2020 Releases

Add-in for Microsoft Office

• Highlight Changed Cells in Planning

  With SAP Analytics Cloud add-in for Microsoft Office, you can now see which of your cell values are being affected by your data input within your planning models and stories. If your new entered value is successfully processed, the visible values which are affected and changed by this data entry will be highlighted in yellow.

• New Features in Add-In for Microsoft Office

  Great news! We have a handful of new features for the SAP Analytics Cloud, Add-in for Microsoft Office. These enhancements include:

  • The ability to log off from your SAP Analytics Cloud Tenant.

  • Removing tables within your workbook.

  • With one click, swapping axis allows you to move all dimensions (including Account / Measure structure) in the Rows axis to the Columns axis and vice versa.

• Availability on Windows Desktop App

  The SAP Analytics Cloud, Add-in for Microsoft Office will now support your application version of Microsoft Excel on your Windows desktop. Now, you can leverage the best of the Microsoft Excel interface with the planning and analytic benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud right on your Windows desktop application.

Administration & Infrastructure

• Extended Translate Support for Content Catalog

  For content published to the Analytics Content Catalog, you can now translate third-party link names, content filter names, and member names in your stories and analytics applications. This means you can search for, view and consume content in your preferred language.

• Filter Content Packages Based on the Lines of Business or Industries in the Content Network

  SAP Analytics Cloud’s Content Network provides various pre-made analytic dashboards, stories, and data models for a variety of analytic scenarios related to various industries and lines of businesses. With this new update, you can now easily and quickly find content by applying filters to your search. Content publishers can add filters to the content packages from a set of available options.

Analytics Designer

• Mobile iOS Integration

  End-users are now able to use the SAP Analytics Cloud mobile iOS app to list, view, and interact with the analytic applications that were created by their analytics designers.

• Pattern-based Functions to Create String-based Functions

  As an application designer, you can now use pattern-based functions to create string-based functions by providing only input and output examples instead of writing script code. By leveraging machine learning to automatically generate string-based functions, this new enhancement makes it more convenient to generate string-based functions without coding.

• Exporting Data to PDF

  Have you ever wanted to convert your table data to a PDF file? Data Analyzers can now export data from tables in the form of a PDF file. You will also be able to configure the following for the exported PDF document:

  • Scope Selection

  • Page Orientation

  • Appendix and Page Size

• Value Driver Tree Widget

  As an analytic application user, you can now use the Value Driver Tree widget for a variety of budgeting and forecasting scenarios. The Value Driver Tree widget is a tool that you can use to connect areas of your business and run “what if” scenarios so you can make informed data-driven decisions.

• Viewing Custom Messages of Scheduled Tasks

  As an analytic application user, you can now view user-defined warning and error messages of your scheduled publication tasks in the Calendar, using the available script API: Scheduling.logMessage(messageType, messageText).

• Switch Widget

  Application designers can now design a switch widget to allow application users to tap the switch and change the state to “on” or “off,” providing a more user-friendly experience. The application developer can configure the following properties:

  • Background color

  • Button handle color

  • Border color

  • Size, position

• Sending Notification to the SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile iOS App

  For all you Application Designers, we’ve enhanced the Notification API. Now, SAP Analytics Cloud iOS App users can now receive notifications in their analytic applications.

• Filter Line Working with Multiple Widgets

  As an application designer, you can now define a filter line for a group of widgets. Application users can then filter members for multiple widgets at once. The filters defined in the filter line will be merged with the filters applied to the same dimensions in these widgets.

• Option to Always Initialize Widgets on Startup

  As an application designer, when your application has background loading, you can now use the widget action “Always initialize on startup” to optimize the startup performance of your analytic application. This allows you, for example, to access widgets that are used in the onInitialization script without the need to wait for these widgets to be initialized in the background.

• Flow Panel for Responsive Layout

  As an application designer, you can now add a flow panel to your applications. The flow panel allows you to display content in a flow layout, which automatically adjusts size to different devices—enabling you to easily create responsive scenarios without any coding efforts.

• CSS-like Theme

  As an application designer, you can now define multiple CSS class styles either as a global default or per widget. The styles conform to CSS standard and are no longer limited to the existing styling properties provided by Analytics Designer.

• PauseRefresh Script API

  Application designers can now use the PauseRefresh API to allow application users to pause the refresh of tables or charts until the user has completed corresponding actions or necessary initial loading activities. This can improve the efficiency of retrieving and updating a table or chart when running an application.

• Data Change Insights to support Remote Repository Schema (Beta)

  You can now configure where to store your Data Change Insights snapshots. The storage place is the local tenant by default. If you are a live data connection user and want to save data changes to your own HANA system, you can also choose any other remote data repository that you configured in Data Repositories.

• Select Data Source Dialog

  At application runtime, users can now open the Data Source Dialog to change the underlying data model for table widgets—allowing you to easily and quickly switch to a different data model when running your applications.

Data Integration

• Make an Embedded Dataset Public

  With this new update, you will now be able to convert an embedded dataset into a public dataset in SAP Analytics Cloud. This new feature allows other users to utilize the embedded data throughout different stories.

• Support Live Connection from SAP Analytics Cloud to SAP HANA Cloud 

  You can now work with live SAP HANA Cloud data in SAP Analytics Cloud. By connecting to SAP HANA Cloud, you can quickly connect to your data in real-time, so your organization can develop powerful applications, leverage advance analytics, and therefore make strategic business decisions.

• Deduplication Transform

  We understand that data wrangling can be a tedious process. With SAP Analytics Cloud, one of our main objectives is to alleviate some of the common challenges that accompany the data wrangling process. That is why we are excited to introduce the new Remove duplicate rows transform. This feature allows you to remove all duplicate rows across all columns in a dataset. Once you’ve deleted the duplicate rows from the sample, you’ll be able to see the total number of rows that were removed. Preparing your data is now easier than ever.

• Live Connectivity from SAP Analytics Cloud to SAP HANA Cloud

  We have simplified the connection setup to SAP HANA Cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud users with Cloud Foundry tenants can now connect to live data from SAP HANA Cloud using SSO or basic authentication, without needing to set up the SAP HANA Analytics Adapter. This new enhancement allows you to quickly connect to the product in a matter of minutes—saving you time and effort!

• Ability to Set Aggregation Type for a Measure in the Dataset

  From the dataset overview panel in Smart Wrangling, you will now be able to define default aggregation behavior—including SUM, COUNT, NONE—for your measures, so that you don’t have to create a calculation for standard aggregation behavior in your story. Here are the following options. This feature overall saves you from having to create calculated measures for aggregation in every story.

• RowNumber() Function Added in the Custom Editor

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can create a new Custom Expression to add a unique row number to each row of your dataset, which can then be used to see individual measures instead of aggregated ones in your story. This update provides a quicker way to uniquely identify rows of a dataset, making this particularly helpful for creating aggregations.

  Note

  It’s not guaranteed that a given row will have the same number for the sample, the full data, or between data refreshes.

• Live Data Connect 3.1 for SAP Business Objects

  Available with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 SP7+ and BI 4.3, SAP Analytics Cloud users can now perform live data connections to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence document data models. Leveraging on-premise SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence document data from SAP Analytics Cloud enables you to reuse extensive calculations, solve complex queries, and merge data providers to inform a more agile business intelligence process.

Data Visualization

• Refresh Indicator Enhancement

  When you refresh a story or use story/page filters, you now have a more visible indication for the table refresh similar to charts that are being refreshed, removing confusion and providing greater clarity regarding the refresh status of your data.

• Suppress Zeros and Nulls

  With this new update, you can now suppress zeros and nulls on SAP BW tables and charts within your story. In SAP Analytics Cloud, the Zero Suppression feature makes it easier to extract meaning from data as it allows you to remove redundant or valueless data.

• Statistical Aggregations in BI Calculations: Median and Quartile Formulas

  You can now create statistical aggregations that will calculate the median values and the first or third quartile values in your stories. These formulas allow you to understand the distribution of your measure values and create valuable business insights. For example, you can use this enhancement to understand the distribution of your employee salaries, identify larger outlier order values or create customer spending groups based on quartiles. Note that this new capability is only supported for models based on acquired or live HANA Connections.

• Simulation for Agile BI

  SAP Analytics Cloud users can now quickly simulate different scenarios by creating private simulations on data uploaded from Excel. Basic simulation features such as entering values, copying and pasting, and undoing or redoing changes are available. This allows you to simulate the impact of different strategic changes on business outcomes so you can gain valuable insights on the fly.

• Reorder Dimension Facets in Explorer

  Good news for users who use SAC Explorer. You can now set your own custom order of the dimension facets for exploration. Your custom facet order will be stored with the Exploration view when saving your story or bookmarking. Custom order of facets makes exploration and ad-hoc analysis easier and more convenient by allowing you to curate the default facet order in your views compared to choosing certain dimension facets every time from a long list of dimension facets.

• Duplicate BI Story Calculated Measures/Dimensions

  As a Story creator, you will now be able to duplicate calculated measures, calculated dimensions, and cross calculations, in the stories which will help in reducing your time spent on creating calculations and increase productivity. For example, you can now use an existing or newly created restricted calculation for Sales Revenue in the year 2019, duplicate it, and then change the time restriction to 2018 to create Sales Revenue for the year 2018 and quickly compare the company’s performance over two years.

• Replace Model Behind Story for Acquired Models

  You can now replace any acquired model in your story with another acquired model that has additional measures and dimensions, alongside the original measures and dimensions—providing you with more flexibility when it comes to repointing models. Replacing the model preserves the configuration of all widgets in your story.

• Suppress Zeros and Nulls on Charts for live HANA Models

  With this new update, you can now suppress zeros and nulls on charts based on acquired HANA models and live HANA Models. In SAP Analytics Cloud, the Zero Suppression feature makes it easier to extract meaning from data as it allows you to remove redundant or invaluable data.

• Automatic Format for Decimal Places in BI Charts and Geo Widgets

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you will now see the option automatic under Decimal Places in the Styling panel. With this new option, the scale will automatically update with a minimum of three decimal places for Charts and Geo maps.

• Choropleth Layer Support with Live HANA Cloud Connection

  SAP HANA Cloud users can now view and utilize choropleth layers in geo maps. Please note that, in order to correctly set up the spatial files within the SAP HANA Cloud instance with synonyms within the administrative page, sysAdmin is required. Synonyms are required for Live HANA Cloud. While Live HANA customers will be able to set up geo choropleth synonyms with this new enhancement, synonyms are only supported for Live HANA 2.00.024.09 + customers.

Mobile

• New Optimized Story View for SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile on iOS

  It isn’t a well-kept secret that we all want fast loading times when using any mobile application. This next feature will help with just that in our SAP Analytics Cloud iOS app. You can now leverage the new Optimized View in your mobile-enabled stories, to enable faster loading times.

• Disable Mobile Cache for Enhanced Security

  Security is always top of mind when developing SAP Analytics Cloud. For the SAP Analytics Cloud iOS app, administrators can now disable the cache for app users to prevent offline access, adding an extra layer of security.

• China Cyber Security (CCSL) Compliance for SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile

  The iOS and Android mobile apps are now compliant with the China Cyber Security Law (CCSL). This applies only in the following usage scenarios:

  • The device language is set to Chinese.

  • The device is set to China Standard Time (CST).

  For more information, see Downloading and Setting Up the Mobile App.

Modeling

• Add or Remove Dimensions from a Model with Existing Artifacts

  This next enhancement will help you simplify model maintenance. For models with private versions, you can now add or remove dimensions. Upon deleting dimensions, a warning message will let you know what dependencies will be impacted.

• User and Teams Validation

  This next enhancement helps speed up the loading times of your models in SAP Analytics Cloud. When opening or saving a model, a user validation is triggered. This feature allows you to easily detect and unassign missing or invalid users with data access and rights on dimensions linked to your model.

