Configuring Page and Story Level

The Canvas page is a flexible space where you can explore and present your data.

Use canvas pages to bring your story to life. Add charts, tables, images, or some other objects that will make your data visually appealing.

You can resize or move the objects around to help you tell your story better. You can even copy the objects and paste them elsewhere on the same page or paste them to a different canvas page to save time.

You can format the general appearance of a page in a story. You can configure the following options:

• Background Color - Select a background color for the page.
• Grid - Control grid options for aiding in placement of widgets on the page.
• Canvas Size - Choose between a dynamic page size or a fixed size. You can select a predetermined size from the list (Letter, Legal, Tabloid, A3, A4, B4, B5) or set a custom size by entering the page width and height in pixels. Before you can change the page size, you may need to rearrange tiles in your canvas to fit the new size.
• Page Layout - Enable / Disable page header and/or footer. Set the margin width for fixed page sizes.

In the View mode, pagination splits a canvas pages in multiple pages.

It is designed to display all the data of a widget, like a table for instance, and provide a reporting page-like browsing experience. In View mode, a dedicated toolbar lets you navigate the report from page to page and quickly access parts of the report that are of interest to you.

If you are designing the story in Edit mode and want to preview what the report is going to look like in paginated mode, try setting one or multiple table widgets to resize automatically. In the Builder, check the Auto-size and page table vertically option.

Responsive pages let you create responsive lanes to section the page content into groups. Widgets within a lane stay together when the responsive page is resized.

By default, a responsive page starts with two lanes and you can add widgets to either lane.

You can change lane styling properties by selecting the paintbrush icon (Edit Styling). You can set the background color of the lane and page, turn on / off the layout grid, and set grid spacing.

To add more lanes, highlight an existing lane in your responsive page, select the + icon (Add new lane), and then select Add lane to left, Add lane to right, Add lane above, or Add lane below.

Reorder lanes by dragging and dropping them in another section of the page. To resize a lane, grab the lane border and drag it to the left or to the right. A grid appears and it is used as a reference on how the lane can be resized. Resizing a lane will also resize adjacent lanes, and the widgets within each lane will adjust to the new lane size.

The following recommendations are provided for report layout using responsive pages and lanes:

• The font 72-Web should be used because it has been optimized for SAP systems, which improves not only readability but also accessibility.
• The Grid Spacing for the whole Story should be 14 px.
• Structure your content using vertical and horizontal lanes. The lanes render top to bottom, left to right.
• Do not leave any space between widgets as the real estate on the screen is limited.
• If you need a header running across your screen, use a horizontal lane on top.
• Remember that if you use vertical parallel lanes, then you cannot guarantee, even on a computer screen, that the charts in adjacent parallel lanes are horizontally aligned. If you need charts to be horizontally aligned, then place them horizontally in the same lane.

For more guidelines on report layout, refer to the Design Guidelines for Stories document available on the Customer Community.

Sections are like containers for your story. If you are working with a canvas page, they are useful both for reporting and interactive dashboards.

Sections allow you to split a report information into smaller, more comprehensible, and more manageable parts. They are also an efficient way to create comparisons by arranging multiple section widgets on the canvas.

You can use sections to improve the layout of your stories and break down your analysis per dimension member. When you have chosen a dimension as section filter:

• The members are displayed in the section heading.
• The widgets in the section based on the same model are filtered on that member.

Some characteristics of sections are as follows:

• Sections take the whole width of the canvas.
• You can NOT create sections within sections.
• Some widgets can NOT be placed in a section.

There are several styling options for sections.

By default, the view setting Show all instances on pages option is enabled for a new section. When viewing the story online, you can navigate the section members via a page number selection bar that appears at the bottom of the page.

If you enable the view setting Browse and search instances option in the Styling panel, the application displays left and right arrows in the section header so you can switch between members of a section. Additionally, a search is available to look for dimension members and browse through data.

You can customize sections and section headings in Edit mode in the Styling panel. You can also hide the heading and guidelines of the section.

The Story Filter allows you to apply filters for all charts in a Story report that are based on the same data source. The Page Filter is the same as a Story Filter but applies to just one page in a Story Report. An Input Control is one type of page filter. You can also apply a filter to a single chart.

Measure-based filters are filters that are based on a range of values in a measure. For example, if you want to include in your Story only your company locations that have more than 200 employees, you could create a filter based on an employee's measure.

Changes you make to a story or page filter affect related filters in the same story report or page.

For example, when you change a page filter value, any related page filters on the same page are updated automatically. If you have both Country and Region filters on a page, and you change the Country filter value from All to Sweden, the Region filter updates to show only regions within Sweden. All other region names are hidden. You can select Show Inactive Values to display those hidden values.

