Upgrade Your Analysis Office 1.4 Release Soon !
The end of maintenance for Analysis Office 1.4 is scheduled for June 2016. Please make sure that you upgrade your 1.4 release to the current 2.3 release until then. We don’t recommend an upcoming go-live with release 1.4 at this point in time.
Release 2.3 has a lot of advantages over 1.4:
- New features like Table Design, formula editor, restricted measures (on both HANA and BW)
- New settings framework (setting filed-based) – no need for registry authorizations anymore!
- New HANA connectivity (http) that extends hierarchy features on native HANA and SSO
- Coexistent Analysis and EPM content in same workbook
- Support of specific BPC embedded features (e.g. work status, Business Process Flow)
- Support of Office 2016 and much more
Note that release 2.3 requires the following infrastructure:
- MS Office 2010 or higher, .NET 4.5 or higher
- HANA SP9 or higher (if connecting to native HANA)
The effort for the upgrade is rather low in most cases.
- You will have to migrate the native HANA connections from ODBC to http connection type (there’s a migration wizard for the workbook).
- And you might have to migrate your settings from a registry-based framework to a setting file-based framework.
- Manual effort is required if you refer to the add-in name in your VBA code (name of add-in has changed).
Find more information in SAP note 2275352.
We are prototyping the migration to 2.2 from 1.4 and we get workbook conversion error. Raised an incident with SAP as high but going nowhere... please kindly check and escalate the resolution. no way we can migrate all our workbooks without this migration working.
Just an update. SAP had earlier given us the preliminary version of 2.2 SP2 and the workbook conversions worked with the new SP2. We are now testing the workbooks conversion with the released version 2.2 SP2.
We hit error with workbook conversion which contains Analysis views created from HANA datasources with message "Connection type referenced in analysis view is not supported". We also cannot insert Analysis view into the workbook with same error message.
Just out of experiences during the 1.4.x SP upgrades during the last years:
Is it fact that the 2.2 version contains all the functionality which has been available with 1.4.x ? Or was there anything left out, for any reason?
Any feeback appreciated, Alexander Peter.
If you check this: http://scn.sap.com/thread/3834152
and this: http://scn.sap.com/thread/3828073
it does not look like Release 2.2. is the preferred go-to release 😕
Can you please enlight us about the status when a 2.2.x version contains the 2.1 functionality?
Thanks, Martin
I have to agree with you Martin, there are too many versions being updating too often. Something always seem to 'break' or 'change' with a new release, be it a whole new version or a patch. I have many calls open with SAP currently on functionality that has changed between 2.1.3 and 2.2.1, namely the way we connect to BIP via Analysis.It seems that since moving to 2.2.1 we need to change the authorisation in BIP to allow us to connect to OLAP connections via Analysis. No mention of this that I can see. Luckily we are not in production with this version.
We are still on 1.4.7 which in my opinion is rock solid but in-house IT tests on the new versions always seem to find an issue preventing us from upgrading. I am aware that 1.4 will be out of support in June but it is very tricky to decide on a version.
This whole concept of saying "are you on the latest release" as an opening comment on an OSS is becoming a bit of a joke. There is no way we could be constantly upgrading our users to a new patch every 6 weeks or so just because the previous version was shipped with bugs - sometime quite obvious ones - not being able to reset your BW password or close Excel are two that I have reported.
Would it not be better to have 2 or 3 releases a year, thoroughly tested by SAP and then issued to ramp-up communities to ensure that the product is fix for release???
I agree with your comment:
"I think I don't have to tell you about the effort of testing each and every version about proper functionality and not to gamble with IT's reputation if hundreds of business users would not be able to execute their planning or reporting activities..."
This is almost a full-time job for me, and by the time you have thoroughly tested one patch, SAP release another one. We need time to put a stake in the ground and make a decision on a version.