Planning

• Financial Analytics Dashboard

  SAP Analytics Cloud’s latest Financial Analytics Dashboard is a flexible, cross-application analytics solution that enables a company’s CFO to monitor and act on the most critical business metrics, while improving their company’s overall performance. Through access to key performance indicators such as P&L, balance sheets, cash flow, and people analytics, a CFO is granted the ability to make strong decisions with confidence.

  This is all achieved by bringing together data from applications such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors to help key players get the full picture when it comes to their company’s health.

• What-If Analysis

  SAP Analytics Cloud users can now quickly simulate different scenarios by creating private simulations on data uploaded from Excel. Basic simulation features such as entering values, copying and pasting, and undoing or redoing changes are available. This allows you to simulate the impact of different strategic changes on business outcomes so you can gain valuable insights on the fly.

• Data Action Nesting and Monitoring

  In SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, embedded data action steps are now available. With one simple click, you will be able to add an entire data action as a step within another Data Action. This simplifies the overall design and administration of Data Actions, while also streamlining the end user experience by allowing them to run a series of Data Actions with a single click. Creating your plans has never been quicker.

  After running data actions in a story, analytic application, or scheduling data actions using the Calendar, you’ll now be able to monitor and manage your data actions on the new Data Action Monitor page—providing greater visibility to task owners. The Data Action Monitor will provide updates on:

  • Current status of executed/scheduled data action.

  • Timing of when a data action was triggered.

  • Use who triggered the data action.

  • Which object the data action was triggered from (for example, specific story).

• Copy and Paste Values in a Table with an Advanced Filter

  In SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, you can now copy and paste values in a table where Advanced Filters are enabled. This includes copying underlying values where the target cells are already booked or pasting a value without weighting where the target cells do not have pre-existing values.

• Embedded Data Action Steps

  In SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, embedded data action steps are now available. With one simple click, you will be able to add an entire data action as a step within another Data Action. This simplifies the overall design and administration of Data Actions, while also streamlining the end user experience by allowing them to run a series of Data Actions with a single click. Creating your plans has never been quicker.

• Validation Warnings

  Accuracy is key during the planning process. With this new enhancement, you’ll be able to mitigate any potential errors when entering plan values. In tables, unbooked data cells will now be proactively disabled for data entry if they are invalid according to the validation rules of the underlying model. A grey dash character (-) indicates that you can’t enter data, providing you with guidance to plan on valid member combinations.

• New Enhancements to the Calendar with the List View

  Collaboration is a huge part of the planning and analysis process. That’s why we are introducing the List View. Now, you can monitor and manage your calendar events with greater efficiency with List View. You can now easily toggle between List, calendar, and Gantt chart to provide an overview of your planning processes.

• Create Rules and Dimensions Relationships with Greater Flexibility

  You can now create rules and dimension relationships directly in the rule builder without the need for attributes. With this new enhancement, you now have the benefit of referencing parents directly as part of the rule and the ability to apply to all decedents.

• Support New Time Function “LAST”

  When writing advanced formulas scripts in a Data Action, you can now use the new function LAST() to retrieve the last time period of the year taken from the given date argument. The other two-time scope selection functions FIRST() and PREYEARLAST() have been enhanced as well to support returning a time period of the year taken from a given date argument. The date argument can be a date type dimension, a dimension attribute, a fixed date, a single selection of an external parameter, or TODAY().

• ATTRIBUTE Function Without RESULTLOOKUP

  When writing advanced formulas scripts in a data action, now you can use the ATTRIBUTE function together with IF condition; for example, “IF ATTRIBUTE([d/Employee].[p/HRGrade]) > 25 THEN”. Also, you can use the ATTRIBUTE function standalone for the number variable assignment, without needing to include RESULTLOOKUP as part of the calculation. All similar functions that return numeric values (that is, DATEDIFF, DATERATIO, DAYSINMONTH, DAYSINYEAR, DAY, MONTH, YEAR) now have the same behavior.

Platform Services

• Scheduling a Story in PowerPoint File Format

  For PowerPoint users, you’ll be excited by this next feature. In SAP Analytics Cloud, the PowerPoint presentation, .pptx format, will now be supported as a file type while scheduling a story. This way, you can send your data visualizations in a PowerPoint format, so your end-user can easily integrate the slide in future presentations.

• Manage Schedules

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can now appoint specific users as Schedule Administrators. Schedule Administrators are able to manage all the schedules available on a tenant in the following ways:

  • Delete unwanted schedule created by other users.

  • Discontinue certain schedules that are not required anymore.

  • Change time of the schedules.

• Schedule Administrator can Delete any Schedule Within Tenant

  To effectively manage and delete unwanted schedules from your tenant to free up scheduling slots, the administrator can now delete the occurrence or recurrence of a schedule. Here, the schedule owner will be notified when a schedule is deleted.

• Discontinue and Move Schedule Occurrence or Reoccurrence to Cancelled State

  You can now discontinue an occurrence or a series of a schedule. Once you discontinue a scheduled publication, the overall status of the schedule will show “canceled.” This enhancement helps you make room for essential scheduled publications in SAP Analytics Cloud.

• Customer SMTP Server Configuration

  As an administrator, you can now configure an SMTP server of your choice for email delivery in SAP Analytics Cloud.

• Commenting Privileges for Story, Analytic Application, Model, and Folder

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you will now be able to control who can view, add, or delete comments on your stories, analytic applications, and folders while sharing it with your users and teams. This is particularly useful when you are dealing with confidential information.

Smart Assist

• Smart Insights Enhancements

  Efficiently find the answers to your business questions with this new Smart Insights enhancement. Smart Insights will now find more meaningful insights on your hierarchical data by basing the analysis on the most interesting level of your dimension hierarchy, opposed to solely using the leaf node level. Details of your dimension hierarchy will also be displayed when you hover over a selected dimension member in the Smart Insights panel, or in the Dynamic Insight text.

  Furthermore, to use Smart Insights against a Live HANA data source, users can implement advanced features in a one-time only step. From then onward, users can effortlessly discover new insights on the fly. For all HANA permissions, each filter added by a user is considered when generating insights, so information is tailored to their respective workflows. When we use a Live HANA source, we can therefore be confident that we are getting the latest insight every time.

• Improved Search to Insight Autocomplete Suggestions

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, we’ve streamlined the search suggestion experience. Now, Search to Insight will automatically group matching measures and dimensions (that are found in multiple models) into the same search suggestion. Additionally, the measures and dimensions that are suggested are now ranked based on the frequency that they are used in Stories.

• Chart Interactions in Search to Insight

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can now directly interact with your search results from Search to Insight. This provides the following benefits:

  • Quickly answer follow up questions. For example, by drilling on a dimension member.

  • Efficiently filter or exclude dimension members that aren’t your focus.

  • Easily export your search results to Excel.

• Re-pointing an Acquired “Identical” Model in a Story

  Within Data View, you can now replace any acquired model in your story with another acquired model that has the same structure, saving you time and effort. Replacing the model also preserves the configuration of all widgets in your story.

• Search to Insight via Home Page Hides Embedded Models

  When using Search to Insight, embedded models are now only included in the search scope if the query is initiated from within a story. This will increase your data relevancy by providing more meaningful Search to Insight suggestions.

• Display Descriptions in Smart Predict Debrief for Planning Forecasts

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, Smart Predict was designed to help you predict future outcomes, so you can make meaningful, data-driven decisions. With this new enhancement, we are making it easier to understand your predictive results from Smart Predict. Now, the information displayed in the Smart Predict debrief will be based on dimension descriptions instead of IDs.

• Predictive Planning—Enhancements to Smart Predict

  Using Smart Predict, financial planners can now generate forecasts using the default currency or local currency. This update empowers you to predict and plan the evolution of your financial KPIs expressed in your local currencies.

Add-in for Microsoft Office

• Microsoft Excel Integration

  We are excited to announce that you can now integrate Microsoft Excel with SAP Analytics Cloud. With this new integration, we are combining the best of the Microsoft Excel interface with the planning and analytic benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud. This makes it even easier to analyze your plans, simulate future outcomes, and take effective business actions. Here are some of the exciting features you can utilize with this new integration:

  • Report on SAP Analytics Cloud models and write back data into different versions: You can publish different versions of your data and revert them in case you would like to discard your changes.

  • Pivoting and filter features: You can use pivoting and filter features within the highly interactive table to easily create your ad hoc reports.

  • Add any calculations and use formulas to easily create added value.

  • Create Hierarchies and return Subtotals in your database.

  If you want to use this integration, please ensure you meet the following prerequisites:

  • Have an SAP Analytics Cloud tenant.

  • SAP Analytics Cloud deployment on Cloud Foundry.

  • Have a Data-acquired in SAP Analytics Cloud models.

Administration & Infrastructure

• Working with Live SAP HANA Cloud Data

  You can now work with live SAP HANA Cloud data in SAP Analytics Cloud. To learn about this great new feature, click this link: Live Data Connection to SAP HANA Cloud Using a Direct Connection and SSO.

• Performance Statistics in SAP Analytics Cloud

  Have you ever wanted to identify which of your SAP Analytics Cloud models have the highest impact on your connected backend systems? The new Performance Statistics feature will do just that!

  With this new update, you can get statistics of your highest performing models, which will be aggregated in a dashboard/story directly within SAP Analytics Cloud. You can easily identify Models and Stories that bring the highest load and processing to the backend system, so you can make improvements as needed. The dashboard will contain a variety information regarding Backend (HANA, BW) Runtime Statistics (and distributions), Query Types, most frequent Users, Models, Connections, and more.

• Invite Specific Teams to a Discussion

  You asked and we’ve listened! For this new release, you will now be able to invite specific teams to a discussion. Collaboration is essential when working on your analytic and planning scenarios and this new feature will make collaboration in SAP Analytics Cloud even more user-friendly.

• Support Microsoft Edge Browsers Based on the Chromium Engine

  For those who use Microsoft Edge, SAP Analytics Cloud now supports Microsoft Edge Browsers based on the Chromium Engine. This will provide you with a smoother and more enhanced user experience when working with SAP Analytics Cloud in your Microsoft Edge browser.

• Content Network

  From the Content Network, you can now import and export teams, team folders, and content in the “System” folder. This means, for administrators who are managing the lifecycle of content between tenants, you can now import and export team related content. This update provides you with greater control while managing the lifecycle of team content.

• Define Default Tab

  With SAP Analytics Cloud, one of our goals is to ensure you can easily access the content you need. This new feature will help you do just that. On the SAP Analytics Cloud home page, administrators can now define a default tab by going to System > Administration or by clicking the Edit Home Screen button. Your individual users can also navigate to the Edit Home Screen dialog and define their own default tab. Please note that if all tabs are disabled, then this option will be hidden in the Edit Home Screen dialog and disabled in the Default Appearance tab.

Analytics Designer

• Select Multiple Widgets

  Exciting news! We’ve made some design time enhancements to improve your work efficiency when designing analytical applications. Now, you can select multiple widgets in which you can move the widgets around the canvas in unison. You can also set common properties for the selected widgets, providing you with more flexibility when designing your analytical applications.

• Create New Dimension Members Using Planning Model APIs

  Did someone say more flexibility when designing planning interfaces? You heard right. We are now providing script APIs that will help you create, update, and delete dimension members on the fly.

  Here are the new APIs that are offered:

  • PlanningModel.getMember();

  • PlanningModel.getMembers();

  • PlanningModel.createMembers();

  • PlanningModel.updateMembers();

  • PlanningModel.deleteMembers();

• Access an Analytic Application from a Calendar Task

  You can now integrate your analytic application into the calendar task workflow. This impacts each task role as such:

  • As a task owner, you can define your analytic application as a work file.

  • As a task assignee, you can access the application from the calendar task and choose whether to submit, reject, review or set the progress of the task in the application.

  • As a task reviewer, you can access the application from a calendar task in which you can accept or reject all actions in the application.

