Optimized Story Experience Improvements
In SAP Analytics Cloud, the optimized story experience improves the performance of dashboards (in certain scenarios) and provides usability improvements.
The optimized story experience has two modes: the design mode (optimized design experience, or ODE) and the view mode (optimized view mode, or OVM).
To enable either mode in your story, see Optimized Story Experience.
For information on the optimized story experience supported and unsupported functionality see Optimized Story Experience Restrictions.
The following sections list the improved behavior of features when using optimized view mode.
Optimized Design Experience: Story Improvements
These improvements only apply to the optimized design experience.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
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Chart Builder Panel |
The chart Builder panel has been redesigned to improve the design experience. These improvements include:
For more information, see Chart Builder Panel Improvements in Optimized Design Experience. |
Available Objects Panel |
The Available Objects panel allows Story Designers to see all measures, calculations, and dimensions. They can easily add objects to the Builder panel using drag-and-drop or the quick action menu. For more information, see Available Objects Panel in Optimized Design Experience. |
Optimized Design Experience: Chart Improvements
These improvements only apply to the optimized design experience.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Reference Line - New aggregation types |
The Reference Line now includes additional aggregation types such
as the following types:
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Custom Sort |
With the detection of Filter by Range or Filtering Across Models, the visible section for Custom Sort will be ignored to prevent data incorrectness. |
Legends Visibility |
We've improved the visibility of the legend by allowing users to explicitly Show or Hide the Legend using the Show/Hide options. |
Chart Title, Subtitle, and Footer Styling |
Chart Text Styling options are unified with the Text Widget. With this, there are more Styling Options available such as text alignment. For the footer, the right-click option will now show the Add Dynamic Text option. |
Hierarchy & Drilling Appearance |
The first hierarchy dimension listed in the dropdown will be chosen as default for non-BW models. For BW models, the hierarchy must be set in the metadata cube and must not be mandatory for the dimension. For other BW models, the dimension will be shown flat. In addition, to avoid loading all hierarchies upfront, the hierarchy icon may appear after the dimension is selected. For dimensions that contain no hierarchies, only the Flat Presentation option will be available in the Set Hierarchy drop-down. |
Token Actions and Menu Button Visibility |
The Display As option will now apply to the entire dimension. This means that if the dimension is switch from hierarchical to flat, then the Display As option that is set will remain. |
Tooltip Measures + Dimensions Entities Limit |
There is no longer a limit to the number of entities that can be added to the Tooltip Measure or Dimension section. Note
As soon as more than 5 entities are added, the performance optimization tooltip is displayed. |
Deletion Handling for Measure and Dimension Input Controls |
The deletion of a Measure or Dimension Input Control is now aligned with Calculation Input Controls. This means that any Chart that consumes the respective input control will display an error state. |
Optimized Design Experience: Filter Improvements
These improvements only apply to the optimized design experience.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Single Select Page Filter |
With the creation of a new Single Select Filter, we will not automatically display the All selection. It can still be displayed under the Show/Hide settings. |
Input Control Dropdown Options |
The size of the selection token beside the description remains consistent with the size of the text with restyle. |
Optimized View Mode: Current Performance Optimizations ( Analytic Acquired Data and Live HANA data sources)
These performance improvements only apply to optimized view mode.
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Improved rendering of what you see when you first open the story, before you do any scrolling. (Improved rendering does not apply when the story contains dynamic variables or forced variable prompts.)
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Improved rendering of large complex hierarchies by loading leaf nodes on demand.
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Model information will be downloaded based on user interactions (for example, filter interaction, page switch, linked analysis, and so on).
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Story designers can change rendering behavior: they can use classic rendering or active viewport rendering (loading content that is in the visible area of the screen, and only loading new content after scrolling stops).
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Page caching for previously visited pages.
Optimized View Mode: Current Performance Optimizations (BW)
These performance improvements only apply to optimized view mode.
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Improvements in dynamic content loading, content caching on browser as well as client-server communication (reduced the number of sequential network round trips).
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Story designers can change rendering behavior: they can use classic rendering or active viewport rendering (loading content that is in the visible area of the screen, and only loading new content after scrolling stops).
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Page caching for previously visited pages.
Optimized View Mode: Story Improvements
These improvements only apply to optimized view mode.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Bookmark |
Bookmarked information is stored and saved based on User Interaction with the story. Example: A story designer creates a story with three story filter: A, B, C.
The next time the story viewer opens the saved bookmark, the bookmark is updated based on the following:
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Optimized Story Experience: Story Improvements
The following section lists usability and behavior improvements shared between Optimized Design Experience and Optimized View Mode.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Linked Analysis |
Story scope linked analysis (shown as story filter) enabled for charts and geographical visualizations:
Additional new behaviors:
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Optimized Story Experience: Table Improvements
When using the optimized story experience (either design mode or view mode), you must use the Optimized Presentation table option.