Regards,
Stephen
Hi Stephen,
sorry for hijacking this thread, but I wanted to ask you a question about your comment:
"It seems that since moving to 2.2.1 we need to change the authorisation in BIP to allow us to connect to OLAP connections via Analysis. "
I just wanted to ask if this problem you had was related to SSO?
One of our many, many issues with Analysis for Office is that the SSO between the BI platform, AfO and BW is not working correctly anymore after upgrading our BO platform to 4.1 SP6. It seems to be related to OLAP connections connecting to a BW system and not to a specific Cube/Bex query.
Anyway, just wanted to check if you faced something similar.
Thanks and best regards,
Joost
Hi Martin,
Release 2.2 contains virtually all features of release 1.4. The only difference is the changed HANA connectivity: http (via INA) instead of ODBC (SQL). This results in some differences and a known gap (see note 2096136).
If there are some differences between SP’s of release 2.2 and its predecessor 2.1, then typically this is due to overlapping timelines where the 2.2 SP is already closed while some changes still go to the SP of 2.1. But this is only a timing matter rather than a structural gap.
Best, Alex
The question is when this will happen. I have tested 2.2 SP2 now and there is still a bug included which was already solved in 2.1 SP3. But there is no information if this is just something which is lost now because it's forgotten to include this fix in 2.2, it will take some more releases to include this or this is a new feature.
This problem is about slow reaction (input lag) when entering planning figures and changing from one to another cell. Due to the fact that we have large planning queries 2.2 SP2 is still not really usable for us.
Thanks for your comment Torsten Wirth.
This is exactly what I mean... SAP is gambling with their client's trust by driving this "strategy".
Alexander Peter I propose to do less things right, than too much things wrong 😡
Think about it!
I have opened a ticket concerning the input lag problem in planning. This has passed 1th level support. I will give an updated information if there is more to say. 😉
Aside from this I had a reproducable problem for using copy & paste for a list of values into a filter (this ends up with a crash of AO). I have not created a ticket for this issue. In past this has worked without problems.
Apart from this two problems we had no problems with 2.2 up to now. But I'm running it only on my system. So this is a limited test environment.
There is another general problem concerning planning: If one uses the same planning sequence several times in one workbook with different parameters in planning (but this seems to be a general problem with AO not only with 2.2). If one does that the parameters are only set when a planning sequence is executed the fist time. E.g. if one adds PS_1 with paramter year 2016, PS_2 with parameter year 2017, executes the PS_1 (it will run for 2016), executes PS_2 (it will run for 2017). But if PS_1 is executed again the year 2017 is used again. Another open ticket at the moment...
A small update concerning the input lag problem with 2.2 in planning. This is directly connected with the number of new input ready lines. 4 is ok, 10 is slow, 100 or 200 new lines results in 15 seconds of waiting time per cell input. We had 10 which is to much to work fluently.
There is a check for the new lines which runs every time you type in a number in the sheet (no matter where you type in the number).
Workaround: Decreasing the number of input ready cells.
Fix: No information up to now if this is a bug from SAPs point of view.
Concerning the other problem with the same planning sequence (for BW) which is called several times in AO (different names in AO) with different parameters. That the paramteters are not sent like they are shown in AO is is a bug.
Workaround: No good one. Copying the planning sequences in BW or trying to set the parameters every time before executing the planning sequences in AO (this does not really work in our case every time - I'm not sure why). Or reconnect every time you are using the same planning sequence with different parameters in a row.
Fix: Subject to change but maybe available with AO 2.2 SP4 07.07.16
Torsten,
this sounds like a bug and the response time is surely not acceptable. We're working on this. (You have already opened an incident)
Best,
Alex
Is there a chance for Extended Support for AO 1.4 for about 2-3 months after June 2016?
Hi Tina,
due to the requests we received, we have decided to extend the support of Analysis Office 1.4 to September 2016. This will be reflected in PAM soon and I hope we can help most projects to move to release 2.x in that timeframe.
Thanks,
Alex