• Export to PDF Scripting

  End users can now define the specific widgets that they want to include or exclude in their exported PDF. This provides your end users with the ability to incorporate the most relevant widgets in their exported PDFs. This can be achieved through the Build panel or the following scripts:

  • ExportToPDF.includeComponent()

  • ExportToPDF.excludeComponent()

• Application.showMessage() API

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, flexibility and customization is at the top of our agendas when we are developing new enhancements. This next update provides analytic developers with the flexibility to customize your application messages in a way that is more digestible and relevant for your end users. You will be able to access this new capability by using the following APIs:

  • Application.ShowMessage() API enables you to create custom messages.

  • Application.setMessageTypesToShow() API allows analytic developers to filter certain types of messages to manage what the end users can see. The different types of messages you can filter include Success, Info, Warning, and Error messages.

• DataSource APIs

  For all application developers out there, we have a handful of useful updates that will provide you more flexibility when using SAP Analytics Cloud.

  As an application designer, you can now use the DataSource APIs(setHierarchyLevel(), getHierarchyLevel() ,expandNode() and collapseNode()) to set the hierarchy level of a dimension and to expand or collapse individual hierarchy nodes.

• Create an Analytic Application Using Datasets of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud

  Within SAP Analytics Cloud, application designers can now create analytic applications by using datasets from SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. By using the “Select Model” dialog, the application designer can choose a configured connection, space, and dataset for the model-based widgets. This new enhancement will increase the scope of the data you can utilize when designing your analytic applications.

• Create an Analytic Application Starting in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud

  Application designers will now also be able to create an analytic application directly in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. There are two methods application designers can follow to create an analytic application in Data Warehouse Cloud:

  • Select Data Warehouse space and then select Analytic Application.

  • Select Analytics Cloud space and then select Analytic application.

  Using either of these options, the application designer will then navigate to SAP Analytics Cloud, where you can choose a configured connection, space, and dataset for the model-based widgets. This new enhancement will increase the scope of the data you can utilize when creating your analytic applications.

• Subscribe to an Application’s Top N Data Change Insights (Beta)

  For analytic application users, you can now subscribe to an application’s top N data change insights either through notifications or your email. You can set the subscription to notify you by day or week depending on your SAP Analytics Cloud scheduling infrastructure. This new capability allows you to easily and quickly retrieve the most important and relevant insights on your data changes in your analytic application. The data change insights will be delivered as a technical component with the corresponding script APIs.

• SetStyle API

  Now, as an application designer, you can use the setStyle API to dynamically customize the style of your widgets including font color, background color, shapes, and much more, all at run time. The widgets that are supported in the setStyle API are text, input field, text area, and shape widgets. This customization is particularly useful for when you are working with conditional formatting scenarios.

• Optimize the Startup Performance of Analytic Applications

  It’s time to speed things up a bit! You will now be able to automatically load all invisible widgets in the background either through the Analytic Application Setting Dialog or the Application URL parameter: loadInvisibleWidgets=inBackground. This new feature will not only improve the performance of your application but also speed up the initialization time.

• Application.getInfo() API

  You asked and we listened! Application designers will now be able to use the Application.getInfo() API to access information regarding your application including the ID, name, description, and URL. Now, you can find all your application information in one, central place.

• Set Variable Value for Hierarchy Node Variable

  Calling on all application developers. We have a handful of useful updates that will provide you more flexibility when using SAP Analytics Cloud.

  First, you can now set a variable value for a BW and HANA hierarchy node variable. To achieve this, here are the following APIs:

  • Single node: Table_1.getDataSource().setVariableValue(“0BC_CUST_NODE”, “0HIER_NODE!FRANKREICH”);

  • Multiple nodes: Table_1.getDataSource().setVariableValue(“0BC_CUST_NODE”, { values: [“0HIER_NODE!CANADA”,“0HIER_NODE!DEUTSCHLAND”] });

  • Not Assigned nodes: Table_1.getDataSource().setVariableValue(“0BC_CUST_NODE”, “1HIER_REST!REST_H”);

  It’s important to note that excluding hierarchy nodes and range specifications (less, greaterOrEqual, from, to) are not supported.

• APIs to Retrieve Additional Dimension Visible Properties

  Get ready to build more interactive dashboards! As an application developer, you can now retrieve additional dimension visible properties. You can then display these properties in a dropdown box or as a text widget. This can be achieved by using the following APIs:

  • First, use DataSource APIs getResultset() to retrieve all properties. Example code: Table_1.getDataSource().getResultSet();

  • Then, use getResultMember(0 to get dimension visible properties for a particular dimension member. Example code: Table_1.getDataSource().getResultMember(“0D_NW_PROD”,Table_1.getSelections()[0]);

• Support for NULL Members and Totals Members

  SAP Analytics Cloud will now support “NULL” members and “Totals” members to application design scripting APIs. This change enhances the Alias enumeration with two new literals: Alias.NullMember and Alias.TotalsMember. These literals should be used in scripts whenever a “NULL” or “Totals” member needs to be referenced.

  • The following DataSource APIs have been enhanced to handle or return NULL or Totals members correctly: getMembers(), setDimensionFilter(), setVariableValue(), getData(), getResultSet(), getDataSelections(), getResultMember()

  • The following Table / Chart API has been enhanced: getSelections()

  • The following Planning APIs have been enhanced: setUserInput(), DataLocking.getState

• Chart and Table Number Format

  You can say goodbye to manually having to set the scaling factor for each chart individually. Now, application designers can set the number format of charts and tables with the following APIs:

  • setScaleUnit()

  • setScaleFormat()

  • setDecimalPlaces()

  • setSignDisplay()

• Page Book Widget

  In your mobile device, you can now use the Page Book widget to group the application contents by different pages. You can use the swipe gesture to navigate from one page to another. The Page Book widget was designed to make it much easier to navigate through your analytic applications on your mobile device.

• Variable Parameters to open an application URL

  Let’s speed things up a bit! Let’s take a look at an enhancement that will accelerate your analytic application’s start up performance. Users can now set the variable value through the application URL parameters. For analytic applications, setting variables via the application URL parameter can avoid the double round trip of comparing setting variables in onInit event.

• New API openNavigationPanel()

  The Navigation Panel for tables is now available in the Analytics Designer. This enhancement provides users with a convenient way to analyze their underlying data models. With the Navigation Panel, users can perform the following actions at application runtime:

  • Add/remove dimensions and measures

  • Swap axis /Arrange Totals

  • Display dimensions in key/text representation

  • Select Hierarchies/Properties

  • Compact Display/Suppress Zeros (for BW)

  To open or close this panel, you can use the following new APIs:

  • openNavigationPanel()

  • closeNavigationPanel()

  • Available items panel can be opened via the optional parameter.

• Shake and Long Press Gesture

  We have an exciting enhancement that will provide a more mobile user-friendly way to consume analytic applications on your iPad device. We are introducing the following mobile specific gestures for analytic applications running on a native safari browser on the iPad:

  • Shake event

  • LongPress event for Button, Shape, and Image widgets

  • onOrientationChange event

• Save & Leave

  When exiting an analytic application that has not been saved, there will now be a new “Save & Leave” dialog. This dialog will ask you whether you want to save your progress before exiting. This ensures you don’t accidentally exit and lose all your unsaved changes that you have made to your application.

• New API getVariableValues()

  You can now use the new API getVariableValues() to return an array of the current values of a specified variable. With this new API, you can transfer those returned variable values to other widgets, applications and stories, providing you with more flexibility to add interactivity between widgets or within your applications and stories.

• New API getDimensionFilters()

  You can now use the new API getDimensionFilters() to return an array of the current filter values of a specific dimension, also providing you with more flexibility when adding interactivity between widgets or within applications and stories. This new API supports single filter values, multi filter values, and range values.

• Planning Model Extension

  The Planning Model API has been extended, meaning you can now read and change a dimension member‘s data locking owner and responsible person.

• System Runtime Messages

  Have you ever gotten a system runtime error message but didn’t understand why? To provide more clarification, Analytic Application users will now be able to receive more details about system runtime messages for failures and error messages. This information will be displayed in the calendar for a scheduling tasks regarding the following scenarios:

  • Export to PDF technical component is missing.

  • Variable input dialog is open for user input and blocks the workflow.

  • The script execution failed due to an error.

  • Error occurs during the export of a PDF.

  • The selected bookmark doesn’t exist anymore.

  • Error occurs during processing Data Change Insights.

  • When an applications developer forgets to use the Scheduling.publish() script when scheduling in manual mode.

Collaboration

• Commenting Widget

  It isn’t a well-kept secret that collaboration is key to any business’ success. This new collaboration feature was designed to help you and your teammates seamlessly collaborate when analyzing stories. The new Commenting widget allows you to contextually add comments based on a specific data model directly in your story page. A highlight of this new widget is that you can add comments on different filter combinations in your story, providing other users with the most relevant comments regarding specific contexts.

Data Integration

• New Data Preparation Experience

  We understand that the data preparation process can be quite time-consuming and complex. This is why we are excited to introduce a new, smarter data preparation experience that was designed to add ease and flexibility when working with your data in SAP Analytics Cloud.

  • Wrangling Public Datasets

    You can now quickly analyze and visualize public datasets in stories. Features include:

    • Cleanse public datasets

    • Directly consume public datasets in stories: Analyzing data has never been easier! Simply upload the data in your Dataset and directly analyze it in a story. Datasets are entities that are ready to be analyzed from the get-go: The dataset creation step includes an automatic inference of which columns are dimensions and which are measures. Users can always adjust those by editing the Dataset.

    Reminder: the upload thresholds for Datasets are 1B cells, 1000 columns, 5000 characters in a cell.

    For the security measures on datasets:

    • Object security of Datasets will be maintained in stories.

    • If a user has view rights on the dataset, they can see the data, but not change it.

    • Users with edit rights will be able to open a Dataset and use all of the wrangling capabilities.

    • If a public dataset is used in a story, any user with at least view rights on the dataset will be able to see it in view mode directly in the story. This new feature provides users with the confidence when working with their data.

  • Embedded Datasets in Stories

    We are introducing a complete self-service analytical experience that will bring you closer to data manipulation and the augmented analytic capabilities of your stories. When loading data in a story, users will now create an embedded dataset. The biggest benefit is the near-instant transition between the story layout and the wrangling area, making any adjustment to the data a simple click away. For those fans who are a fan of Excel, you will also be able to drag and drop their data into the homepage to get start analyzing it right away. In case you are still looking for an environment you are still familiar with, there is an option to start wrangling with the basic data preparation experience.

  • Model and Column Overview

    Next, we have simplified the modeling experience by introducing a new right-hand side panel that will provide a summarize representation of your model including your dimensions, measures, and descriptions. Here are the actions that will be directly available from panel:

    • Change from dimension to measure and vice-versa via the drag and drop or menu

    • Rename and delete objects

    • Shortcuts to geo-enrich dimensions

    • Create hierarchies

    • Check errors

    There is also the ability to view all columns of the dataset, even those not part of the model, by switching to the column view. Note that if columns are not part of the model, they will simply not appear when selecting dimensions or measures to create charts, or any story widget.

  • Data Types and Statistical Types

    In SAP Analytics Cloud, there will be new data types in each column. If a value doesn’t match the data type, the value will be flagged and will not be visible in the story. However, these errors will not block the move to story view nor will delete rows. Here is a list of the different column types:

    • Date

    • Integer

    • Number

    • String

    • Date and Time

    • Boolean

    In addition, columns will also contain a statistical type, which can be edited.

  • Working with a Sample

    With this new experience, you are still working on a 2000 row sample when wrangling. You also have the option to validate all the data outside the sample. Warnings will be raised to the user:

    • If the data in a column does not fit corresponding datatype

    • If an ID has multiple descriptions

    All errors are only warnings, meaning that users can always proceed to work with that dataset. In this case, cells with issues will be cleared but rows will not be deleted.

