SAP Learning Journey

Navigating in SAP Analytics Cloud

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Navigate in the SAP Analytics Cloud Interface

Introduction to SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is an end-to-end cloud solution that brings together business intelligence, augmented analytics, predictive analytics, and enterprise planning in a single system. As a cloud-based system, you can perform all these tasks from anywhere, on any device. SAP Analytics Cloud provides the analytics foundation for the SAP's Business Technology Platform.

SAP Business Technology Platform

The SAP Business Technology Platform is the glue that holds everything together. It allows customers to harness the power of data: from managing the amount (SAP S/4HANA) and span (SAP Data Intelligence) to ensuring the quality (SAP Datasphere) and ultimately using it to make intelligent business decisions (SAP Analytics Cloud).

SPAN: SAP Data Intelligence.

AMOUNT: SAP S/4HANA, SAP IQ, SAP ASE service

QUALITY: SAP Datasphere

USAGE: SAP Analytics Cloud/ SAP BusinessObjects BI Reporting

In other words, the SAP Business Technology Platform strategy connects all elements of data processing– from a database and data management, to data warehousing, analytics, and planning– into one seamless experience.

Note

SAC shares the same quarterly release cycle with other major Cloud products from SAP. It is explained in this page:

Q&A of SAC release cycle: https://saphanajourney.com/sap-analytics-cloud/product-updates/release-cycle-faq/

SAP Analytics Cloud Home

When you log on to your SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) tenant, you default to the Home screen. The Home screen is where you can access your recent stories and visualizations as tiles. You can also add useful reminders such as personal notes. Your Home screen is private, and you cannot share it with other users or add it to discussions. This privacy also applies to the notes and tiles you pin there.

To start with, you can:

  • Explore a sample story
  • Change an account
  • Create your first story

The Home screen provides you options to perform the above tasks.

The SAP Analytics Cloud Home screen has four tabs.

The Catalog, Favorites, and Shared With Me tabs can be disabled by an administrator or a user granted the necessary permissions.

You can, however, customize your Home screen to your preferences, including choosing which one of the tabs is displayed by default. From the horizontal menu, choose Profile → Home Screen Settings to display the Edit Home Screen dialog.

Edit the Home Screen

You can edit the Home screen by doing the following:

  • Adding or removing tiles from the Home screen

  • Featuring files on the Home screen

  • Changing the Home screen background and logo

Profile Settings

User profiles are used in many parts of the platform to identify the logged-on user. When you select a user in any dialog, the picture from the user profile displays in addition to the display name and ID. You can also display the full user profile to get information about the user in the following areas:

  • In the Collaboration panel, the name and picture of every participant of a discussion displays. If you hover the cursor over the picture, you can display the full profile and start a one-to-one discussion with that user.
  • In the Event area, the picture of the user who is assigned to an event or a task is displayed in the details of the event and task; for example, the profile of the user that needs to review a task displays.
  • In the Users area of user management, you can display the full profile by clicking on the user's ID.
Note

If you use SAP Cloud Identity (ID), your profile information will be pulled from your SAP Cloud ID profile. To edit your SAP Cloud ID profile, go to Profile Settings → Edit Profile & Change Password in that system.

You can access your user profile and edit user preferences from the Profile Settings dialog.

To access your user profile and edit user preferences, go to Profile → Profile Settings to display the Profile Settings dialog.

Profile Picture

By default, a photo placeholder is displayed. To upload your own picture from your computer, choose Upload Profile Picture or select the placeholder from the Profile Settings dialog.

Password

If you are using authentication via a SAML Identity Provider (IdP) or connecting with the Identity Authentication service (IAS), choose Edit Profile > Change Password in your user profile. The Password section appears as an option in your user profile. Choose Change Password to redirect to the password change page.

User Preferences

To change any of the default settings, select the Edit icon. You can choose a default language for the SAC interface.

