completing an install for a client this week and the Cognos 10 External Data Wizard was not launching and all the buttons where greyed out. If I logged on to the server as the same user, it worked correctly. I ...