Design Your SAP Analytics Cloud Stories for an Engaging Experience on Mobile

SAP Analytics Cloud is one single solution for business intelligence and organizational planning powered by machine learning and predictive analysis, offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution.

With SAP Analytics Cloud, users can connect to various data sources, whether on premise or cloud, create compelling data visualizations, stories, and much more. Now with SAP Analytics Cloud mobile application, users can access SAP Analytics Cloud stories anytime anywhere, on their Apple iPad and iPhones. Here are some tips  to help you ensure an engaging experience.

Tip #1: Keep Mobile in Mind and Know Your Lanes

First and foremost, design your stories with mobile consumption in mind—what works well on mobile will work on the desktop, not necessarily the other way around. For instance, you could build one story having a few mobile specific pages using the ‘responsive layout’ (for example, you can specify that three pages are for web layout, and two are for mobile​ viewing). In this case, only the pages designed with ‘responsive layout’ will display on mobile.

The SAP Analytics Cloud mobile app renders the story differently. It uses the lane concept to lay out various components for the different form factors,  so that you can design once, and consume from any device without any additional efforts.

• On the iPad, all components included in one lane stay together, while how many lanes it will show on the screen depends on the size of the device it’s rendered on.
• iPad Pro 9.7 and smaller iPad devices are treated as “small device”, with a maximum of three lanes visible at a time.  Lanes four to six will show next.
• Larger iPad Pro is treated as “large device”, so up to a maximum of six lanes is visible.
• For iPhones, it always shows one component spanning the screen width and the rest of the components one by one. There is a ‘device preview mode’ in the application, so use it while designing your stories to find out how components will be laid out for the various form factors.

Tip #2: Know Your Components

There are also a few components which aren’t meant for accessing on the device or are not yet supported to view on the device, so exclude such components from your story​.

• More details can be found in the feature compatibility matrix.

Tip #3: Know How to Maximize for Speed

Remember, also, that mobile users want and expert faster performance on the device than on the web.  ​

Web and mobile are different experience due to device resources.

• A notebook is much more powerful than a device (like 8 GB RAM)​. For best query processing performance, use a device with a minimum of 2 GB of RAM (iPhone 6S is bare minimum)​.
• More powerful iOS devices give a much better experience​. (iPhone X, iPad Pro are preferred).
• Apple emphasizes battery time more than CPU, so sometimes the OS slows the applications down so the CPU is not overwhelmed.To compensate, reduce the number of individual controls visible on the screen—each one can cause a parallel query. (For example, use a chart with in-lined values rather than a chart and separate text boxes)
• Make use of the caching feature to access already loaded data in bad network areas​, and to get subsequent faster access to your data.

Learn More

With each new release to SAP Analytics mobile application, there is more and more emphasis on having a better experience. If you’re interested in knowing more about SAP Analytics Cloud, refer to our

• SAP Analytics Cloud product page
• SAP Analytics Cloud best practices page