It was interesting to see that many questions can be answered by reading this blog series and therefore I decided to continue with it as new innovations come up for SAC related to the live connectivity and there are still some nice features you will explore, when working live with SAP BW.
Blog series content (Part 4)
Please note that this is “Part 4” of my blog series. I strongly recommend that you read “Part 1”, “Part 2” and "Part 3" first, before you continue with this blog, because they show some basics about SAP Analytics Cloud and the Live Connection to SAP BW itself. In addition, it shows some great features you should see and know (including many screenshots & videos).
Part 1: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/01/08/analyse-your-data-live-with-sap-analytics-cloud-on-sap-bw-on-hana-s...
Part 2: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/03/10/analyse-your-data-live-with-sap-analytics-cloud-on-sap-bw-on-hana-s...
Part 3: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/06/11/analyse-your-data-live-with-sap-analytics-cloud-on-sap-bw-on-hana-s...
Part 4: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/11/24/analyse-your-data-live-with-sap-analytics-cloud-on-sap-bw-on-hana-s...
Part 5: will be available soon.
Part 6: not started!
Note: I have included some videos in this blog series. You can run them directly in the blog and maximize them if needed. Please note as well, that there is no sound in the videos. The content speaks for itself ?
Now let’s start with “Part 4”
Agenda:
- Introduction
- Why SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)?
- Variables, Variable Popup, Variants & Filtering
- Zero Suppression
- Another example with R: Create a table including sorting & search!
- Additional information related to the custom grouping feature
- Flexible date handling in SAP Analytics Cloud with BW Live Connection
- Using dynamic text to access the content from the SAP BW Query variables
- Support for tuple filters (Filter data that is organized in multiple dimensions)
- What about "Navigation Attributes" & "Display Attributes" from SAP BW?
- Working with SAC and the report-report interface (RRI) from SAP BW
- Create generic hyperlinks in SAC tables, to open external pages using parameters (+example with SAP S/4HANA)
- Tunnel Connection Type from SAC "live" to SAP BW
Introduction
The growing popularity among SAP customers, who use SAC to analyze their SAP data, has contributed to the fact that the live interface is constantly being expanded and enhanced with many new innovative features.
In the past months I’ve been involved in many customer activities. Often it was also about SAC and how it connects live with SAP systems (e.g. SAP BW/4HANA, SAP BW on HANA).
Why SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)?
The often-requested PowerPoint export or publishing of stories based on SAP Live data has now also been delivered. I already presented both features in the last part of this blog series.
And now let's look into some additional features I have not included in the other parts of this blog series.
Variables, Variable Popup, Variants & Filtering
In the first blog post you saw how to work with SAP BW Query Variants which has been saved in Analysis Office. You can create a user variant which is only visible to you, or you can create a global variant which is visible for all SAP BW users who opens this query. If you have a variable popup screen with many variables inside, it is a nice way to just bookmark your selected filter values easily.
Another nice feature which end users like is the possibility to copy & paste filter values from their clipboard into the variable popup. 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.
In the first blog of this blog series I have presented how SAC deals with BW Query variants. Let's see in a video how the copy & paste of values in the variable popup works and how you can pass values as a story filter to a specific SAP BW variable.
Zero Suppression
With the update to wave 2020.15, you can now suppress zeros and nulls on SAP BW tables and charts within your story.
Another example with R: Create a table including sorting & search!
With R you can do a lot of nice things within SAC - and this also works with the live access to SAP BW. In one of the past blogs I presented an example with gauges using R on selected BW Query key figures. A lot of libraries are available, and several blogs has been published around this topic. But when it comes to R the community is very creative. Let’s see an interesting example with R and how easy it is to implement.
In the next step we will insert the following R script:
In the next step we will insert the following R script:
library(DT)
datatable(BWQUERY, options = list(
searching = TRUE,
pageLength = 10,
lengthMenu = c(10, 50, 100),
filter = 'top',
initComplete = JS("
function(settings, json) {
$(this.api().table().header()).css({
'background-color': '#000',
'color': '#fff'
});
}")
))
And now the whole process as a video:
Additional information related to the custom grouping feature
And do you know what? You can also use this custom hierarchy to filter your data in the story. In the next video you can see it how it works as story filter or in the designer tab.
Flexible date handling in SAP Analytics Cloud with BW Live Connection
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an easy option to implement date comparisons and flexible date filters with less effort in SAC based on the BW live connection? Maybe even to allow that the story creators & end users can set up this by themselves? Or a feature that allows them to select the key date for a story and have all charts and widgets adjust accordingly? This was delivered with the Flexible date handling in SAP Analytics Cloud by using the BW Live Connection.
My colleague Jens Braun has posted a blog about this topic and I would strongly recommend to read the blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/08/24/flexible-date-handling-in-sap-analytics-cloud-with-bw-live-connecti...