Story filter changes affect other story filters in the same story report and page filters on any pages in the story.

You can turn off the cascading effect in the settings for the filter. When the cascading effect is turned off, any filter value selection changes made in this filter do not affect other filters, and any filter value selection changes made in other filters do not affect this filter.

In the image, a Story filter on the location field only has Atlanta and Boston enabled. Therefore, those are the only two values that appear in the page input control when cascading effect is enabled. Click Show Inactive Values to see all locations.

You can define time periods based on years, quarters, months, or days, and apply the date range as a filter so that only details in the selected time period are visible.

The ranges can be fixed or dynamic; for example, you could choose the fixed range January 2019 to December 2019. If this story is opened in 2020, the story will still show 2019 data. Dynamic date ranges shift based on the current date. They offer a few more granularities such as current year, current quarter, and current month, and you can offset the range from the current date.

Examples of dynamic date ranges are as follows:

• If you want to display data from three years ago, to two years into the future, choose Year granularity, enter 3 under Look Back, and enter 2 under Look Ahead. If the current year is 2019, then the date range is 2016 to 2021.
• If you want to display data for the current quarter, choose Current Quarter granularity. If the current date is June 1, 2019, then the date range is April 1, 2019 to June 1, 2019.
• If you want to shift the entire range forwards or backwards instead of basing it around the current date, choose Offset as the range type. For example, to set the range as the year before the previous year, you choose Year granularity, select Look Back as the offset direction, Year as the offset granularity, and 2 as the offset amount. If the current date is June 1, 2019, then the date range is 2017. Note that the Offset Granularity can't use a shorter period than the overall Granularity.
• If you switch on Include Range up to Current Period, the date range ends at the current period. If you choose Year granularity, and enter 3 under Look Back, and the current date is June 1, 2019, then the date range is January 1, 2016 to June 1, 2019. For offset ranges, the Include Range up to Offset Period setting works the same way using the offset period instead of the current period.

Input Controls give you the ability to change which dimensions or measures to display for your charts or tables.

Depending on which input control you create, you can either show a single selection or multiple selections.

You will see some output options when working with fields that store dates.

To apply a story or page filter, complete the following steps:

1. Apply a filter in one of these ways:For a story filter, select the Story Filter icon on the top navigation panel. In the filter area, select the Add Story Filter icon.For a page filter, select the Input Control icon on the top navigation panel.
2. If you need to change the data source, select the name of the current data source, and then select the data source that you want to use in the filter.
3. Determine if you want a Time Filter or Measure / Dimension Filter.
4. If using a Time Filter, in the Add Time Filters list, you can create a dynamic time filter that shifts based on the current date, such as Month to Date or Previous Quarter.Choose which periods to include, for example, Previous or Current and Next.If you have multiple date dimensions, pick the one that you want to filter.Select the granularity of the time period under Full Period or To Date, depending on the range that you want to include.
5. If using a Measure / Dimension filter, select the dimension or measure you want to filter from the Add Story Filter / Prompt list.
6. Depending on the selection, you may see the following:Select the date measure and choose between Filter by Member or Filter By Range.Select the dimension to automatically open Filter By Member or Filter by Range(limited). Select a measure to automatically open Filter By Range.

   For a Member Filter, do the following:

   • To change the display information for the filter, select to expand the Available Members menu and select one of the Show Description options:
     • Description / ID and Description / ID
     • To display dimension members that do not contain any data, switch the Show Unbooked Members option On.
     • In the Available Members area, select the check box beside the members you want to filter. Select All Members to automatically select all members in the dimension or select the Exclude selected members check box to exclude the members you select.

   For a Range Filter, do the following:

   • • For measure-based filters, select the Dimension Context. The dimension context is one or more dimensions that the measure is aggregated against.

       For example, if you are analyzing salaries of company employees based on country and gender, you could choose the two dimensions Country and Employee Gender for context.

     • For dimension-based filters, if you want viewers of your story to specify a single value within a range instead of a range of values, expand the Multiple Selection list, and select Single Selection.
     • Select end points for your range: i. For dimension-based filters, you can either drag the sliders on the range bar or select end points from the drop-down lists. ii For measure-based filters, type end point values into the Min and Max boxes.
     • Select Add a New Range if you want to define additional ranges. Note that the single value slider is not available if you define more than one range.
     • For date dimensions, you can also define the granularity (for example, year or month). You can also set dynamic ranges that shift based on the current date.
7. Choose whether you want viewers of the story to be allowed to specify the effective filter values from a list of filter values that you define.

   You can choose to allow a single filter value or multiple filter values. If you allow viewers to specify filter values, they can either toggle on and off each filter value or select a single filter value.