  • Transformations, Unpivot

    All existing transformations are available also on Datasets. These transformations include concatenate, split, extract, replace, change, and unpivot. In addition to these transformations, Filter is a new function that will be available as a transformation. It will allow users to specify which values to filter out, even if they are not part of the sample.

    Note, that unpivot can only be run on a single column header, and if you want to be able to unpivot a dataset with multiple headers, you will have to move to the basic data preparation experience to have access to this functionality.

  • Custom Transformations

    Next, SAP Analytics Cloud will contain a variety of data manipulation functions enabling data analysts to write custom transformations. A particular focus was set on providing the best development experience when writing a new expression. Imagine being able to write the custom transformation without leaving the keyboard. That was the challenge and in order to address it, here are some of the features that were brought into the editor:

    • Typeahead of column, function, keyword names

    • Function stub automatically displayed

    • Easy navigation across function arguments

    • Copy/Paste of expressions

    • Clear troubleshooting experience

    Custom transformations are based on a new, powerful language, developed in-house:

    • Functions are divided in the following categories: Numeric, String, Date and Time, Spatial, Others

    • A total of 50 functions are available, further superseding existing capabilities. Notable additions: timeDiff(), Distance(), element() etc.

    • Outputs are now named: [NewTown]=“Roma” creates a new column with “Roma” as constant value

    If needed, transformations can be edited from the transform log for further adjustments, thus matching the realities of everyday developments.

  • Semantic Enrichments

    For the drilling experience in charts across dimensions, users can create level-based hierarchies. This means:

    • Levels are defined by dimensions

    • Hierarchies are declared objects in models

    • Dimensions can only be used in one hierarchy

    • Columns can be ordered together in the grid

    To map data points, users can geo-enrich existing dimensions through a variety of entry points, such as the toolbar and dimension menu. A big improvement is that an associated hierarchy can be created in the model, which users can use to build charts. Locations that have errors will not be displayed but will also not prevent the enrichment nor delete rows in the dataset.

  • Reimport Data for Dataset

    This new feature introduces the ability for users to update data inside a dataset. For any local dataset, whether a public dataset or embedded dataset in a story, users can now re-acquire the data from the original source to fully replace the contents of the dataset. The columns of the dataset will automatically be matched to the newly acquired ones. In cases where there are structural differences with the newly acquired data, the process will be canceled. Lastly, regarding files, users will need to specify the location of the new file in order for all other sources queries to be automatically re-executed.

  • Invoking Basic Data Preparation Option

    Lastly, users can now re-initialize the wrangling session in the classic workflow without having to re-acquire data. When doing this, a warning sign will inform the user that all work will be lost. Basic data preparation can only be opened when the column count of the Dataset is less than 100 columns and has less than 100m cells total for non-file sources.

    Benefits of using the Basic Data Preparation includes be able to:

    • Append data to an existing embedded dataset

    • Map a new upload into an existing dataset

    • Acquire data coming from Dow Jones

    • Use multi-headers when doing unpivot

    • Use Smart Insight on variance chart

    • Build a parent-child hierarchy

    • Support of cross-calculations on tables and charts (just like remote models, universal models)

• Default Data Mapping Inherited from SQL Source

  When acquiring SQL data, default data mappings are now inherited from the source. The data type definition is directly passed through from the SQL source, and not inferred. This feature saves you from having to recreate the metadata in the wrangling view, saving you time and reducing any possible errors.

• Tunnel Connection Type

  Would you like to be able to share your business findings and insights with your external stakeholders, without giving them VPN rights? SAP Analytics Cloud administrators will now be able to create connections using the Tunnel connection type. This connection type will allow users outside your corporate network to connect live to your data, without giving them VPN rights. The Tunnel connection can be created to an on-premise remote source through the SAP Cloud Connector. These sources include HANA, BW, and S4HANA.

• Acquire Data from SAP HANA Using an SSL Connection

  With SAP Analytics Cloud, security is at the top of our agendas. We are introducing a new option to configure an SSL connection when connecting to SAP HANA from SAP Analytics Cloud. This adds a higher level of security when you’re connecting to SAP HANA on-premise.

Data Visualization

• Growing Tables

  For business reporting needs, it is essential to have a full picture of your dataset. That is why we integrated the new growing tables feature available in the Canvas. With this feature, you can now automatically resize the table vertically to view you canvas in full height. This simplifies your viewing experience as it allows you to get a full picture of your whole dataset without having to scroll too much.

• Dimension Member Display Configuration for Dimension Input Controls

  When you are dynamically analyzing your data, switching the selection within a dimension input control can be cumbersome when you have to constantly switch between description and ID. For example, you may want to view store names as a description, but it is added as an ID. Now, when you are configuring a dimension input control, you will have the ability to specify on a per dimension basis whether you want your dimension member to be displayed as an ID or description.

• String Functions in Calculated Dimensions

  Great news! We have introduced the following new functions in calculated dimensions to provide you with more flexibility to manipulate strings at the story level instead of planning to do the changes at the data source level. The functions specially help when you want to do ad-hoc analysis and analyze your data. Please note that these functions are only supported for models based on acquired or live HANA connections.

  • CONCAT: You can now use the CONCAT function to combine two strings into one string dimension. An example would be if you wanted to combine the dimensions, first name and last name, into a single dimension.

  • REPLACE: You can now use REPLACE function to replace characters specified by location in a given text string with another text string. For example, if you want to replace a certain country with a prescribed value, you can use the REPLACE function to achieve this.

  • LOWERCASE and UPPERCASE: You can now use LOWERCASE and UPPERCASE functions to convert a text string to all LOWER and UPPER cases.

  • SPLIT: You can now use the SPLIT function to return a substring from a string, using a delimiter character to divide the string into a sequence of tokens. An example would be if you want to split your customers’ first names and last names with a comma.

  • FINDINDEX: The FINDINDEX function searches for substring and returns its start index with 0 as a default. The function will return -1 if the target is not found.

  • ENDSWITH: The ENDSWITH function returns “True” if the given string ends with the user’s mentioned substring. This function does not ignore trailing white spaces.

  • RIGHT and LEFT: The RIGHT function returns the specified number of characters from the end of the given string. The LEFT function returns the specified number of characters from the start of the given string.

• BW: Paste Filter Values in Story and Page Input Controls

  Both story viewers and designers can now make changes to story and page filter selections faster, especially when working with a large list of values. You can now simply copy and paste filter values into the input control to either overwrite or append the existing selection when working with BW models.

• Data Labels with Background Color and Opacity

  Have you ever created a chart and the data label was difficult to read? We have a new customization feature that will enhance the readability of your data labels. Now, you can choose the background color and opacity for your data labels. Please note that this feature does not support Cluster Bubbles, Bullet & Numeric Point Charts, and in conjunction with Web Fonts.

• Display Values for Mixed Periods in Previous Period Time Calculations

  We have made an enhancement to the Previous Period Time Calculation. Now, story designers have the flexibility to show all values in widgets containing different hierarchy levels such as year, quarter, and months in Previous Period Time Calculations. This new capability can provide you with more holistic view when analyzing your data.

• Paste Filter Values in Story and Page Input Controls

  Both story viewers and designers can now make changes to story and page filter selections faster, especially when working with a large list of values. Simply copy and paste filter values into the input control to either overwrite or append the existing selection when working with Acquired and HANA live Models.

• Remove Member Count Limitation for Input Controls Based on Flat Dimensions in BW

  Story Designers can now create story, page, and Digital Boardroom topic filters with more than 4,000 members with BW live Models and other data sources on flat dimensions. This means that you can now access all of your input control members without any limitations, allowing you to easily access all the information you need.

• The TRIM Function in Story Formulas

  Story creators can now use the TRIM function in story formulas. This means you will now have the flexibility to trim string spaces in the story calculations rather than relying on backend data source calculation layers, overall reducing the turnaround times when creating and editing stories. This function is specifically useful when doing calculations on data from flat file uploads. TRIM is supported only for models based on Acquired or Live HANA connections.

• BW Input Controls: Starts/Ends with Search Improvements

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can now search for members with a certain pattern in input controls. This means, when searching in story and page filters, you can now specify “starts with” (a*) or “ends with” (*a) search terms. Please note that this is not a wildcard filter, meaning this only encompasses searches for existing members of the dimension. New members will not be automatically reselected. Also, it is important to note that this feature is only supported for Story and Page filters and not supported for Hierarchies.

• Facet Loading Configuration in Explorer

  When enabling Explorer views for visualizations in Stories, Story Designers can configure measures and dimensions to be included in the view. To improve performance when opening the Exploration View, by default, only dimensions used in the chart will be loaded as facets in Explorer. To see other configured dimensions, the viewer will need to select desired dimensions. Story designers can disable the default for all configured dimensions to be loaded upon opening of Explorer View.

Mobile

• Search to Insight on iOS for iPhone and iPad

  Are you ready to find the answers you need no matter where or when you are working? You will now be able to extract insights with just a few taps using the new Search to Insight capability on the SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile iOS app available on iPhone and iPad. This new feature is supported for acquired and live models based on Prompts available for acquired/live SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW.

  Please Note: Currently, Search to Insight on Mobile does not support changing variable values and uses the default set model parameter values to run the query. If no variables are set with default values, then all results are returned. Setting chart level variables is also not supported.

• Synonyms in Search to Insight on iOS

  Quickly find the answers to your business questions right at your fingertips. iOS Mobile users can now view and define synonyms for measure and dimension names, which they can then easily search for in Search to Insight. The synonyms created will appear in the Search to Insight autosuggestions along with other measures and dimensions. This new enhancement will provide more customization that is tailored to your business when searching for your answers on your mobile device.

Modeling

• New Viewing Options

  For every organization, it’s essential to get the full picture of your data to make the most effective and meaningful business decisions. This is why we are introducing two new viewing options in SAP Analytics Cloud:

  • “Structure View”: Will allow you to easily look at your models in a star schema style view, providing you a graphical, diagram-based modeling experience. This view works for account-based models.

  • “Data Foundation View”: Will allow you to see the underlying fact data of your model from the “Model” tab. This view is synchronized with “List” and “Structure” views.

Planning

• Build Value Driver Trees Within a Story

  You can now build Value Driver Trees in a story. Here are some exciting key highlights of this new feature:

  • Choose any display time granularity: Now when building a Value Driver Tree, you can choose any display granularity you would like.

  • Supports Story Calculations: You can use story calculations for your accounts or cross calculations, providing you with more control over your accounts.

  • Supports Analytical Models: You can build a Value Driver Tree based on an analytical model. Note: You do not need a planning license.

  • Independent Node Configuration: Each of your nodes can be configured independently, displaying its own versions, cross calculations, or filters.

  • Default Node Configuration: You can now design Value Driver Trees even faster by providing a default mode configuration.

  • Select Multiple Cross Calculations for One Node: Nodes can display any number of cross calculations.

  • Collapse and Expand Nodes: You can collapse your subtrees to make your Value Driver Trees more compact.

  • Drag & Drop Linking: Connect nodes through drag and drop.

• The Planning Panel

  The data entry process can be quite time-consuming and tedious, especially when you are working with complex planning scenarios that involve spreading, distributing, and assigning operations. It’s time to part ways with spending countless hours during the data entry stage because we have created a tool that will allow you to execute your planning scenarios with ease. We are excited to introduce the Planning Panel in SAP Analytics Cloud!

  The Planning Panel is an all-encompassing tool that enables you to quickly and effectively execute your ad hoc planning scenarios all in one united, consolidated platform. From providing recommendations for typical planning scenarios to distributing values along multiple dimensions at the same time, the Planning Panel has got you covered for all your planning needs.

• Data Actions with Automatic Publishing of Target Version

  You can now set a follow-up action for the execution of a data action so that the target version is automatically published upon successful execution.

  This is available for:

  • Data Action Triggers: Saving additional user interactions for publishing after a manually triggered execution has finished.

  • Data Action Tasks in the Calendar: Supporting the automated planning process by publishing results.