In the following story based on SAP BW live data you can see how I switch dynamically from the full data range to November 2020, the current quarter and the last year. Fully dynamic.
For more details about this feature please read the afore mentioned blog from my colleague jensbraun.
Using dynamic text to access the content from the SAP BW Query variables
The dynamic text feature is a very powerful feature. It allows you to put any content from filters, input controls, system information and of course BW Query variable input/content wherever you want as text.
Just try this feature with some other objects & story properties.
Support for tuple filters (Filter data that is organized in multiple dimensions)
SAP Analytics Cloud supports tuple filters in SAP BW queries. This includes filtering with multiple dimensions in addition to using the “AND” and “OR” operators. The feature requires BW/4HANA 2.0, BW on HANA 7.5 SP16.
You can create filters by selecting multiple data points in the widget. Note that “Exclude”, blending, and linked analysis between widgets that contain tuple filters are not yet supported. Hierarchy and Currency Unit cannot yet be filtered.
Please note that this also works with charts and tuple filters can also be used in linked analysis. For more details please have a look into the SAC help: https://assets.sapanalytics.cloud/production/help/help-release/en/8a10d5859ffc4df49605efe131c298d1.h...
What about "Navigation Attributes" & "Display Attributes" from SAP BW?
What is the difference between "Display Attributes" and "Navigation Attributes"? Display attributes can only be used for display purpose, which means that they will only act as a detail of a characteristic.
Navigation attributes are very different. They are attributes which can be used like any other characteristic in SAP BW. If we declare an attribute of a characteristic as navigation attribute, we can do functions like filtering or drilldown on this attribute like we do on any other characteristic.
How SAC deals with this different attribute types?
********* Display Attributes *********
A characteristic InfoObject in SAP BW can have display attributes which contains additional information’s. For example, you can have the customer number as a characteristic and e.g. add the customer location, customer segment in the backend to this characteristic as attributes. You can usually activate attributes in the SAP BW query, and they will be shown – e.g. in SAP Analysis Office. It is also possible to activate these attributes in SAP Analytic Cloud as well.
In the following screenshots you can see how I show/hide the display attributes colour and product group for the characteristic product. This can be done by end user during the navigation or by the story creator if it should be activated already.
End User:
Story creator:
********* Navigation Attributes *********
You can now activate them e.g. in a Composite Provider and they will be available in the SAP BW Query.
Hint: It's easy to identify “Navigation Attributes”. You can see it in the technical name of the relevant object. They always start with the BW characteristic to which you have assigned the navigation attribute followed by 2 underscore (“__”) and then the technical name of the attribute itself.
The question "if SAC supports navigation attributes in the live mode" has been asked many times and the answer is clear - yes, it is supported.
Again one of the many features which is supported plug & play without touching or changing the SAP BW query ?
Working with SAC and the report-report interface (RRI) from SAP BW
The report-report interface (RRI) allows you the flexibility to call a jump target (receiver) online from a BEx query (sender) within or outside of the BW system. Jump targets assigned to a query are available in the BI client under the Goto function.
Queries, transactions, reports, and Web addresses can be jump targets. The parameterization of the target action is taken from the context of the cell that you have jumped from. You can set parameters for calling query using input variables that are filled from the selection conditions and the element definitions of the selected cells in the sender query.
For more details about the report-report-interface, please have a look into the SAP Help (e.g for SAP BW/4HANA):
https://help.sap.com/viewer/107a6e8a38b74ede94c833ca3b7b6f51/1.0.1/en-US/4a5b96c6517f2e24e10000000a4...
As you know SAP Analytics Cloud has a URL API which can be used to directly open stories using a URL with parameters. For details please check the SAC help page: https://help.sap.com/viewer/a4406994704e4af5a8559a640b496468/release/en-US
And that's exactly the point which can be combined with the report-report-interface from SAP BW.
Some customers have asked me in the past, if there is a possibility to open a SAC story with a filter or the SAC Data Analyzer from Analysis Office.
The following link will be needed to make this possible (you can also use it as a hyperlink in a SAC story but that's not what I want to achieve):
https://LINKTOYOURSACTENANT/sap/fpa/ui/app.html#;view_id=dataAnalyzer;connection=BW4;dataSourceName=...
To maintain the report-report-interface settings for a specific SAP BW Query you need to have access to the SAP BW backend. Connect to SAP BW and run the transaction "RSBBS" to open the interface.
In combination with SAC and its URL API you can do many nice things - e.g. you can open any SAC story an send any information using a generic URL.
Example: you can right click in Analysis Office on a customer ID and can jump to an SAP Analytics Cloud story which usually shows sales details for all customers. The parametrized URL will allow you to filter the story to a specific customer ID - a fully generic process. There are several blogs available for each - the SAC URL API and the report-report-interface from SAP BW. You can start to test the possibilities on your own. I just wanted to give you a glimpse about what's possible.
