Navigating Within Analytic Applications

Explore the menu options and objects in your analytic application and get a deep insight in your data.

You have opend an analyitc application and want to view and analyze your data.

An analytic application in SAP Analytics Cloudis an analytical application that visualizes data in various forms and lets you navigate the data. It can also allow planning.

Analytic applications can range from simple static dashboards showing static numbers to highly customized applications with many options to browse and navigate data, change the visualization, navigate across multiple pages or areas, up to an extensively customized look and feel according to customer branding.

Here's an overview of the main menu options that you can find within an analytic application:

Note
Your choice of menu options changes depending on the way the application was created and the data it contains.

  • Toolbar Options (runtime)

  • Action Menu Options (design time)

  • Context Menu Options (runtime)

Toolbar Options

When you run your application, it is by default displayed n fullscreen mode. However, when you hover the mouse cursor at the top of the page, you can access a condensed version of the toolbar. To switch to view mode, click the button in the toolbar to leave the fullscreen. In view time mode the toolbar is fixed and always displayed in the application in its full version depending on the application's context.

Note

Your choice of menu options in the toolbar changes depending on the type of application and the data it contains (analytic or planning application). The most important functions can be reached by quick access buttons.

The toolbar has several sections:

  • Edit

    This section contains the following functions:
    Function Description
    Refresh

    • Refresh: reload the application to get the most recent data.

    • Auto Refresh: automatically refresh the application at an interval set by the application designer

  • Tools

    This section contains the following functions:
    Function Description
    Predictive Forecast

    		 If this option is enabled, you can select a single cell that can be edited, to start a predictive time series forecast. For more information, please see Run Predictive Forecasts on Table Cells.
    Edit Prompts

    		 If this option is enabled, you can filter application data from the data source level by setting application variables that you want to display in the application. Charts or tables that are built from that data source will get updated based on the details you entered.

    For example, if you want the application to show only full-time employees who have worked in the company for at least 7 years, you can set these variables and change the details.
    Allocate

    		 There are two ways to allocate values:
    Version History Use the version history function to quickly undo or redo private or public version changes.

    For more information, Undo, Redo, and Revert Changes to Versionssee .
    Version Management With this option you can copy, publish, delete and share public and private versions. For more information, see Create, Publish, and Manage Versions of Planning Data.
    Schedule Publication If this option is option is enabled, you can schedule a publication for both stories and analytic applications. As for a story, you can create a single schedule or a recurring schedule for an analytic application.

    For further information, see Schedule Publication for an Analytic Application.

  • Display

    This section contains the following functions:
    Functionality Description
    Comment Mode When viewing a planning application in the view time mode (Exit Fullscreen), you can directly show or hide all comments by choosing the Display button from the toolbar and check the option Comment Mode.
    Note

    You can only view and create comments on a widget or a cell of a table that is based on a planning model.

    For more information, see Adding Comments to Widgets and Table Cells.

  • For planning applications you'll find the Publish Data button quite prominenty displayed in the toolbar. This button lets you quickly publish or revert your edits to public versions.

  • By clicking Edit Analytic Application you can switch to the edit mode of the analytic application where you can make changes to your application, for example by adding more widgets or changing the model. When you edit the application you can use the action menu options described in the following paragraph.

Action Menu Options (Edit Mode)
Click anywhere within the area of a widget (for example chart or table to open the action menu. Expand (More Actions) to see all the options available in the menu.
Note

Note that these options vary depending on the widget type and the data it contains. Just make a choice and the selected widget will get updated right away!

In the following paragraph you'll find as an example the action menu options for charts

Function

Description

Sort

Allows you to apply an ascending or descending sort to your chart. Select the measure or dimension you want to sort, and the sort direction.

To sort on a measure that isn't included in the chart, select Advanced Sorting, choose a measure, and then set the sort criteria.

Rank

Show a specified number of the lowest or highest ranked members.

The following options are available:

  • Top 5

  • Bottom 5

  • Top N Options:
    • Mode - Top or Bottom
    • Value - used as the number of values you want to include in the filter.
    • Measure
    • Cross Calculation
    • Version

When a Top N filter is applied, text is displayed at the top of the chart indicating the filter direction and value. To change the filter, select the filter text and input new values.

Compare To

Shows the difference between versions of a measure or the difference between time periods. For more information, see How to Add a Variance to a Chart

Add

a)

b)

 a) CGR: add a Compound Annual Growth Rate line to a chart that has date values on its axis.

b) Comment: add comments to your widget and show or hide them by switching the toggle on or off.

For a list of options you can add, see Add More Functionality

Show / Hide

Allows you to show or hide chart elements. By default, most elements are shown.

The following elements can be hidden:
  • Chart Title
  • Subtitle
  • Chart Details
  • Legend
  • Threshold Legend
  • Data Labels
  • X-Axis Labels
  • X-Axis Title (Bubble, Scatterplot, and Histogram charts)
  • Y-Axis Labels
  • Y-Axis Title (Bubble and Scatterplot charts)
  • Total
  • Footer
The following elements are specific to time-related charts:
  • Time Intervals
  • Date Picker
  • Navigator
  • Vertical Grid Lines
  • Horizontal Grid Lines
  • Confidence Interval
  • Past Period Forecast
Edit Scripts Opens the script editor where you can edit the chart scripts.

Edit Axis

You can manually change the axis values. For more information, see Manually Setting the Axis Range.

Copy
Copy options include the following:

  • Copy to the clipboard

Export

Allows you to export data from your chart as a CSV file, with or without formatting. For more information, see Export Data as a CSV File

Edit Styling

Opens the Styling panel. For more information on styling options, see Formatting and Styling Items on a Story Canvas.

Fullscreen

Expands the tile to fill the canvas.
Context Menu Options
Click on a data point of a chart or table to open the context menu.
Note

Note that the menu options you get vary depending on how the chart or table was created and the data it contains. Just make a choice and the selected chart or table will get updated right away!

Function Description

1.Filter

Focus the chart on a specific set of data.

2.Exclude

 Hide data that are not immediately useful for your current analysis.
Drill

a)

b)

c)

d)

Drill down on data that has multiple levels so you can display your data at the level you want.

a) Choose a level to Drill Down. For example, drill down to Countries from Location.

b) Choose a level to Drill Up. For example, drill up to Countries from Cities.

c) Expand/Collapse: see all levels of the hierarchy. For example, you can see Cities, Countries and Location data altogether.

d) Set Drill: change the hierarchy back to the default level or choose another hierarchy and level to display from a list. For example, if the current level is Countries, you can reset the hierarchy back to Cities, the default level that the application designer has set, or you can drill down on Department data instead.

3.Compare To

Compare the selected data point of a chart with date or time data to itself from previous time periods.

If you are working with a bar chart, simply click on a bar and hover over another bar to see their difference in value.

4.Break Axis

 Get more information about the data of a selected chart or table.