  Successful publishing and errors will be indicated to the user via notifications. Please note that this feature can only be applied for public target versions. For private target versions or versions of BPC Writeback models, the user needs to manually publish.

• Create Data Action Tasks in Calendar

  We are introducing a new task type, which will allow you to schedule the execution of your Data Actions. You can also set this execution to occur on a regular interval.

• Transforming a Legacy Value Driver Tree

  A few waves back, we announced the new Value Driver Tree widget that can be added directly into your stories. This widget contains many amazing capabilities such as the ability to leverage story calculations, to collapse and expand branches of the Value Driver Tree, to utilize more granular time scales, and several other capabilities. With this release, we are now allowing you to easily transform your legacy Value Driver Trees into a Value Driver Tree widget. This feature will save you time and effort since you don’t need to completely remodel the Value Driver Trees to gain the benefits that the new story-based Vale Driver Trees provide.

• The Datediff Function

  The Datediff function is now available for advanced formula steps in Data Actions. With this function, you can easily calculate the difference between two dates at a specified granularity.

• Define In-Cell Charts and Thresholds

  For BW queries, you can now define in-cell charts and thresholds for the second structure. In other words, you can now define both of your dimensions as a number definition dimension. This helps ease the setup of in-cell charts and thresholds for tables on BW queries in SAP Analytics Cloud.

• Apply Viewer Role to all Subtasks of a Calendar Process

  By selecting the new “Shared with” icon in the Process panel, you can now simultaneously add a viewer to all child tasks of a Calendar process. As a viewer, you will be able to see all the descendants of a process that has been shared with you.

• Use Three Dimensions to Define Dimension Combination Rule

  In planning models, you can now create a maximum of three validation rules in one model and three dimensions per rule to define allowed member combinations across dimensions. This will add ease during the data entry process and will be useful when you are planning on more complex member combinations.

• Validation Warnings

  As a planner, you’ll now see validation warnings in your table, enabling you to quickly identify which values are invalid for data entry due to dimension combination rules. You can delete the value in these cells, but data changes will be reverted when you publish your version. These visual cues will help reduce errors and streamline the plan entry for users by highlighting valid dimensional combinations in-line during the data entry process.

• Work File Handling Made Easy for Calendar Tasks and Processes

  For calendar tasks and processes, we have redesigned the header section in the Builder panel to provide a streamlined experience for accessing all relevant information. This update includes:

  • Work files: A huge part of this redesign is that you can now find all the work files of a task or process in the header section, which are displayed as separate tokens.

  • Add URL links as work files to your tasks: In addition to stories and analytic applications, you can add URL links as work files to your tasks or processes.

  • Links that will instantly take you to a desired section in the Builder panel: Here, you can view relevant information in greater detail.

Platform Services

• Schedule Story or Analytic Application based on SAP HANA 2.0 Live Data Connection

  For those who are using a HANA 2.0 live data connection, we have a fantastic update for you. You can now schedule a Story or Analytic Application based on SAP HANA 2.0 live data connections, increasing the scope for sharing your stories and analytic applications with your teams and stakeholders. When creating or editing a Schedule Publication for your stories based on SAP HANA 2.0 Live Models, you will also be able to define and edit prompt values.

• Check Maximum Number of Publications per hour

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can now check the maximum number of scheduled publications per hour based on your license under System  Monitor  Overview  Maximum number of Publications every one hour.

• Copy an Instance of a Schedule

  It’s time to simplify your workload with this new enhancement. You can now copy an instance of an existing schedule from the calendar and reuse it with new date and time. By default, the existing values of the scheduling parameters are available and can be modified after copying the schedule. This feature will help simplify your workflow, particularly when you want to copy and rerun a failed schedule with the same parameter or copy a schedule and modify some of the parameters.

Smart Assist

• Synonyms for Measure and Dimensions in Search to Insight Questions

  Power users can now define synonyms for measure and dimension names, which they can then easily search for in Search to Insight. The synonyms created will appear in the Search to Insight autosuggestions along with other measures and dimensions. Under System, you can access the synonyms dictionary, which lists all the definitions of synonyms used for dimension and measure names independent of a model. This new enhancement will allow provide you with more customization when searching for your answers, allowing you to ask questions in a more business-like language.

• Dimension Specific Indexing Configuration for Live Models in Search to Insight

  The 5000-member indexing limit will be removed, allowing Search to Insight users to search for all dimension members even for high cardinality dimensions. At index time, it’s possible to exclude certain dimensions, such as sensitive or unwanted dimensions, in order to hide dimension members from Search to Insight. This update empowers users to choose their desired level of hierarchies to index from, providing you with greater control over results in Search to Insights while increasing overall performance.

• Predictive Forecast on a Planning Model at Y/H/Q/M Time Hierarchies

  Currently, SAP Analytics Cloud allows you to run a predictive forecast on a monthly, quarterly, half-year, and yearly basis. With SAP Analytics Cloud Planning, you will now be able to run a predictive forecast on a planning model at Y/H/Q/M time hierarchies, even when the lowest level granularity of your model is “Day.” This provides you with more flexibility when you are working with predictive forecasts for planning models with different time granularities.

• Enriched Smart Insights for Formulas

  We’ve enhanced Smart Insights for formulas! First, you can now hover over a measure to quickly see its corresponding values. The second exciting enhancement is that you can now trigger Smart Insights from Measures in the Smart Insights Panel. These insights are automatically generated, which helps you and your business increase efficiency when working with formulas.

• Smart Insights on a Data Point Calculated Using the MIN and MAX Aggregation Types

  You will now be able to get Smart Insights on a data point that was calculated using the MIN and MAX aggregation types. With this enhancement, you can access useful insights for more calculation types.

• Smart Insights on Data Points that Represent Account Dimensions

  Currently, SAP Analytics Cloud supports Smart Insights on data points representing account dimensions which have Income (INC) and Expense (EXP) as financial account types. We are extending this support as you will now be able to receive Smart Insights on data points that represent account dimensions which have Liabilities & Equities (LEQ) and Assets (AST) as financial account types. With this enhancement, Planners can access valuable insights for more financial account types.

• Enhanced Dynamic Text on the Footer

  We’ve added a visibility enhancement for dynamic text on a chart footer. When you add Smart Insights as a footer on your chart, the enhanced dynamic text will now call out the highest contributor to your chart and make reference to all Smart Insights that are available in the Smart Insights panel.

• Improved Visibility of Leak Variables and Chart Details on Smart Discovery

  In Smart Discovery, we’ve improved visibility of leak variables and chart details information.

Smart Predict

• Planning Models can now be used as Data Sources for Predictive Scenarios

  The next feature revolves around integrating planning model data sources with Smart Predict to unify the Predictive, BI, and Planning experience in SAP Analytics Cloud. This means you will be able to create your predictive model from your planning models. You can then inject the predictive results directly into your planning models. These predictive results can be broken down and segmented across multiple dimensions and members, facilitating automated and intelligent bottom-up forecasting at scale.

  Further, planning users will be able to access the predictive reports, enabling them to see the quality of the debriefs and KPIs. Receiving these insights will empower users to make the most accurate and confident decisions for their business.

• Predictive Scenarios in Files Area

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, predictive scenarios will now be created and stored in the “Files” area. Here, you can also store your predictive scenarios alongside your favorite models, stories and other files. This update provides you with a layer of security when working with your predictive scenarios as you can decide which scenarios are visible to your teammates or to specific users.

• Redesigned Settings Panel in Predictive Models

  Did someone say more improvements? Yes, you heard right because we have made improvements to the Settings Panel, providing you with a smoother user experience when creating and editing predictive models. The new enhancements for the Settings Panel include:

  • On-demand contextual “Help” for entry fields with the associated information (i) icon.

    • Click the (i) to display the “Help” dialog, which provides an explanation of the entry requirement for the specific field.

    • We’ve made key terminology changes to make complex predictive concepts more understandable.

    • Predictive modeling parameters and options have been regrouped to facilitate predictive model creation. This will make it easier to define your predictive goal.

    • New messages inform and guide users when a selected parameter or option isn’t available in the data source, along with default placeholder values in fields.

• Moving Predictive Scenarios to Files Area

  In SAP Analytics Cloud, predictive scenarios can now be moved from the Browse Predictive Scenarios area to the “Files” area into a selected public folder. The Predictive Scenario Migration feature supports single filter values, multi filter values, and range values. This update provides you with a layer of security when working with your predictive scenarios as you can decide which scenarios are visible to your teammates or to specific users.

Modeling

• SAP Analytics Cloud now gives you an easy way to view a model with a visual tool (the new Structure view), and also a way to see the underlying fact data of the model with the new Data Foundation view. For details, see this blog and this help topic.

Administration & Infrastructure

• SAP Analytics Cloud, add-in for Microsoft Office

  With the new add-in, you can continue to analyze your SAP Analytics Cloud data in Excel for the web. Based on SAP Analytics Cloud models, you can deepen your analysis using filters, totals, and Excel formulas. You can also enter data for planning and write it back to the cloud. During your analysis, you can update your table with the actual data from SAP Analytics Cloud at any time.

  You can download the add-in for free from the Microsoft Office store. All you need is your SAP Analytics Cloud license to get started.

  For more information, please see SAP Analytics Cloud, add-in for Microsoft Office.

• Support for Safari

  SAP Analytics Cloud now supports the Safari browser for the following use cases:

  • Consuming applications created by Analytics Designer on iPad in embed mode.

  • Viewing Canvas/Responsive stories on Mac for all embedded scenarios with different solutions like SAP S/4 and Success Factors.

• Analytics Catalog

  Members of you organization can now view published content in one central location within SAP Analytics Cloud – the new Catalog tab in the Home Page. Analytic resources such as stories, boardroom presentations, and more can be published and viewed in the Catalog. Users can easily search for published content using meta-data and filters to make their daily tasks more productive. To enable this new feature, see Enabling or Disabling the Catalog.

• Manage Team-specific Folders

  You can now manage team-specific folders the same way you can manage other folders. This addition gives admins more control over the Team folders, including being able to rename and delete them, improving file repository organization.

• Quicker Access to Content from the Home Page

  The Home page now includes the following features to let users and teams quickly discover and access important content:

  • A Favorites tab dedicated to all the content you have designated as "Favorites".

  • A Shared with Me tab listing all the content that has been shared with you by other users.

  Note that this feature is disabled by default, and tenant admins can turn it on via the administration settings.

• Permissions to discuss and comment

  Companies may have very specific rules around which applications should be used to allow the direct user to user collaboration. You can now manage permissions to start a discussion or view and contribute to it through a new application privilege managed in the role definitions. The same application privilege is also available for managing commenting. Thus, effective team communication can be achieved while data security is ensured!

• Self-service IdP maintenance

  You can now use the Identity Provider Administration tool to manage the custom identity provider configured with SAP Analytics Cloud. This can be used to recover your IdP configuration in case of unexpected interruption. For example, you can upload new metadata for the current custom identity provider or revert to using the default identity provider.

• View Recent Files

  You can now open recently accessed files on the Recent Files widget located on the Home Page. This update saves you time navigating to your recent work and opening the files you use most often. You need to turn this feature on in the administration panel as it is turned off by default.

• Publish Content for All Users

  The ability to publish to "All Users" has been added to the Publish To Catalog dialogue box. This allows you to publish content to all current and future users of an SAP Analytics Cloud system.

• Create URLs to Share Content

  When sharing content, the default link can be quite lengthy and nonspecific. You will now be able to customize your URL when sharing content. This way, you can make your links more understandable and sharable for your teammates and other users.

Analytics Designer

• Support for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud

  An application creator can now create an analytic application based on an SAP Data Warehouse Cloud space in SAP Analytics Cloud. This increases the scope of the data you can choose from when designing analytical applications.

• Copy widget to Analytic Application

  Users can now copy widgets from a story to analytic applications at design time within the same browser page. Copying can be achieved via ctrl +c and ctrl + v, or via the copy feature on the quick menu. All the property capabilities on the widget itself will be copied over.