8. Select OK to create the filter.
9. If you created a page filter, you can resize it to convert it to an input control.
10. The filter or input control is assigned a name according to the dimension being filtered.

    If you want to change the name, double-click it.

11. By default, the cascading effect is applied. If you do not want the cascading effect to apply to this filter, turn off the Cascading Effect in the filter settings.

When you create a story filter, the filter appears in the filter bar below the toolbar. You can convert a story filter to a page filter on a canvas page.

To convert the Story filter, complete the following steps:

1. With a canvas page open, select a story filter from the filter bar.
2. Select Convert to Page Filter.

   The new filter appears as a widget on the canvas page. You can resize the filter widget by selecting it and dragging its sizing handles. If you enlarge the filter widget, it becomes an input control that you can use to select filter values.

   For example, if the filter is set to allow viewers to change the filter values, and to allow multiple filter values, you can enlarge the filter widget on the page so that the filter values appear in a list, with check boxes. Then, you can change filter values by selecting and deselecting the check boxes.

   Note

   You can convert a page filter to a story filter by selecting the page filter and select Convert to Story Filter.

   Note

   Conversion of story filter to page filter and vice versa is not supported in Optimized Design Experience.

Linked Analysis allows you to create filters that simultaneously update multiple charts and / or tables for your Story.

With linked analysis, when you create filters for one chart, the same filters are applied to other charts that you include in the analysis. For a filter to update other charts, the charts in the analysis must be based on the same data source, or the data sources must contain linked dimensions.

Story filters can be configured in two select modes:

• Confirm Selection on Apply
• Confirm Selection on Select

By default, Optimized Design Experience uses Confirm Selection on Apply, and Classic Design Mode uses Confirm Selection on Select.

When using Confirm Selection on Select, changing a story filter selection causes the system to auto-update the visualizations with each change in the selection by the user. This can cause unnecessary reloading of visualizations and contribute to a sub-optimal user experience when an end user is modifying filters.

By using the preferred Confirm Selection on Apply functionality, it only reloads the visualization on the final selection by the user. This improves the loading time of the story and conserves system resources to requested query updates.

In Classic Design Experience, Report Creators can choose between the default Confirm Selection on Select functionality or Confirm Selection on Apply. You modify the setting via the Edit Story > Story Details > Story Filter Selection Settings. This setting is not visible in an story with Optimized View Mode enabled.

You can add localized values for widget titles and page names in Story reports. The ability to add localized widget titles and page names enhances the user. It enables report consumers to view the stories in their preferred locale.

For example, consider that currently your system locale is German. If you enable inline translation in a story (initially created in the English US locale), the source language of the Story now becomes German. After the inline translation is active, you can edit the Story only when your system language is German.

To enable the inline translation for the story, complete the following steps.

1. With the story open, select the Edit mode.
2. Choose File→Story Details.
3. Switch on the Enable translation option under the Translation section.
4. Select Save.
5. Select the Save report button.

The source language for the report will be your system language.

When you have successfully enabled inline translation for the story, you can add inline translation values for page names and widget titles in multiple target locales. However, you edit the story only in the source locale.

To add localized values for widgets and pages, complete the following steps.

1. With the story open, select View mode.
2. Go to Tools→Inline Translation. The Inline Translation pane appears.
3. Select a Target Language from the dropdown menu.
4. In the Page Details section, update localized values for page names and widget titles in the selected target language.
5. Save the changes.

The following are considered best practices:

• Maximum number of widgets in a page: 6.
• Number of non-aggregated widgets (tables) in page: If you have multiple data sources, ensure that the total number of columns across data widgets does not exceed 120. The recommendation is to have 1 non-aggregated table when the number of columns in the table widget is greater than 60. Otherwise, 2 tables are recommended as a maximum.
• Number of aggregated widgets (charts): Keeping the number as low as possible will decrease story load time. Reduce if you have pages that do not load.
• Number of rows per table widget (Drill Limitation): Calculate using the formula - 1 Million / Number of Columns.
• Linked dimension among data sources: Minimize linked dimensions because they also increase load time.
• Number of cells in table widgets: This is 1 million per table widget. However, the recommended limit is to have not more than 30,000 cells per table as more than that produces non-readable tables. Use proper filters to get only what data is needed. See Inappropriate Use Cases for Story Reporting.
• Number of users to access the report with many columns: Limit access to the minimum number of people who are in the need-to-know basis to avoid multiple concurrent usage of the report, which will impact application performance.
• Device: Complex reports are recommended to be accessed from desktops only due to high computation needs. Do not access complex reports from mobile or enable the story to be mobile enabled.