The new IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app is nice!

Just a quick post for today. It’s been a super busy week with stops in Barcelona, Munich and London. While sitting in the lounge in Munich, I was delighted to see that the IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app had been approved for the Apple iTunes store. A perfect opportunity to download it and test the offline capabilities at 33000ft cruising altitude. (I cannot wait to take the the app online this weekend!)

CLEAN AND SIMPLE

Once our plane had taken off, I pulled out my iPad and launched the app. European flights do not have WIFI, yet. But the app does support offline content. And so I was sitting there in seat 5D somewhere above Frankfurt and was able to test some of the dashboards and reports. Being able to work offline is a huge advantage, from my point of view. I have personally encountered so many situations where the wireless network was either poor or simply not accessible. But back to the Cognos app: The initial impression is excellent. The interface is nice and clean. It does not take any time at all to get up and running. Navigation is intuitive and all the usual finger movements (swiping, pointing etc.) work flawlessly.

IBM Cognos iPad
Offline content

SAMPLE CONTENT

The app contains some sample reporting applications. There is a good mixture of classic visual dashboards, typical numerical reports and some interactive graphics. Everything looks super clean and it is fun to engage with the content. You can swipe to move to another chart, you can click on buttons and there are drop-down lists. It’s as simple as that. And the application is pretty snappy: you use a gesture and it immediately reacts .

IBM Cognos Go Mobile
Engaging with the content is easy

IBM Cognos Mobile for iPad does support really useful and powerful chart types such as Stephen Few’s bullet charts, sparklines, etc.. This is great for designing effective dashboards for mobile and offline use.

Cognos Bullet Charts
Sparklines, bullet charts and more on the iPad

The sample reporting applications actually contain a lot of data. I was able to drill down several levels. Spreadsheets and PDFs cannot compete with that. You can also highlight some areas and share reports along with comments. Simply click on the pen, write on the screen and click the email button. Perfect for reviewing stuff on the plane.

Email the report to your colleagues

The offline mode is great. I cannot wait to connect to our different live systems this weekend. Stay tuned for a more in-depth review over the next week or two. And make sure to download the IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app!


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Comments

4 responses to “The new IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app is nice!”

  1. Yes, I’m looking forward to playing with this as well.

    I was really disappointed with Cognos 10 mobile. (I think the usability isn’t great, it does a terrible job of rendering prompt pages, is slow,and is just generally unstable.)

    question….do you happen to know of a decent i-pad simulator? (that I can run on Windows 7)

  2. Anonymous

    Thanks for your feedback! Not aware of an iPad simulator. Will do some research. Have fun playing with the app!

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  4. That’s a really slick design!