  Supported features: State of the widgets (calculated measures, features created by the building and styling panel), copying widgets to container or a popup, copying grouping widgets (without group information), chart in smart insight panel, etc.

  Not supported features: Value Driver Tree, Input Control, linked analysis, story filter, geo polygon filter, etc. In a word, the properties that are saved within the entire story.

• OData Services on more SAP systems

  In addition to SAP S/4HANA live connections, you can now define OData Services in analytics designer based on SAP BW systems, SAP HANA systems, and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) systems. Additional back-end support is added, so you can trigger Odata actions on data from more SAP systems.

• Referenced custom widgets in exported archives

  Custom widgets enable you to create your own visualizations. With this new enhancement, you can export analytic applications that contain all referenced custom widgets by default. This will guarantee you access to all custom widgets, saving you time and trouble.

• New APIs

  There are two new scripting APIs for BW and HANA Live connections:

  • removeVariableValue()

  • copyVariableValueFrom()

  You can set, remove or copy the variables values when editing your script for analytical applications. In the story or application, the variables are merged by default, which means any changes you made on the variables will affect all tables and charts the variables are used. You can choose to set Table Variables to let the variables be unmerged on the widget, meaning that only a particular chart will be affected if you make any changes. Have fun with the extra scripting capabilities from this update!

• Improved Adding Widget Menu

  The adding widget menu gets longer with each new widget added, so we have enhanced it by regrouping some widgets. Widgets that are not used frequently are regrouped in "More Widgets". Custom widget is also separated on the widget menu. New groupings give developers easier navigation to work on their widgets.

• Restore the latest deleted widget

  Accidentally deleted a widget when working on Analytic Designer? Don’t worry. With this update, you can restore the deleted widget or technical component within the ten seconds after you deleted it. The restored item will keep the previous state so you can easily pick up where you left off.

• Error count on Analytic Application

  We now show the error count on the information panel toolbar's icon of your analytic application. This will help inform the application developer instantly when the application has an error.

• Edit Button

  When you're running Analytic Applications, you can now use the Edit button in the toolbar of an executed application to enter edit mode. The Edit button is not available in Microsoft Internet Explorer and is only displayed for application users with corresponding permissions. Quickly switching from run time to design time increases your efficiency when designing an Analytic Application.

• onBeforeExecute event

  As an application designer, you can now use the onBeforeExecute event for the Data Action Trigger and the BPC Planning Sequence.

  You can use this event to add any scripts that should be executed before the data action trigger/Planning is executed. So now you have more flexibility and room for creativity when designing applications.

• Copy Widgets Across Browser Tabs

  You can now copy widgets from story to analytic applications and application to application at design time across different browser tabs.

• Enhanced Tabs in Builder Panel

  Application developers can now rename and reorder tabs in the Builder Panel. The name and order of the tabs within a Tabstrip in Builder Panel is synchronized with the outline. In the outline, application developers can reorder the tabs within the same Tabstrip via drag and drop. New scripting APIs for the tabs are also provided. Your capability to organize the Tabstrips of your applications is enhanced, making it easier for your viewers to consume the information.

• Data Locks

  When working on a planning application, the developer can now use the menu entry Data Locks at design time to display locked cells in the table. Now the Data Locking display is available at both design and run time.

• New API to send a notification

  Application developers can now use the Application.sendNotification() API to send a notification when an analytic application is running on the backend, i.e. scheduling. You can use scripting capabilities to configure the notification. Users can receive the notification via email or the notification panel. A maximum of three notifications can be sent per scheduling job.

• New APIs to move widgets

  Application developers can now decide to move widgets or containers dynamically to other containers at application runtime to cover dynamic layout scenarios.

  Supported container widgets are canvas, panel, or tab strip.

  Provided scripting APIs:

  • Application.moveWidget();

  • Tabstrip.moveWidget();

  • Panel.moveWidget()

• New API to apply bookmarks at run time

  Application developers can now use the BookmarkSet.apply() API to load/apply bookmarks at run time. This scripting API needs to be related to the technical component of a bookmark, Bookmark Set. This new feature lets designers load bookmarks more conveniently.

  The included widgets within the bookmark definition will be reloaded. The status of non-included widgets within the bookmark definition will be kept.

• API DataSource.setDimensionFilter() supports range filters and exclude filters

  Application developers can now use the scripting API DataSource.setDimensionFilter() to support:

  • Range filters

  • Excluding members with single and multiple filter values

• New APIs for SAP BW models

  Application developers can use the following scripting APIs for SAP BW models in the table widget:

  • Table.setCompactDisplayEnabled()

  • Table.isCompactDisplayEnabled()

  • Table.setZeroSuppression()

  • Table.isZeroSuppressionEnabled() table axis.

  • DataSource.getDimensionProperties()

  • Table.setActiveDimensionProperties()

  • Table.getActiveDimensionProperties()

  This allows application designers to customize the table design. For example, when a user wants to open a chart in a popup / fullscreen container, the application developer can move the table to that popup / fullscreen container directly – with all the interaction states kept.

• New API to improve the existing read access to OData services

  You can now use the API getEntitiesCountFromEntitySet to improve the existing read access to OData services by enabling the OData system query options for "filter", "orderby", "select", "count", "top", and "skip".

  The new API works like the getEntitiesFromEntitySet API but returns the count instead of an entity list.

Data Integration

• Live Data Connection to Data Warehouse Cloud

  You can now combine the data management and modeling capabilities of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud with SAP Analytics Cloud. Create a live data connection to your SAP Datahouse Cloud system, and get started visualizing your analytical datasets and designing compelling Stories today!

• Remove Duplicate Rows

  Duplicate rows in the dataset can be removed while creating a public model. You can find the option "Remove duplicate rows" in the Actions tab. Initially, the duplicates are removed from the sample. Once the "Create Model" button is clicked, the duplicate rows are removed from the entire dataset. This helps you keep your dataset lean and clean.

• Expanded Limits for Acquiring Data

  Great news! We have increased the data acquisition limits for handling large amounts of customer data for models and datasets. This will be available for sources such as Business Warehouse, Business Objects Enterprises, HANA, SQL, and BigQuery.

  • Data acquisition will now have a cell limit of 100 million cells and 100 columns per load.

  • Datasets will now have a cell limit of 1 billion cells and 1000 columns per load. Hierarchies.

• Export blank values as the specified value

  When exporting data using an SAP Analytics Cloud property for the target member ID, users can now export members with blank property values. Member values acquired from BW system are sometimes empty, and users using SAP Analytics Cloud for planning purposes may want to export them as empty or replace them with a default value. This new functionality helps ensure the completion of data throughout the analyzing process.

• Import from SAP HANA views based on XS Advanced

  This feature enhances existing on-premise data acquisition from HANA to support XSA based HANA Views.

• Support for more Open Connectors data sources

  We now support more data sources via SAP Open Connectors: Autotask CRM, Close, ConnectWise CRM, Infusionsoft CRM, Insightly, and Box. Users can acquire data from one of these sources and create a model based on imported data. Note that the users must be on a Cloud Foundry tenant and have the Open Connectors account.

Data Visualization

• Custom Hierarchies/Groups for BW Live

  Story designers want to organize members of different dimension groups. When working on a story, you can define custom hierarchies on BW dimensions. These hierarchies can be used in charts, tables and even input controls and filters. The definition of a new hierarchy always starts from the flat dimension. Changing the Variables will reset all custom hierarchies. Please note that this new feature requires BW 7.5 SP16 and SAP Note 2865887 and SAP Note 2865929.

• Export Story Content to PowerPoint

  We've released the ability to export a story to Microsoft PowerPoint, allowing users to easily include stories in their presentations and streamline their workflow. Each exported story page will be one image on a PowerPoint slide. This feature has the same capabilities and limitations as exporting stories to PDF or Google Slides.

• User-defined hierarchies with custom shape files in the geo choropleth layer on SAP BW

  For SAP BW, you can now consume user-defined hierarchies with custom shape files in the geo choropleth layer. It allows you to drill down to a specific level. For example, you can access level two with one click.

• Custom sort for dimension members in SAP BW

  You can now set up a custom sort for dimension members in tables, visualizations and Explorer. Flat list and Hierarchy are sorted only within the same hierarchy level and Characteristic Structures. This can be shared between the same model within the same story.

• Input Controls Search Improvements

  You can now search for members with certain patterns in input controls.

  Note that this feature works only for searches of existing members of the dimension. New members are not automatically reselected. It is available for Acquired and HANA Live models only, and not supported for Hierarchies.

• Restricted Measures with Constant Selection on a Subset of Dimensions

  We have made improvements to Restricted Measures as you can now create restricted measures that allow you to select dimension(s) that you want to hold constant or fixed. What this means is you now have the flexibility to bypass conflicting filters and breakdowns for a selected subset. An example of where this would be useful is for creating complex comparison calculations between members of the same dimension, allowing you to effectively compare your data in analysis.

• Widget Filters on Dynamic Time Using a Custom Current Date

  Now you have the ability to create widget filters with dynamic time ranges based on a "custom current date". Viewers can control the current date used for the dynamic time range, so they can have more options when it comes to working with data in different timelines. Note there is only one custom current date input control, which is located in the filter bar. This feature is currently not supported on Geo Maps.

• Favorite Story and Boardroom in View Time

  You can mark your story or boardroom as "favorite" during view time, making it easier and faster to open and pick up where you left at a later time. In all new boardrooms, you can find "favorite" in the action bar; as for the existing ones, you can add them through settings.

• Choose between ID and Description Display of Member Input Controls

  Users can select whether to display ID, description, or both in an input control, to better select members in a filter. Searching for members is based on the display settings. The selection can be changed during view time and is persisted in bookmarks.

• Disable Data Label Rounding in Charts

  Some chart types round the data labels in favor of a cleaner visualization. Although Data Label Rounding remains the default, you can disable it by unchecking "Round Data Label Values". Chart types supported include: Bar/Column, Combined Column and Line, Stacked Bar, Waterfall, Heat Map, Tree Map, Marimekko, Bubble.

• Responsive Layout as Preferred Page Type

  The use of responsive pages is being encouraged through small UI changes, so your stories can automatically resize to fit on different devices or screen sizes. When creating a new page, Responsive Layout is suggested first, and stories created by Data Exploration use responsive pages by default.

• Show/Hide Data Markers On Line Charts And Combined Line Charts

  Show/hide data markers on line charts and combined line charts are now available. When you choose to hide data markers, thresholds will also be hidden. This update simplifies your visualization and increases the readability of your charts.

• Display Measure Values in the Bubble Layer of a Geo Map

  Now you have the ability to show measure values in the bubble layer of a Geo Map. You can choose to display the color, size, or measure values.

• Enhanced Number Format Capabilities for Geo Maps

  We have enhanced our number formatting styling capabilities, so you can adjust the scale, scale format, and decimals when working on geo maps. All values also update in tooltips, even when they're hidden.

• Search and viewing enhancements for widget filters and input controls

  When viewing a story page, you can now choose whether to display (and search) the ID, Description, or ID and Description for widget filters and input controls. This action can be done through the "more actions" menu or the right-click menu.

Mobile

• Available on Android

  To all Android users, the SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile App is now available for you! You can discover mobile-enabled Stories by using the global search or navigating through the content folders. From now on, you can view and work on stories via your phone anywhere, anytime.

• Easier navigation

  Mobile users can now easily navigate to their desired content through the following:

  • A new Home tab containing favorite and featured content, as well as recently viewed items.

  • A new Files tab to view all the folders and files containing stories and presentations enabled for mobile.

  • Settings are now available under the Profile icon.

  • Global search on both the Home and Files tabs for accelerated content discovery.

• Support for story metadata

  The SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile App now supports translated, user-defined story metadata based on acquired data connections. Multilingual communication will offer a competitive advantage to companies in the wave of globalization.

