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IBM Data Platform Ideas Portal for Customers


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against products and services offered by the IBM Data Platform organization. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


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Status Submitted
Workspace Cognos Analytics
Components Dashboard
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 4, 2026

Allow Conditional Formatting (Color) on Summary/Total cells in Dashboard Crosstab Visualizations

Current Limitation: In Cognos Analytics Dashboards (including the current 12.1.3 release), the "Conditional color" formatting feature for Crosstab visualizations applies exclusively to detailed data cells. The system completely ignores the Summary rows and columns (Totals). Currently, users can only apply a static color to summaries via the "Summary fill color" property, but they cannot make the summary cells react dynamically based on data values.

Business Use Case / Justification: Business users and executives rely heavily on Crosstab totals to evaluate overall performance at a glance. Often, the Summary cell is the most critical number in the entire visualization. For example, if the Total Regional Sales fall below the budget or a specific threshold, the Total cell itself needs to be highlighted in Red or show a warning indicator. Without this feature, users miss out on immediate visual cues for aggregated results, forcing them to scan through all detail rows to understand if the overall goal was met. This dynamic formatting on totals is a basic expectation for users migrating from Excel or older Analysis Studio/Report Studio environments.

Desired Behavior: Enhance the "Conditional color" properties for Crosstab and Table visualizations in Dashboards to support Summaries. Ideally, this could be implemented in one of two ways:

  1. A simple checkbox in the conditional formatting pane: "Apply rules to summaries".

  2. A separate tab/section within the Conditional color pane allowing users to define specific thresholds and rules explicitly for the Summary level.

Implementing this feature would drastically improve the at-a-glance readability and effectiveness of executive dashboards.

Needed By Quarter