Product Information
SAP Analytics Cloud – Feature Highlight – Date based filtering
In SAP Analytics Cloud there have been several new additions to the Date / Time based capabilities of the product, so I will try to outline those changes here.
In my example, I am working with a very simple data model, which just uses a single dimension for a Order Date and a single measure.
In SAP Analytics Cloud I am staring with a simple table, which just shows the measure value (Order Volume) per Year and Month.
Pre-Defined Date Periods for Filtering
In the past, if you wanted to setup filtering for scenarios, such as Current Month and Previous Month or Current Quarter and Previous Quarter you always had to go through multiple steps to define the filter values for the Current Period and your choice of the second period.
Now (as part of Wave 11), there are several predefined filters in SAP Analytics Cloud for the date based filtering.
In our given example I open the option to create a Story Filter and not only can I choose a dimension or a measure to define filter values, I am also offered several predefined Time Filters, such as the option to filter Current and Previous Quarter with a single click.
The system recognized that my data set does have a Date dimension and therefore I am offered this new capability to quickly filter on a set of periods.
for our example I am using the option to filter the data for the Current and Previous quarter.
Because it is July 03, 2019 and my data only goes until June 2019, I am shown the data for the Previous Quarter – April to June 2019.
Custom Date as Today
In case I would like to now go back in time and perhaps see the first and second quarter of 2019, I could remove my current filter (which uses the system date as indicator) or I use the new option to specify a customer today for my story.
I open the definition of my Story Filter and can recognize the two filter ranges for Q2 and Q3 2019.
We also have the option to create an Input Control for the Current Date.
For our example, we use the option create a Current Data Input Control and we configure the granularity for the Input Control to be on Month level.
As soon as we confirm this, we also have the option (in addition to our existing Story Filter) to set a custom month as our Current Month for the Story.
The Control allows us to either use a custom month or to enable the current date again.
Using an Offset
So for now we have been able to use a set of pre-defined filter values, and we used the ability to provide the end-user the option to set a custom “today”. One very frequently asked question also is the ability to define an offset for date based filter. A typical example would be to see the value for June 2019 and for June 2019 – using an offset of 12 months.
With wave 11 of SAP Analytics Cloud, this is also possible now.
Going back to our existing Story Filter…
… we can use the option to have the filter dynamic and use the Input control (named Current Date) that we configured before. The first range we have is the current month.
With the new option, we can now also define an Offset. So instead of using a Standard Range we set the Range Type to Offset with Month as Granularity.
In the second row we can then define the Offset direction and for our example we go back 1 year, which then results in the data for June 2019 and June 2018.
Not only can you now use a list of predefined date / time filter, which allow you to quickly focus on the date / time ranges that you require, you also can define now a customer “Today” and you have the ability to define your own Offset – all in all providing you with great flexibility for data / time based filtering in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Thanks for the blog ,
I would like to ask a question regarding following comment
"The system recognized that my data set does have a Date dimension and therefore I am offered this new capability to quickly filter on a set of periods."
We have seen that for some of our reports SAC automatically recognise the date dimension but for some of the reports it is not recognised even though we have a date dimension . Both recognized and none recognized reports are BW sourced same reports ´, one with date variable selection one without date variable .
What could be the reason of this ? Are there any manual activities that we need to do to define a dimension as date ?
Thanks ,
Emil
Hi Ingo,
I've just used the "Custom Date as Today" type functionality for a suite of dashboards. Unfortunately the ability to select the date in the story does not seem to work the the SAP Analytics mobile app.
Working perfectly when you're in dashboard view, but although the date selected during build is applied in mobile view, it's unchangeable...
Any ideas on how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Brian
Hi,
SAC Mobile provides limited support on Filters and Input Controls, including:
Regards,
Xiwen
How would I use this to show the first 4 months of the current year dynamically?
Hello Edward,
In your case, is the first 4 months a fixed timeline or are you referring to the first 4 month based on us being in April 2021 ?
In case it is the ladder, then "Current Year" or "YTD" would be options you can use and that should give you the correct result.
In case you are looking for the option to go in and select the first four months and the "current" year, then I would suggest to use a Custom Day option to configure the "current today".
Then you can add a filter for Current Year and then add another filter for the first four month.
Best regards
Ingo Hilgefort
Hi Ingo Hilgefort ,
I have a Numeric Point Chart where I want to get the last booked value of the last 20 days. With weekends and holidays I have a problem. In summer we have 2 weeks plant holidays. Therefore it should take the values from Friday two weeks ago on Monday after the plant holidays? How can I get this done?
BR
Hi Ingo, I have Fiscal Calendar i.e my calendar start April 01 2021 to March 31 2022. How I can use this date based filtering for this Fiscal Calendar ? Also, I am using live Hana models for this reporting.
example:
Consider my date is July 15th 2021, My YTD is April 01 2021 to July 15th 2021 & MTD is July 1st to July 15th.
Thanks,
Praveen