The Data Access Language option sets the preferred language for displaying live data and text in stories. If the Data Access Language is set to Default, the value used in the Language setting will be used. The Data Access Language setting is used by default unless an administrator selects a different language when the live data connection is created. When you send a model for translation, the Data Access Language becomes the source language of the model.

Formatting options are as follows:

  • Date Formatting: Choose a date format from the list.
  • Time Formatting: Choose a time format from the list.
  • Number Formatting: Choose a number format from the list.
  • Scale Formatting: Choose to format the number scale as short (k, m, bn) or long.
  • Currency Position: Choose where to display the currency symbol (or ISO code) and scale formatting.
  • Clean Up Notifications: Choose a date after which you want the system to delete notifications. Otherwise, the system keeps the most recent 500 notifications.
  • Default Application: Sets the landing page displayed when you access the SAP Analytics Cloud URL.
  • Email Notification: Enable this feature to receive information via email about system activities, for example, when a new password is set.

SAP Analytics Cloud Help

SAP Analytics Cloud has a very robust Help feature that gives you access to many online resources. Simply click the Help button in the horizontal menu.

Click Try Me to perform the steps to access the browser requirements from SAP Analytics Cloud Help.

Search to Insight

Search to Insight lets you ask questions in plain language which automatically generates visualizations with your answers using artificial intelligence. You can access Search to Insight from the Home screen in the Ask a question field under the Welcome message:

The key features of Search to Insight are as follows:

Vertical Menu

To access all the functionality of SAP Analytics Cloud, use the vertical menu on the left side of the interface.

Watch this video to learn about the basics of SAP Analytics Cloud interface. The video shows the basic system functions that can be accessed from the vertical menu.

Files

The Files area is where many of the SAC resources reside.

Similar to most file explorer interfaces, the SAC Files area can be organized into folders and subfolders. Only users with appropriate authorization are able to create folders, but all users have their own, private My Files area. You are the only user with access to your My Files area, so anything saved there is visible and usable by you and only you. You can filter files in any folder by type, but the filter will apply to all folders, not only the folder where you applied the filter.

Click on a file name, and it will be opened in the corresponding view/runtime in SAP Analytics Cloud. However, each file has a check box to the left of it. Checking the box gives you other file-related options, as illustrated in the figure File Options:

The File ribbon provides multiple file options.

Catalog

The SAP Analytics Cloud catalog contains curated content provided by your system administrator. You can search or filter using categories and interact with the data to focus on the specific information you are looking for. If you do not have any content in your catalog, you can request it from your administrator.

Each item published to the Catalog is displayed as a tile that users can open to access the underlying content. The following content types can be published and displayed in the Catalog:

  • Stories
  • Analytic Applications
  • Digital Boardroom presentations
  • Models
  • Datasets
  • Uploaded SAP Analytics Cloud files
  • Content Links

Publishing to the catalog is an administrative function. For an administrator to publish content to the catalog, they select the object from Files and choose Share → Publish to Catalog. They then select the team with whom to share and choose OK. Finally, choose Share.

Explore the SAP Analytics Cloud User Interface

Task 1: Navigate the SAP Analytics Cloud user interface

Business example

You are new to SAP Analytics Cloud and so you need to learn how to use the Home page and perform a few navigation tasks.

Task flow

In this practice exercise, you will perform the following tasks:

  • Open your user profile and view how to log out
  • View the user preferences
  • Explore the navigation bar on the left side of the screen
  • Review system notifications
  • Use the Help feature
ExerciseStart Exercise

Task 2: Use the Search to Insight feature

Business example

Search to Insight is a natural language query interface used to query data. Simply ask it a question, and it will recommend a chart to insert into your story. It is a quick and easy way to explore your data.

You are working in a team that must report on operating expenses for your company. You aren't sure where to start, so decide to use the Search to Insight functionality in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Task flow

In this demonstration video, we will show you how to:

  • Access Search to Insight from the Home page
  • Create a search query
  • Refine the query to further explore data
DemoWatch Demo

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