Exploring Augmented Analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud provides you with many artificial intelligence and machine learning utilities to assist you in your data analysis and planning activities. For example, you can:

• Access Smart Insights from My Metrics or from charts and tables to use statistical analysis to automatically provide insights to better help you understand your data.
• Use Smart Predict to address a business question requiring the prediction of future events or trends.
• Ask questions about your data using natural language using the SAP Analytics Cloud just ask feature.
• Use the SAP Analytics Cloud compass simulation to estimate the possible outcomes of uncertain business events with Monte Carlo simulation applied to your data.
• Use the conversational experience in the Joule analytic insights feature in other SAP products (if enabled) to explore your data in SAP Analytics Cloud and gain insights into your business.

Create one or several predictive scenarios that automatically learn from your historical data and find the best relationships or patterns of behavior to easily generate predictions for future events, values, and trends. For example, predictive forecasting takes different values into account, and also looks at trends, cycles, and fluctuations in your data.

A predictive scenario is a preconfigured workspace that you use to create predictive models and reports to address a business question requiring the prediction of future events or trends. You choose the one that is relevant to the type of predictive insights you are looking for from classification, regression, and time series.

Smart Predict can be used on:

• Acquired data is supported for datasets and planning models but not for analytic models.
• Live data is supported only for SAP HANA on-premise.

This topic is covered in more detail in the Applying AI-powered Visualizations and Augmented Analytics to Business Data in SAP Analytics Cloud course.

Smart Insights uses statistical analysis to automatically provide insights to better help you understand your data. In the Smart Insights panel, such as the one available in My Metrics, there are textual insights combined with a visualization to provide you with as much information as possible about your selected data point or variance.

Smart Insights are available when working with most chart types, tables cells, and all variance types in stories and can be accessed when using the following data sources:

• Acquired data
• Live SAP HANA connections
• SAP Datasphere and seamless planning models

This topic is covered in more detail in Smart Insights on the SAP Help Portal.

Request information in natural language simply by typing a question about your data using the SAP Analytics Cloud just ask feature. You can access this AI-driven feature from the Home screen or from the icon in the shell bar.

The SAP Analytics Cloud just ask feature supports a variety of different natural language query (NLQ) input options, so simply ask your questions in English, German, French, Italian or Spanish and instantly receive results displayed as either simple tables or charts. For example, you can ask the just ask feature to show you data for:

• Sales by region.
• Sales for 2023.
• Sales for this quarter.
• Top 3 products by gross margin.

In the following example, you can see a chart created using the SAP Analytics Cloud just ask feature and seven of the key points to note.

1. Open the just ask feature from your horizontal menu bar, as highlighted in the previous image.
2. Select your model using the Select model dropdown list, as shown above.
   • Select Add Model to Search to add models to the current session.
   • If a specific model you want to search is not listed, you can request to have it indexed for the just ask feature by selecting Click here to create a model request to an admin.
3. To help you with starting a query, select the + Add to Search icon to the left of the search field. Select any entry from the list of available measures, and dimensions to populate the search field.
4. Enter your question directly in the field and press the Search icon. Depending on the target model, the actual inputs will vary.
   • As you type, you can select auto-complete suggestions to populate the search field.
   • Keyword suggestions will display below the search field. Select any to add them to the search question.
5. Interact with the data using the interaction options (from left to right):
   • Change from a Chart to a Table using the first two interaction options.
   • Select the Analyze Data icon to open the Data Analyzer in a separate tab, displaying the data from your search result.
   • Copy your charts by using the Copy icon to copy the card and paste the contents into a story page using the Ctrl + V shortcut.
   • Select the More Options option to set or reset drill levels, sort the display in ascending or descending order, set rank, or export the data as CSV or Excel files.
6. The Suggestions section is a list of queries generated by the system to help you explore different aspects of the current data model.
7. The Prompt Guide provides tips and tricks on how to best use the just ask feature.