Hello, and welcome to another edition in the series “SAC – What’s new”.
The days are getting shorter and the year is rapidly drawing to an end. What has been happening in SAP Analytics Cloud? A lot – we can say that for sure. And my summary after this year’s DSAG conference promises great things for the future of SAC.
But first, let us look back – what new highlights are waiting for us?
New developments in the story environment
Planning of stories
System variables (temporary) can be recorded in the planning of stories both in the subject field and the messages field. This helps e.g. with periodically planned stories.
In planning, the input help for available variables can be called up by entering the square bracket [.
The defined mail subject text “Sales Overview for [=Month] [=Year]” is displayed for the recipient as “Sales Overview October 2022”.
There are currently still problems with this. For instance, certain keyboard layouts cause the input help to not appear. This is explained in the SAP note https://me.sap.com/notes/0003228414 and should be solved in the foreseeable future.
Ranking function
You now have the possibility of specifying the ranking order of your diagrams based on several dimensions, including the ranking of all dimensions individually and the ranking separately per dimension.
This function is only available in the optimised story experience.
Filter sorting
The different filter elements are now easy to sort within the story (e.g. by drag and drop).
This function is only available in the optimised story experience.
New in the planning environment
FOREACH expansion in formulas
In expanded formulas, you can now also use dimension attributes in FOREACH.
With the new keyword, ASC or DESC, with dimensions or dimension attributes you can iterate instructions via the FOREACH loop in ascending or descending order.
New value driver tree
The creation of new legacy value driver trees in a separate designer is no longer permitted.
An existing legacy value driver tree can still be edited and used, but it can and should be converted into the new value driver tree.
You can look up the procedure for the transformation of a legacy driver tree into the new value driver tree via the following link: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ANALYTICS_CLOUD/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/a3caf7aa130c4d1cab5769318fd31018.html.
Other highlights and conclusion
A quick overview of other highlights:
- Comprehensive updating of the SAP Analytics Cloud – an add-in for Microsoft Office
- Exporting user-defined widgets to PDF
- Further adjustments and function extensions in the calendar area of planning
- Saving search words and filters within catalogs after logging out.
- Expansion of the import interface
There is still also a great deal of untapped potential in the areas of
- Content management
- Modelling
- Calendar
- Mobile
and much more.
It is noticeable that more and more new features are only supported in the optimized mode. You should therefore already be considering taking this new route when creating stories.
As already implied at the beginning, this year’s DSAG annual conference was a pleasure for budding and long-standing SAC users. Here is a small sample from the pipeline of future SAC developments, to wrap up the blog and whet your appetites for the next installment! Because it shows us that “this horse isn’t standing around – it’s galloping”:
- Improved integration between SAC and BW/4HANA, HANA, BPC, SAP S/4HANA, and HANA Cloud
- Consolidation of stories, applications, and the digital boardroom
- New and improved planning features
- Extensive planning functionalities in the SAP Analytics Cloud Excel add-in for Office
Until next time!