Create generic hyperlinks in SAC tables, to open external pages using parameters (+example with SAP S/4HANA)
In SAC you can add dynamic hyperlinks to your visualizations and tables. The easiest setting is to jump from your item to another page of your story. This includes also the possibility to apply selected dimensions as filters.
You know already that SAC provides a SAP Analytics Cloud URL API. But did you know that you can also click on a bar in a chart or you can click on a dimension value in a table and can open an external page? This includes also, that you can pass parameters in the URL to the target application? I did this in one of the last blogs to show how you can jump from a bar chart to an SAP S/4HANA transaction. I will so something similar now with a table widget.
First of all add your table to your SAC story. In my example I have a table showing sales data coming live from SAP BW/4HANA. The first row shows the product categories. In the edit mode you can add a hyperlink to this table:
It is also possible to select the description or the ID of the dimension.
In addition you can also make use of a dynamic label where you can use the dimension ID or description. I have used "Search in internet for" as label, followed by the dimension value.
This makes the process more dynamic and intuitive. I would also recommend to select "Open in New Tab". If you finished your settings close this settings by clicking on "Done".
Now you have 2 options how to work with this URL.
First option is to click on a dimension value (e.g. BROWSER) and then you can navigate to the external page by clicking on the link under the table description.
The second option allows you to show the hyperlinks to the external page directly in the table.
We will use the second option.
You will notice that you can click on the dimension values (for SAC context menu just click in the right empty space).
After clicking on a dimension value, the Google search will open as expected and the search will start. SAC will send the dimension value to Google.
So all in all a simple but powerful feature.
What you need to consider is, that the target URL is correct and you parametrize the target URL parameters correct.
You can see the full process in the following video:
Let me give you now another example.
The following link will open S/4HANA and the sales order 7 will be shown.
https://MYS4HANAURL/ui#SalesOrder-display?SalesOrder=7
So all we need to do in SAC is to repeat the steps above and use the link to S/4HANA.
At the point where the Sales Order ID is needed, you can use the ID provided by SAC.
You need a story with a table inside, which has also the sales order ID in the rows (e.g. a table based on live data from SAP BW or based on another data source).
In the next step just add the relevant URL to SAP S/4HANA into the field "External URL". You need to enter SAP S/4HANA first to get the required URL to the transaction you want to use.
Now add the ID delivered from the dimension value exactly at the place in the URL, where the sales order is required/expected (just click at the place in the URL and SAC will ask you which dimension you want to use). If needed do the same for the label:
Switch to the view, that you see the hyperlinks directly in the table (like in my first example above).
I have recorded a demo for you which shows exactly that - using a SAC table as source and jump to SAP S/4HANA Fiori Launchpad and open a sales order. No scripting, no programming, fully generic, just a few clicks 🙂
Then you are ready to make use of the hyperlinking feature in SAP Analytics Cloud, if your SAC model provides the dimensions needed to parametrize the URL. Please note that you can have more than one parameter in your URL.
Tunnel Connection Type from SAC "live" to SAP BW
Let me start with a quote from the SAC Q3.2020 update ( https://saphanajourney.com/sap-analytics-cloud/product-updates/sac-q3-2020/ ).
“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.”
For more details about the SAP Analytics Cloud Tunnel Connectivity and its use cases please check the SAP Blog from my colleague Shailendar Anugu.
If you have installed the SAP Analytics Cloud Agent Simple Deployment Kit which includes the SAP Cloud Connector or you have already deployed the SAP Cloud Connector you can make use of this new feature easily.
For further details about the SAP Cloud Connector configuration and other materials please check the following SAP note: https://apps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2358097
You can find the complete details about the installation of the SAP Cloud Connector here : Cloud Connector Installation – SAP Help.
There are also a couple of SAC Blogs available regarding to the SAP Cloud Connector configuration and the new tunnel connection.
In a Nutshell: after configuring the “Cloud To On-Premise” settings in the “Cloud Connector Administration” …..
…. you can create a live tunnel connection in SAC to your SAP BW system.
You can start to build your stories based on that connection and can access them like shown in the following video. If you watch the short video you will see the new story exploration option available with "Release 2021.01". For more details please have a look into the product update blog for that release: https://saphanajourney.com/sap-analytics-cloud/product-updates/release-2021-01/#StoryExploration
That's it for the moment with "Part 4" of this blog series. Hope you enjoyed reading the blog.
See you in "Part 5" with some more things you can do with SAP Analytics Cloud live on top of SAP BW. Part 5 of the blog series will be published soon.
Cheers
Adem
- SAP Managed Tags:
14 Comments
