Application Building Capability within SAP Analytics Cloud #ASUG Webcast Recap

This was an ASUG webcast presented by Jie Deng today. You can watch a replay here.

Source: SAP

The usual legal disclaimer applies that anything in the future is subject to change.

Source: SAP

Application designer in SAP Analytics Cloud is a new capability

Parallel to other capabilities

Added app design capability

Enable power users, professional designers to create analytical app dashboards

Core capability – wrangling, modeling, collaboration, mobile API

Reuse core capabilities, data connections, to enable user to build analytical apps/dashboards, integrate planning, story features

Source: SAP

What is an application?

You might be a SAP Analytics Cloud user, create stories, why do you need an application?

Applications are single dashboards to complex applications, expose custom logic based on scripting

Applications are created by a few experts, consumed by many

They include complex logic, require for your scenario, and drive standardization

Source: SAP

A SAP Analytics Cloud user makes a story

Above shows the difference between story and application

Stories – standardized user interface for self service dashboards, user does not write code

User doesn’t write logic, drag and drop, easy dashboards, consistent already

Application can reuse story features, provide additional logic, dropdown box for additional item

Application has more flexibility

More comparisons follow:

• Applications and Stories share functionality and widgets
• Applications and Stories provide same user experience
• Applications and Stories are different artifacts
• Applications and Stories are created with different Design Environments (Source: SAP)

Source: SAP

Provide intuitive design environment in browser

Provide panel, pagebook, composite

Also provides a function script editor

Source: SAP

First delivery is planned for end of July as part of the beta program

Outline – see your objects, provide rich script capabilities

Source: SAP

Starting with SAP Analytics Cloud, go to create analytical application – outline view – turn on or turn off

Turn on global variables view

Source: SAP

Write code to fill dropdown boxes

Get dimensions, set filter, similar to Lumira Designer/Design Studio

Source: SAP

Use scripting to filter

Basic filtering

Filter line widget; define a source widget

Source: SAP

Support dropdown box cascading filter – depends on selection of dropdown box

Source: SAP

Dynamic switch widgets at app run time

Source: SAP

Open / close popup using scripting capabilities

Source: SAP

Selection based on the crosstab

Based on where make selection, get different information; can pass through to other widgets

Source: SAP

Application initialization event – before the application starts, influences how the application will look like

Source: SAP

SDK is planned as shown above

Source: SAP

Above is a comparison

Also note that the Composite will be in future versions; it is not in the first version

Source: SAP

Recent innovation – deliver at end of July

Release cycle – every 2 weeks release new features

Q3 – global functions are planned  – modularize code

Dynamic layout/grid layout –

Integration with planning in app design

Integrate with predictive features such as the smart features

End of this year – container widgets

Next year – 2019+future – shared data sources, composites

Subset of Q&A:

Q: Hi when it comes to features and enhancements will Lumira Designer road map play second fiddle to cloud development as has been the case with lumira discovery?

A: no, important to understand, discovery is special case

Q: Does SAC also use BIAL scripting like SAP Lumira Designer?

A: Yes

Updated Q&A – special thanks to SAP’s Jie Deng

1. What is the difference between ‘Widgets’ in SAC versus ‘Components’ in SAP Lumira Designer?
They are indeed the same. The terminology for SAC is Widgets, and in Lumira designer it calls “components”.

2. Is there a separate rich client planned for SAC Application Design?
No, that’s not planned. We want to exactly leverage the advantage of SAC to use browser to directly create analytical applications instead of installing the client first.

3. Can simple widgets like dropdown menus also be data driven in SAC?
What do you mean with data-driven for dropdown box? Do you mean the data-binding capability for drop-down box? If yes, the data-binding capability like we have for Design Studio is planned for future releases.

4. Are there planned abilities to cross-link or drilldown from one SAC Application to another? Is passing parameters while doing so a planned feature?
Yes, this feature is planned. We are planning to deliver the navigation between different applications and also passing parameters.

5. Are the applications designed on SAC inherently responsive? Or is there a container that allows designers to make the application responsive?
Currently with the first version of application design (wave13) the application is not responsive like the story. We do plan to deliver features like dynamic layout in Q4 this year.

6. Will the application design be included into the existing licensesor will there be spcal type of license to buil applications?
To be able to create analytical application, the developer/designer need one of the planning license
To be able to consume the analytical application, the standard BI license is sufficient

7. Is there a way to profile applications built to identify the bottlenecks, if any?
Its not possible with the current version (wave 13). Of course, this feature is on our backlog

8. Does it share the inablities or limitations of SAC Analytics cloud. ?? R visualization for HANA Live models, blending between different models like HANA LIve and static files? 2. Is it user responsive for mobile phones????
Application Design is integrated into the whole SAC landscape, it reuses the data modeling, data connectivity, lifecycle management etc. So it also shares the limitation of data connectivity in SAC.
With the current version (wave 13), the application is not responsive. But this feature is also on our backlog

9. Will this scripting capability / application design capability also apply to SAC Planning? Can SAC applications also enable user to save Planning data?
Application Design is going to integrate the planning functionality that are available in SAC. So what’s possible with the planning sheet, it can be integrated into application design.
Integrating Planning functionalities are planned for Q3/Q4 this year.

10. Can ‘Filter line’ component work like a cascading filter? Ex: Based on Region filter, Country is filtered.
In case this cascading behavior is already modeled in the backend (e.g. in BW, region is the attribute for country), then you will see the behavior also in filter line.
Otherwise you can use scripting capability to implement the cascading behavior and then use widget (e.g. like dropdown box) to represent it.

11. Is SAC Application is successor of SAP ANALYTICS CLOUD Stories! what is best to recommend to client ???sorry for questions
No. They are different artifacts in SAC and serve for different purpose. For self-service scenario, business user should create stories. For IT-professional authored dashboards (including planning function, complex logic, and re-use aspects), then analytical applications can be created by developers/designers.

12. Also i see you have two Dates?? Currently SAC support one Date in a model!!! is it offered multiple in SAC Applications???
App Design is using the same data model as story. In my demo I have shown that you can make different date selection on data sources.

13. Currently we have a limitation in SAC till now. creating a calculated with dimension 2 3 forces the existence of dimension 2 and dimension 3 if not dimension23 dosent work! if it works it shows wierd chart and is that still persistent in SAC Application?
The use case is not very clear to me. I need more detailed description

14. What if i have my own db hosted in cloud as Tenant a(client1),Tenant b(client2) but now i am building a SAC
visualization for tenant A and deployed.Now i want to reuse it for my client 2 by transporting existing hana models to client 2 teant from client 1 without data.?
and can i replicate SAC Stories to use them too on the same SAC dev environment or is the Analytics hub help me to manage my stories for different tenants on deployment for each tenant?
The scenario description is not 100% clear to me. Basically you can import the stories/applications etc. into SAC without Data.

15. for end of July App design applications can we use them on mobile?.
With the first version of application design (wave 13), its not possible to show applications on the SAC Mobile app. It’s on the roadmap to show analytical applications within SAC Mobile app.

We had several open questions and as soon as they are answered I will update here.

Upcoming webcasts:

• July 3 BI: Smart Features and Conversational AI in SAP Analytics Cloud
• July 5 BI: Overview of Latest BI Features in SAP Cloud Analytics
• July 12 BI: Advanced Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud
• July 18 BI: Extend your planning with SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation Standard