SAP Learning Journey

Viewing and Interacting with a Story

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

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • View and interact with a story

SAP Analytics Cloud Stories

An SAP Analytics Cloud story is the primary data reporting and analysis medium. It is often referred to as a report or a dashboard because it can consist of detailed tables, highly visual charts, interactive elements, or a combination of these options.

The following image shows different views of an SAP Analytics Cloud story, a dashboard of summary information and a more detailed view of the data.

Explore a Sample Story

In the following video, we will explore a sample story, highlighting some of the key features.

Edit and View Modes

All SAP Analytics Cloud stories have two working modes:

  • View: When you open a story, you default to View mode. In this mode, you have very limited functionality and cannot change the story other than with any interactive elements designed in the story. It is similar to read-only in other applications.
  • Edit: In Edit mode, however, you have full control over the design of the story. You can add elements to the story, including new pages. You can rearrange elements in the story. You can change or add interactivity to the story, and more.

The following is an example of a story in View mode.

The following is an example of a story in Edit mode.

Note
We will cover story editing options in more detail later in this course.

Bookmarking

You can create bookmarks to save different states of a story.

When viewing a story, you may want to come back to the same view of the data every time, or you may want to set up different states or scenarios. For example, you have several pages in your story that have filters or prompts applied to them. You do not want to spend time resetting all of them each time you want to see a different scenario. You would like to open the story, see one scenario, and then quickly switch to another scenario.

  • Bookmarks can be either private or global. You can always save a private bookmark, but you need appropriate authorization to save a global bookmark.
  • Bookmarks only include filters and prompts.
  • Bookmarks can be shared.
Note
When you create a bookmark, you can choose Customize Link in order to provide a meaningful label at the end of the URL.

Add a Bookmark

Business Scenario

You are working with stories in SAP Analytics Cloud and you want to be able to quickly access your story from your home page as well as bookmark specific story views and set them as the default view for a story.

Task Flow

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

  • Pin a story to your Home page
  • Add bookmark of a story state and make it the default view for the story
  • View a story bookmark
ExerciseStart Exercise

Export a Story to PDF

In either View or Edit mode of a story, you can export the entire story to either a .pdf, .pptx, or Google Slides file type from the File menu. Note that from the File menu, there is no option to export to .csv, .xls, or .xlsx file types. The export process is strictly a presentation format.

There are options for exporting the story's data in other areas of the story elements. We will note some of these options in the More Actions Button concept.

More Actions Button

More Options

In many areas of SAP Analytics Cloud, you have More options than can be displayed in the interface.

In some situations, seeing a More option depends on your screen size and resolution as well as your browser's zoom setting. In other words, if you have a large monitor, your browser window may be large enough to display all the possible options you have.

More Actions

While viewing and editing a story, however, there is a More Actions button available for every element of a story (charts, tables, filtering devices, text, images, etc). This option provides you with many more design- and object-related options than the story can practically display.

You can think of the More Actions button as being similar to a context or quick menu you access by right-clicking an object.

There will be different More Actions options depending on whether you are in Edit or View mode. When viewing a story, there are fewer options.

In the following example, you can see some of the different options available when choosing More Actions when editing a chart (left) or table (right).

Included in the More Actions button for charts, tables, and other data-dependent story elements is the option to export data to a .csv or .xlsx file. Unlike the export option for the entire story, which exports only to .pdf, .pptx, or Google Slides files, the More Actions export option exports the data reflected in the object.

Export to Excel and PDF

Business Scenario

You are new to SAP Analytics Cloud and you need to learn how to use the export functionality.

Task Flow

In this practice exercise, you will:

  • Export data from a data table to Excel
  • Export a story to a PDF document
ExerciseStart Exercise

Log in to track your progress & complete quizzes