• Access specified content

  Now when a user creates a link to share a story with others on the Mobile Application, it will include specified filters, page indexes, and prompts, so the receiver of the link can access the specified content with ease. This feature greatly improves the shareability of stories on the Analytics Mobile Application.

• Query time in Search to Insight

  Search to Insight on Mobile now supports time-related keywords such as "… by Year", "… by Quarter", etc. to offer more contextual information based on different time inquiries. This update provides you with more concise search results at your fingertips.

• Query Live Data Models in Search to Insight

  You can query models based on live data (SAP HANA, SAP BW, SAP S/4 HANA) when working with Search to Insight on iPhones. Now you can enjoy the benefits of our conversational artificial intelligence to visualize and analyze live data on your iPhone.

• Single-sign-on experience

  You can now use a simplified single-sign-on experience when using the mobile App to connect to your live SAP BW, SAP HANA, or SAP S/4HANA data using SAP Cloud Connector. This gives end-users seamless access to their data without worrying about entering credentials, saving you time and trouble.

  This feature can be enabled on existing connections by supplying the right configurations details.

• Support for Xcode-11

  The SAP Analytics Mobile App and SDK now support Xcode 11. This means that the new App is now built with Xcode 11 and deprecating older iOS versions.

  The Mobile SDK requires Xcode 11.3 to be able to build an IPA file and deploy it in internal App Stores.

• Home Tab on Android

  For all of you Android users, the "Home" page will now be available in SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile. Now when you log into the application, you will be directed to the "Home”"page where you can quickly access your favorites, featured files, and most recent files. Accessing and discovering your most important content has never been quicker and easier.

• Language Enhancements on Android

  The SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile for Android will now support most languages across the application. The menus, buttons, messages, and other elements will now be translated based on your language settings. That's not all! The Android Mobile App will also support translated, user-defined story metadata based on acquired data connections. With these language enhancements, Analytics can be consumed by a wider audience within your organization, which is especially useful for international organizations.

Modeling

• Shareable Full Control access

  If you share a model with Full Control access, other users are now able to export jobs. This update improves team collaboration and makes it easier for the appropriate users to make exports as necessary.

Planning

• Create validation rules to define valid ranges of data

  In planning models, you can now create validation rules to establish relationships of members across different dimensions to restrict planned data entry. For example, you may want to restrict planning to only a few products in a given geography. With this capability, you can set relationships based on attributes to enforce this type of restriction.

• Calendar Integration for Reviewer in Story

  When you're reviewing a story that's part of a calendar task, you can access it through the new status bar, which is located on the top of the task-connected story. It also shows calendar information when hovered over, together with Submit, Reject, and Details buttons. This update saves you unnecessary clicks to switch back and forth between the Calendar and the story.

• Export data from SAP Analytics Cloud to S/4HANA Activity Type Plan Cost Rates

  We have expanded our capabilities to push plan information from SAP Analytics Cloud to specific components within S/4HANA. With this release, you can now export data from SAP Analytics Cloud to S/4HANA Activity Type Plan Cost Rates (ACCOSTRATE). Configuration for this export is consistent with the current export to S/4HANA capabilities (i.e. ACDOCP).

• Return the current Coordinated Universal Time in Advanced Formulas

  A new function TODAY is now available within Advanced Formulas which returns the current system date in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in the format YYYYMMDD. This function can be modified to return local time based on the configuration setting CONFIG.TIME_ZONE_OFFSET.

• Set Completion Options to Ignore

  When copying data across different models, there is a new completion option, "Ignore", to help you include only data that is relevant for the specific copy action.

  By setting the "Ignore" option, any source members that were not automatically mapped to a target member are excluded from the copy. This can improve overall cross model copy performance and simplifies and streamlines the overall cross model copy mapping experience.

• Enhanced Table experience

  We've improved the table experience with the following updates:

  • Smooth scrolling bar appears when your cursor hovers over the table and saves you from clicking.

  • Improved performance of in-cell charts and thresholds.

  • Ability to specify exact row height or use the predefined Fiori heights (Default, Condensed, Cozy).

  • Ability to specify exact column width for non-responsive tables.

  • Deselect linked analysis members with "Esc" on keyboard.

  This should make your experience feel more familiar and intuitive.

• Reference another time dimension for time functions NEXT/PREVIOUS

  For planning models with multiple time dimensions, you can now reference a secondary time dimension within the Advanced Formula functions Next and Previous.

  One of the more typical use-cases for this are scenarios that require amortization of revenue recognition. For example, in the insurance industry, premiums are paid upfront for the duration of the contract. However, these payments cannot be recognized as revenue immediately, but rather need to be spread over the contract duration.

  By introducing the ability to reference a secondary time dimension in the Next/Previous functions, it becomes easier to define relative time offsets to the initial payment period to amortize the specific revenues or expenses.

• Show Units and Scale in cell

  Using the styling panel, story designers can decide where units and scale should be shown in the table. You can format it at the cell level to increase visibility. You can choose to display units and scale in:

  • Default

  • Row

  • Column

  • Cell

• Open the data locking editor from a Data Locking Task

  You can now easily open the Data Locking editor in read-only mode from a Data Locking Task. The context of the task is applied to the editor as driving dimensions so you can see the current lock state for your task.

Platform Services

• Schedule Publications

  Scheduling publications on stories and analytical applications will allow you to create a schedule with recurring patterns and allow you to distribute the content as a PDF over email. With the same story, you can customize the publications using bookmarks to send more relevant information to your colleagues and even to external audiences.

  This new feature greatly improves the distribution of your stories and analytical applications. With this new feature, you'll be able to maintain historical data from your content at any pre-defined frequency.

  SAP BW and HANA Prompt Variables are supported. On the Calendar, you are able to see the status of your scheduling job. Please note that scheduling is only available on Cloud Foundry.

• Defining Prompt Value while scheduling a story

  When creating or editing a "Schedule Publication" for stories based on SAP BW and HANA data models, you can now define prompt values. In this way, you can share different views with different prompt values for your story with the same or a new set of recipients, increasing the shareability.

Smart Assist

• Live Universe Connection in Search to Insight

  Search to Insight can be used on Live Universe Connections. The model needs to be indexed in the Model Settings and requires Live Universe 2.3. This will help your end-users quickly ask questions of their data from the live universe connection.

• Story Filter in Search to Insight

  When you open Search to Insight from a story, all story filters are automatically applied in the question you ask. Only filters affecting the specific chart get displayed. This update makes it easier for you to dig deeper into the filtered data, simplifies your workflow and makes the experience with Search to Insight more seamless.

• Enhanced Simulation View

  For your business, it's really important to answer the question "What would happen if…?" To better help you answer that question for all your new stories, our impact simulator replaces the original waterfall chart. This will better explain your simulation results, help you forecast possible scenarios and make smart business decisions.

• Histograms in Search to Insight

  Users can use histogram as chart type in Search to Insight by specifying "as histogram". For example, type "Show me Employee by Salary for 2019 as histogram" in Search to Insight, instantly the results will be visualized with a histogram.

• Smart Insights in Explorer and Digital Boardroom

  You can now use Smart Insights in Explorer and Digital Boardroom, allowing users to get contextual insights in more scenarios.

• Enriched Smart Insights for calculations

  Smart Insights for calculations can now show you their top contributors and how they change over time. It lets you see more information about calculations on a particular data point or variance in your visualization or table, and understand which factors are making the biggest impact on them.

• Search using number abbreviations In Search to Insight

  You can now search data using number abbreviations allowing you to search in a more natural & intuitive way. For example:

  • Numeric decimal values, such as "2.4 B".

  • Expressions in English, such as "a million" or "a half million".

  • Words for fractions, such as "half a million".

Administration & Infrastructure

• Translate Analytics Hub Content

  You can now translate SAP Analytics Hub asset content and structure using the SAP Analytics Cloud translation service. Users can update their language preference and view translated content in their preferred language. Support for over 30 languages allows for Analytics to be consumed by a wider audience within your organization, which is perfect for international organizations!

• Buy and Import Content

  When browsing paid content from Content Libraries on the Content Network, you can now follow a link to the SAP App Center to buy the content, and then import it directly into SAP Analytics Cloud. This seamless integration makes it much easier and faster to bring in your favorite external content.

• Browse menu improvements

  With this update, the Content Network, Translation, and Analytic Application Bookmarks can now be accessed from the Browse menu instead of the Files area, saving you a few clicks.

• SSO IdP improvements

  You can now configure IdP-initiated SSO for SAP Data Centers, allowing for tighter integration to portals and other applications that share an IdP, as well as linking from a portal page to SAP Analytics Cloud without prompting the user for credentials. In addition to that, administrators will have the option to configure the behavior of SAP Analytics Cloud to keep users logged into the corporate IdP when they logout of SAP Analytics Cloud. SSO.

• Update and manage IDP metadata

  System owners can now fully update and manage SAML SSO metadata before the current metadata expires, avoiding support tickets and downtime.

• Danish Support

  You can now choose Danish as your user interface language. Velkommen to all our Danish users!

Analytics Designer

• New text-area widget

  You can now add a new text-area widget to your Analytic Application. It is similar to the input field widget, but different in that it can wrap text automatically based on the size of the widget and the line break entered by the application users. This is especially useful when you get long text from comments and descriptions.

• Scripting for Search to Insight

  As an application designer, you can now use scripting API to build your own Search to Insight UI by integrating Search to Insight with another application, such as a Chatbot or your own company portal. This new scripting API allows users to pass a question through the application and apply the resulting chart or table in an Analytic Application, making it faster and easier for the end user to get custom analytics.

• Concurrent Session Notifications

  This usability improvement will help ensure that users don't overwrite each others work when working on the same Application. When a second user opens the same Application, system notifications will indicate to them that someone else is already editing, and the original editor will receive a notification that someone else opened the file. Once an edit is made by one of the users, the other user will receive a notification to either save a copy of their Application or jump to the most recent revision to continue working.

• Data Source API Enhancements

  With this update you'll now be able to use the data source prompt API, <DataSource.setVariableValue()>, to facilitate more customization in Analytics Designer. Please note that this API will not be supported for hierarchy node variables for live data connections to SAP BW.

• Data locking APIs

  You'll also be able to use data-locking APIs to check whether a model is data-locking enabled as well as to set or get data locks, even if the table is not planning enabled. This is great for quickly changing data in tables, where a designer can create a button to lock certain data as fixed.

• Change themes when running applications

  Application designers will now have access to the setTheme() API, which would allow users to easily change the theme when running the application.

• API Improvements

  Multiple improvements have been made with a synopsis listed below for each improvement:

  • The wave version of the API reference is displayed in the browser tab and in the first link of the "Contents" section.

  • The link "API Reference Latest Published Version" in the "Contents" section navigates to the latest publicly available version of the API reference.

  • Class, field, method, and event API additions are listed in their documentation with the wave version of their addition under the heading "Since" and their update under "Last Update".

  • Direct subclasses of a class are listed in the class documentation under the heading "Direct Subclasses".

  • Each class in the "Contents" section has decorator icons indicating special capabilities of the class:

    • Icon with the letter "D" indicates whether the class contains fields or methods that can be directly accessed in the script editor without creating an instance of the class.

    • Icon with the letter "T" indicates whether the class can be used as a type in method arguments, return values, or global script variables.

  • The API reference shows the type library information of each class and all classes are grouped into type libraries.

• Performance Enhancements

  This update will allow you to improve performance by merging queries from SAP BW or SAP HANA for multiple charts in the Analytics Designer. To enable this feature, visit the Query Settings pop-up panel and turn on the "Enable Query Merge" toggle.

• Loading Indicator

  Application Designers can now define a loading indicator to prevent Application users from performing new actions while an operation is still in progress. This will improve the user experience as they will receive a visual cue that a process is occurring.

  There are two types of loading indicators:

  • Automatically triggered when loading is longer than a predefined delay time. This is configured in the Styling panel of the canvas.

  • Defined for the application as a pop up, a tab strip, or a panel, by leveraging corresponding APIs.

