Canvas vs Responsive Layouts in SAP Analytics Cloud
In SAP Analytics Cloud, story creators have the ability to create either Canvas or Responsive pages, each with their own strong advantages.
Canvas Layout – Ideal for advanced, pixel-perfect layouts
- The designer sees exactly what the end user sees regardless of what resolution they are looking at.
- Scrollbars will appear if viewer is on lower resolution.
What canvas pages can do that are not possible on responsive pages:
- Set exact canvas size
- Set exact object size
- Overlay objects
- Bring objects to front/back
- Group objects
Examples of overlaying, grouping, and rotating objects.
Responsive Layout – Ideal for reports consistently viewed on multiple device sizes
- Content reflows based on the resolution.
- In smaller design spaces, some items such as legends or data labels will be automatically hidden to maximize usable chart area.
- There is NO way to allow any overlay of objects as the positions of bars or other chart elements will adjust when reflowing.
What responsive pages can do that are not possible on canvas pages:
- Be rendered on mobile devices
- Be used in the new Digital Boardroom experience which includes Surface Hub and N number of screens
- Be used in upcoming DiBo mobile
NOTE: More features possible in upcoming releases
How to Migrate Between Responsive and Canvas Pages
You can easily copy and paste multiple objects between pages by selecting all objects and using ctrl+c to copy and ctrl+v to paste. Alternately, you can also copy and paste using the menu bar.
NOTE (and super cool feature): You can copy and paste multiple objects BETWEEN stories as well, so long as you remain within the same browser tab.
Click and drag to select all objects, and then use the top menu or ctrl+c to copy.
Additional Resources:
Really great to see the rapid advancements with stories. I particularly like the ability to preview what a story will look like in multiple screen real estate sizes while I'm authoring the story in my browser. Great stuff Jacob!
Another benefit of Responsive Layout is that loading performance will usually be better. There's some extra logic to load the visualizations asynchronously, so if you have a really long loading map (for example), you can still interact with the other components while waiting for the others to display.
Jacob Stark are all these features going to be available in Successfactors since this canvas functionality was just recently baked into the report center in SF?
It is really great. What would be fantastic in the future is to have a chance to choose which visuals are going to be shown first in Responsive.
You might first draw the attention to the graphics in the middle, and then past to the left. then it is impossible to build a canvas that works on a PC screen the same way as ersponsive. But generally, the responsive layout is great and I see major advances over the last month! Good job
we are using this in Stories reports Successfactors and its very useful for saving the template and use the templates for new reports in future , i find this very useful for different screen size .