Optimized Story Experience: Chart Improvements
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Variance |
Variance is grouped under Applied to Chart in the Context Menu. |
Axis alignment |
Axis alignment rendering:
Axis click options:
|
Dimension tooltip |
The measures listed in the tooltip dimension will only be the measures associated to the data point that is clicked / hovered on. If there is a color measure, it will be included. |
Drilling |
There are multiple improvements to the drilling capabilities in
charts, including the following:
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Minimum Drill State |
There are multiple improvements to the minimum drill state, including the following. Charts:
Geo Visualizations:
Tables:
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Heat map |
Sorting behavior may change depending on what data is included in the sort. Measure sort: measure sorting uses the data intersections as the sort type, but the sort is disabled when there are two dimensions. Dimension sort: break grouping is always disabled when using dimension sorting. Unbooked data: the heat map will respect the sort that is applied even though unbooked data (nulls) is present. |
Time series |
There are two improvements with the Time Series chart within
Optimized View Mode:
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Variance Waterfall chart |
There are two improvements with the Variance Waterfall chart in
Optimized View Mode:
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Widget-level filters and version filter |
Version in auto-generated titles: the version will be removed from auto-generated titles (for example, “for Actuals” is removed). Version in chart details: the version filter will be displayed the same as other widget level filters, except that it cannot be deleted. Filtering on all data points using interaction: when attempting to exclude all data points in a chart, the exclude button is disabled and shows a helper tooltip. Remove Member button: Instead of using Remove Member to remove individual members, you can deselect a member the same way you would in story and page filters. Chart details filter token: The filters that were in the chart (that allowed you to remove or edit filters) have been moved to the action menu ( ). |
Rank |
Expanded dimensions: When the dimension is expanded, applying a rank will now flatten the list while preserving the rank that is applied. Version: The version drop-down list is hidden when Version (Category) is not included in the Color section. |
Auto-generated titles |
Auto-generated titles will no longer display the Version (Category)
|
Break grouping interaction with sort and the color dimension |
When a chart has a measure, a dimension, and a separate color dimension, applying a sort on the measure (ascending or descending) will break the grouping. This is because the color dimension is now included within the sort. |
Data order / Sort / Auto limits |
When Time is the outer-most dimension, auto-limits are applied to the chart and a descending order is applied on the Time dimension. In Optimized View Mode, because the inner dimension ordering isn't changed, there may be a difference between the visualization that is displayed in Edit Mode versus Optimized View Mode. |
Optimized Story Experience: Filter Improvements
Feature | Improved Behavior |
---|---|
Custom Current Date |
Story Viewers can't delete Custom Current Date. This prevents them from accidentally resetting dynamic time filters to System Date. |
Child Member Selection in Hierarchies |
When you have access to only one member out of multiple members in the hierarchy and you select that one member, the input control selects only that child member instead of the parent member. |
Filtering across Models
The overall accuracy of filtering across models has been improved. This may result in data differences between a non-optimized version and an optimized version of the story, with the optimized view mode version displaying more accurate results.
Scenario | Improved Behavior |
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Indirect time links involving fiscal time |
Indirect time filters will function like direct time filters in the way that they find a match on a secondary model. This will ensure higher accuracy of data when fiscal time is mapped directly to calendar time. |
Indirect Multi-dimension links between a level-based hierarchy and a non level-based hierarchy |
Indirect multi-dimension links between level-based hierarchies and non level-based hierarchies increases the number of links, resulting in more accurate matches. |
Excluding direct filters that are linked on Description |
Improves generation of target filters and accuracy of data. |
Multiple Selection Hierarchy with Parent / Child Hierarchies, and excluding children |
The Exclude descendants setting is now on by default when creating new dimension links. This configuration is recommended as it improves performance and accuracy of data. |
BW Link remapping |
To ensure that it reflects the actual state of the model in all cases, optimized view mode will check for an active hierarchy in the model before mapping to a secondary model. |
BW Time Links |
BW Time Links are improved for more accurate matches. |
Improvements for SAP BW
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Allows you to take advantage of new performance enhancements.
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Additional behavior improvements that were not possible in a non-optimized story.
For more details, see Optimized Story Experience.
Feature | Improved Behavior |
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Rank |
The ranking behavior for BW is now aligned with Live HANA where ranking with multiple dimensions returns the Top / Bottom N results across the dataset. |
Hierarchy variables |
Changing Hierarchy using a variable: The drill is removed, and the filter is preserved with its token. However, a warning will be displayed to indicate that the filter might conflict with the new hierarchy. Changing Hierarchy using a hierarchy dialog (Flat or Hierarchy): The drill and filter are removed. Changing Hierarchy to Flat using a variable: The drill is removed, and the filter is preserved. |
Drill |
Whenever a filter is added or updated after a drill, the drill is removed. |
Input Controls |
Hierarchical input controls will not apply the default anymore. However, the configuration from the input controls is still applied. |
Chart drilling on REST node |
When drilling on a REST node, the result set contains the REST node and its children. The chart only displays the children because we've filtered out the REST node. Dependent on BW-InA Patch:
Other Behavior:
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Hierarchies with LinkedNodes |
The linkedNode appears in multiple places, but you can't select or un-select it. (The rest of the nodes can be selected or un-selected). The linkedNode only appears on the first expanded parent. |
Hierarchy loading in a table |
Within a table, the children of a hierarchy will be loaded on demand. |
Filter Token for Dynamic Filters |
BW Dynamic Filter tokens are now selectable, which means that items can be deselected from the token. |
Exit Variables on Dynamic Filters in Local Widget Variables |
When the exit variable is reset the filter is overwritten. Opening the variable dialog will now show the exit value. The old behavior can be restored by disabling exits on the local widget. |
Hierarchy variables with story filter or page filter |
When the hierarchy variable is submitted, page filters and story filters remain on the old hierarchy. There will be a warning on input Controls to make user aware of the fact that the filter is NOT on the current hierarchy. |
Migration of Input Control with a filter from an unassigned node |
Dependent on BW-InA Patch
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