Working with Data Change Insights

With the help of data change insights, users of an analytic application can subscribe to charts' top N data change insights in an application by day or week to intelligently auto-discover significant data changes of a dashboard application within a particular period.

The user will receive the insights as notification via an SAP Analytics Cloud notification, or email.

Setting Data Change Insights

At design time, you as an application designer can enable or disable Data Change Insights in the Analytic Application Details that can be opened via the File menu.

You can also decide which chart can show the Data Change Insights context menu at runtime and whether the chart is subscribed by default or not via the settings in the Styling panel.

Subscribing to Data Change Insights

If application designer has enabled Data Change Insights, application users can subscribe to data change insights during the application runtime in the toolbar: from Tools, choose Subscribe Data Change Insights.

Some subscription details can be set in the dialog, including:

Name
Subscription Recurrence: start time, by day or week within a particular period
Maximum Insights Count

By default is Top 5 Changes, and can list up to Top 10.
Sending to email or mobile app, or both
Skipping notifications when no insights found
Script Variables (if applicable)
Bookmark

Only one bookmark per subscription is allowed

The application name and current user are the default email subject and recipient.

After having set the subscription, a calendar task is created. This way users will receive notifications within a configured particular period via:

notification email
SAP Analytics Cloud notifications

At runtime application users can change from the chart context menu. for each chart the subscription mode to Subscribed, Subscribed: High Importance and Unsubscribed.

Note

Only the subscribed charts will be considered in data change insights.

Note

Please be aware that data change insights supports auto mode only: It is triggered automatically after the onInitialization event completion, and before the PDF generation.

Supported Charts for Data Change Insights

Depending on the data change types, different chart types are supported:

Value Change
- Bar/Column
- Combination Column & Line
- Combination Stacked Column & Line
- Stack Bar/Column
- Waterfall
- Line
- Area
- Bubble
- Cluster Bubble
- Scatterplot
- Heat Map
- Radar
- Tree Map
- Bullet
- Numeric Point
- Pie
- Donut
- Marimekko
Value Change over Threshold
- Bar/Column
- Combination Column & Line
- Combination Stacked Column & Line
- Stack Bar/Column
- Line
- Area
- Bubble
- Cluster Bubbble
- Scatterplot
- Radar
- Bullet
- Numeric Point
- Marimekko
Value Change over Reference Line
- Bar/Column
- Combination Column & Line
- Combination Stacked Column & Line
- Stack Bar/Column
- Line
- Area
- Bubble
- Scatterplot
- Radar
- Marimekko
Top N Change
- Bar/Column
- Combination Column & Line
- Combination Stacked Column & Line
- Stack Bar/Column
- Waterfall
- Line
- Area
- Bubble
- Cluster Bubble
- Scatterplot
- Radar
- Bullet
- Numeric Point
- Marimekko

Special Cases

Global Level
- If the analytic application document is modified (two snapshots from different document save versions), the subscription user will get a warning about it and no data change insights will be generated.
- If the analytic application document current applied bookmark is different, the subscription user will get a warning about it and no data change insights will be generated.
- If the model variables from the URL parameter are changed, the subscription user will get a warning about it and no data change insights will be generated.
Chart Level
- If a chart's model variable is changed, the comparison of that chart will be ignored.
- If a chart's filter is changed (except for dynamical datetime filter value, assume dynamical datetime filter definition is not changed), the comparison of that chart will be ignored.
- If a chart's calculated measure's referenced script variable is changed, the comparison of those data points of that measure will be ignored.

Script API

Sample Code

DataChangeInsightsStatus: {
    OK,
    Invalid,
    Error
}

DataChangeInsightType: {
    ValueChange,
    ValueChangeOverThreshold,
    ValueChangeOverReferenceLine,
    TopNMemberChange
}
 
DataChangeInsight: {
    content: String, // the NLG of insight with markup <keyword>value</keyword>
    type: DataChangeInsightType
}
 
DataChangeInsightsResult: {
    status: DataChangeInsightsStatus,
    statusMessage: String,
    insights: DataChangeInsight[]
}
// Save a snapshot
// One application can have only one snapshot per-day, and the later one will override previous one within the same day.
// Work only when ran by snapshot task of scheduling in manual mode.
DataChangeInsights.saveSnapshot(): Boolean
 
// Get a date list which represents there is an application snapshot saved at that date.
// maximumNumber is 10 in backend service configuration.
DataChangeInsights.listRecentSnapshotDates(maximumNumber?: Integer): Array<Date>
 
// Compare current application state with a previous snapshot.
DataChangeInsights.compareApplicationStateWithSnapshot(target: Date, options?: DataChangeInsightsComparisonOptions {
    top?: Integer, // limit number of returned DataChangeInsight
}): DataChangeInsightsResult
 
// Compare two snapshots by date.
DataChangeInsights.compareSnapshots(source: Date, target: Date, options?: DataChangeInsightsComparisonOptions {
    top?: Integer, // limit number of returned DataChangeInsight
}): DataChangeInsightsResult
 
// Similar to Scheduling.isRunBySchedulePublication().
DataChangeInsights.isRunBySnapshotGeneration(): Boolean

License

Data change insights is under the license of scheduling.