Lets talk about SAP Design Studio and Maps....(Part 1)

[IngoH]

So after showing some of our upcoming Period Selectors, I thought that I would this time share more about the maps integration we are going to offer to our customers.

As part of the upcoming release of our Design Studio Extensions, we are going to offer two different kind of map integrations. We will offer you the option to use a set of predefined maps and we will offer you the option to integrate your data with Leaflet.

So lets start with the first portion - the predefined maps and what kind of features you will be able to use.

First of all we integrated a large list of maps on all kind of different levels, such as countries and continents.

Figure 1: List of Maps

As you can see, Figure 1 shows just parts of the complete list of maps.

Important : these maps are not stored locally or have to be downloaded to your mobile device. These maps are available on online servers around the globe hosted by Visual BI, so your dashboard user does not have to worry about the size of the map.

So in my case the data that I have contains a list of countries, a list of regions per country, and product category information.

Figure 2 : Data Set

So in the configuration of the map I can then decide which map I wanna use to start with - in our example the World map - and which dimensions and more important which part of the dimension (key or text) contains the geographic information.

Figure 3: Map Configuration

In my case I am using the Dimension Key value from dimension Country for the first level and I am using the Text value for dimension Region as the drill down level, so that the user can drill down from Country to Regions - for example drilling down from the World Map to the US map.

In addition I can set the data format, as shown here for the Map Level 2, where I configured the option for "Full Name" for dimension Region.

Now you might remember that our data set also included the dimension Product Category, which we are going to use as "Z-Axis" for the maps and you will see this in a screenshot below how a user can use this Z-Axis feature.

So now I can run the map as part of my dashboard.

Figure 4: World Map

As a starting point I am shown the World Map with the data per country, as I had it configured.

Figure 5: US Map

When using a double-click I can drill down from the World map to the US map and see the details per Region.

Figure 6: Z-Axis

When navigating back to the World Map I can also use the Z-Axis feature. Now the Z-Axis feature allows me to select a set of countries with a single click and will then show the values for the configured dimension - in our example the Product Category - and compare the values for the different countries.

A very easy and simple way to provide more details and provide the user with the ability to quickly compare values even in a geographic scenario and most important - this is also available on the mobile device.

Another example how a simple Add On to SAP Design Studio can help building some compelling dashboards.

The Design Studio Extension will be available as a trial solution in a just a few days......(like waiting for Christmas =:) )