• Data Analyzer Enhancements

  As a user of the data analyzer, you will find several improvements for this ready-to-run service to improve your workflow efficiency:

  • The "Available Items" area is now displayed by default.

  • You can use the Refresh button in the query information dialog to refresh your data source.

  • In the query information dialog, prompts that have been set for the data source are now displayed.

  • You can now quickly and easily collapse the filter line.

• Trigger Refreshing for Widgets

  By leveraging the refresh data APIs, Application Designers can allow Application users to trigger a data refresh for a specific widget (such as a table or chart) or all widgets related to an Application data source. This ensures that relevant and up-to-date information is always available for your end user to make decisions.

• Type Library Optimization

  More isn't always better, especially when it comes to searching through help sections. In an effort to save Analytic Designers from having to sift through multiple irrelevant topics, new Analytic Applications will only suggest types that are available in the standard library, within the script editor value help. Whenever a widget or technical object is loaded into the application, the associated type library will be added as well. For Analytic Applications that were created prior to this update, there will be an "Optimize type Libraries" button under the "Settings" menu which will remove any unused libraries from the script editor value help.

Data Integration

• Qualtrics Import Connection

  Could you think of a time when knowing how a customer or partner felt would have helped your business? Most of us would agree that understanding how people feel about an experience would be incredibly beneficial and offer insights that simply cannot be gained through financial metrics. With this new release of SAP Analytics Cloud, we're bringing in the experiential data (X data) powers of Qualtrics by allowing you to import survey questions and answers, adding new insights to augment your operational data (O data). Users will be able to define what data to import via the familiar query building experience, making the X+O connection experience seamless and intuitive, so you can focus on understanding how to offer your customers the most benefit.

• Option to allow import data to public dimension for non-leaf node in hierarchy

  When importing data into Global dimensions, users can now omit validation, allowing non-leaf members to contain fact data for specific hierarchies.

• Live Connections to CF HANA 2.0 without setting up HDI

  Connection setup to Cloud Foundry HANA 2.0 has been simplified by removing the need to force the connection through an HDI container. The overall architecture of the live connection has not changed, the only difference is to replace the HDI container reference to a user provided service.

• Query Panel Resizing Improvements for Live SAP Universe

  When creating a model on a Universe with SAP Live Data Connect, you can now use the full-screen icon in the Query Panel header to maximize the view. This will make it easier to deal with large quantities of selected data, especially when working on smaller computer screens.

• View Mapping and Import Job Transformations

  Users can now view data mapping and transform history after they import data into a model or dimension. This history can be used to help map or transform data for other import jobs, saving you time and potential confusion!

Data Visualization

• Background gradients or image for Responsive Pages and Lanes

  Story designers can now select gradient colors and images to use as a background for responsive pages and lanes. Background images and color gradient are also available in story preferences for ease of story design.

• Threshold legend in charts

  Story designers can now choose to display a threshold legend when a threshold is applied on a chart. Just like other chart legends, the threshold legend can also be hidden via the "More Actions" menu.

• Custom Web Fonts

  Administrators now have the ability to bring in Custom Web Fonts to their tenant from within the Administration Panel. Story Designers can then use these Custom Web Fonts anywhere fonts are configurable in the Story, in the exact same way you would use a pre-installed font. This will allow for better brand consistency for companies with custom typefaces and offers more flexibility in formatting.

• Right-Click Context Menu

  This update brings a big increase in usability and discoverability of possible widget actions by providing a right click context menu. Widget menu items will now be accessible by right clicking anywhere on the widget, or through the floating "More Actions" icon at top right of the widget. The wrap title action will be moved inside the context menu to reduce clutter on the main widget screen and core datapoint actions such as filter, exclude, and drill will remain available via left click. These updates should make interacting with widgets much more intuitive and consistent.

• Live BW Support for Exception Aggregations

  Story designers now have the ability to create aggregations in the story calculation editor using Live BW models. There is one exception: the First & Last aggregation can only contain one aggregation dimension while the other aggregations will have a limit of five.

• Restrict Measures on Dynamic Time Using a Custom Current Date

  This feature provides the ability to create restricted measures and cross calculations with dynamic time range filters based on a "custom current date". This allows viewers to control the "current period" used for the dynamic time range based on their current date configuration. Essentially, you will no longer need to update the date filter range whenever you want to change the time-period, just update the custom current date and the rest will change accordingly!

• Story-Level Font Resize in Device Preview

  Story Designers can now change the font scaling of the entire story for each individual device size using a single scale. Widgets can still be individually scaled but this will save you a lot of time from having to configure each widget one-by-one.

Digital Boardroom

• Set prompts for All Pages

  Boardroom presenters can now change prompts for all pages rather than page by page. This dramatically reduces the number of clicks needed to change prompts and allows for a more consistent view of the data. Prompts can still be set for individual pages if desired, allowing you to choose between efficiency or customization!

• Combine Action Bar with Header or Footer

  Digital Boardroom designers can now easily integrate the Action Bar into the header or footer of the Boardroom for quick access. This greatly improves discoverability and leaves more space for viewing the boardroom story itself. These options can be configured in the boardroom preferences.

General Updates

• SAP Analytics Cloud for Office

  SAP Analytics Cloud's add-in for Microsoft Office extends our analytic and planning capabilities with the well-known Excel frontend and functions to allow planners to work on their preferred device while still getting all the benefits SAP Analytics Cloud provides. This add-in works both on premise, with a product installation, as well as on desktop and in the cloud where no installation is required since the add-on can be found in the Microsoft store. And, of course, please keep in mind that some functionality may be missing as this feature is still in Beta.

Intelligent Enterprise

• Live BW Support for Time Variances

  Time-based variances on Live BW models can now be created within the story, and they will also support Recommended Comparisons, giving you expertly curated ways to view your data.

Mobile

• Search to Insight on Mobile

  Search to Insight is here! You can now query your acquired models using Search to Insight in the mobile app to get quick answers to questions and share these findings with other users. As you type your query, auto-complete suggestions will display, bringing augmented analytics right to your fingertips no matter where you are in the world!

• BW Bex variable prompt support for fiscal year and currency

  The SAP Analytics Cloud mobile app now supports BW Bex variable prompts for Fiscal Year and Currency Variables.

• iOS 13 Support

  The SAP Analytics Cloud mobile app now runs on iOS 13 for iPhones.

• Application Logs

  The SAP Analytics Cloud App will now generate local application logs to help analyze issues when contacting the SAP Support team. This will help accelerate resolution of any issues you may face.

• Support for HANA Variables

  HANA Input parameters and variables will now be supported within the SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile app.

Modeling

• Delete private versions

  As an administrator, you can now delete all private versions for a specific model for all users of that model.

Planning

• Cut and paste shortcuts

  With this update you'll be able to cut and paste cell values with keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, or Cmd+X and Cmd+V. This brings the functionality that was available for custom cells, to data cells, creating a consistent user experience.

• Option to Switch to Input Mode in BPC Embedded

  When planning against BPC embedded, planners now have the option to toggle between input mode to edit data in a table, or view mode to only view data in the table. In view mode, there is no BW backend lock, and other planners can change data. This improves collaboration and makes it easier for appropriate users to make edits as necessary.

• Show Hyperlink in Tables

  Table hyperlinks are now visible through a quick "Go to Link" Hyperlink button available in the context menu of each cell. The hyperlinks will be displayed with the URL and additional context for quick comprehension and access to the destination.

• Allocation Steps in Data Actions

  Rather than manually executing allocations from within you story, you can now add structured allocations as part of a data action to provide a more automated experience for your end user. You can also combine an allocation step with other step types in one data action, and then easily execute them with one click using the data action trigger. Quick and easy!

• Copy Data Actions

  In this release, you'll gain the ability to copy a data action with all its steps and parameters, saving you time in those cases when you want to duplicate an existing data action. Just be aware that you can only copy one data action at a time, in order to not lose any previous copies.

• Export quantities to S4/HANA

  When you export data to S/4HANA using OData Services and your target key figure is a quantity, you will now be able to map it to a unit dimension and export the quantities of the different units. This will ensure accurate mapping and improve the quality of data exports to S/4HANA.

• Rename Account and Measures in the Builder Panel

  The table now provides options to rename Account and Measure dimensions directly from the Builder panel. The changes will not be saved to the model itself but are useful for customizing individual stories based on individual preferences.

• Activate Processes Automatically on Start Date

  As you can already do with tasks, you can now enable Processes activate automatically on the start date you've chosen. This reduces the manual inputs required for Processes, leaving you more time to spend on the actual tasks!

• Auto Complete Process on the Due Date

  Planners can now choose to have a process complete automatically on the due date and define the completion settings. In addition, Planners are able to apply the same completion settings to subtasks and Processes, or they can complete them with custom settings. Another case of SAP Analytics Cloud saving you time through automation!

Smart Assist

• Additional Time Phrases in Search to Insight

  Search to Insight will offer more contextual information based on different time inquiries. The following time phrases are now supported:

  • Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4

  • H1, H2

  • Previous, Current, This, Next

  • First, Second, …, Last

  • Half of the Year

  This will provide the end user with a more pleasant experience and better search results!

• Better Support for Time-Based Questions in Search to Insight

  Natural language is more useful than ever! Users can now ask for a measure over time in a much simpler way as well as specify the granularity through familiar terms, for example:

  • Show me Gross Margin…

    • over time

    • by year

    • by fiscal quarter

    • broken into months

    • broken down by week

    • by date

  • Show me monthly Gross Margin

  Search to Insight will also automatically select a time dimension if the user does not specify one explicitly. This will help your end user get quick information in a very intuitive manner without needing any specific knowledge about the data!

• Smart Insights Enhancements

  To help you make better business decisions, Smart Insights now brings top contributors for all generic dimensions, even those with large number of dimension members. To further improve the value of insights, "unassigned" values will no longer be shown as a top contributor, and for variances, Smart Insights now supports up to 50 dimension members.

• Search to Insight Support for Acquired Models with Data Access

  Acquired Models with Data Access Control (DAC) will now be used in Search to Insight when indexing is enabled from the Model Preferences. By default, models with DAC are not indexed, and because indexing does not respect the DAC settings, users without access to a member will still be able to see it in autocomplete.

• Exclude Acquired Models from Search to Insight

  Acquired Models can be excluded from Search to Insight by disabling indexing, giving users more control over which models get exposed.

• Smart Insights on Data Over Time

  Smart Insights now show you how your data points have changed over time, including when they have time dimension filters applied to them. This comes with a convenient tab view of the different time granularities which you can quickly toggle between. These features not only provide more context for better insights, but they also make for a more intuitive interface!

• Smart Insights on Account Dimensions

  You can now get Smart Insights on data points representing account dimensions which have Income (INC) and Expense (EXP) as financial account types. This feature is especially useful for Planners, offering more valuable insights when looking at financial data.

Smart Predict

• Time-Series Forecasting Predictive Model Improvements

  The time-series forecasting predictive model has received several major improvements with this release. In an effort to improve navigation and interactivity, the predictive reports are now available as tabs to quickly switch between. Furthermore, the structure of the debriefs has been enhanced by removing one of the reports and grouping the information in a more concise and relevant way. The default report has also changed, showing the forecasts as the initial report. Lastly, the explainable AI has been improved by exposing the influencers and their contributions in the debrief, as well as providing a description for each component of the signal to help with interpretation.

• Smart Predict Cloud native and converged architecture

  We've made improvements to how Smart Predict connects to your data. This ensures that your user experience creating predictive models is now more aligned when using either live or acquired datasets. This alignment, however, means that you’ll have to make sure that all predictive models created before release 2019.23 on acquired datasets, are retrained to view their debriefs, and also before they can be applied to new datasets.

• Multi-Column Segmentation for Data Sets

  When creating time series forecasting predictive models, segmentation will now have the ability to use values from multiple columns. This makes it easy to create forecasts for segments that combine values from several columns, such as region and product.