Custom Analytics Applications and Dashboards Tailored for Your Users with SAP Analytics Cloud, Analytics Designer

An Extend Analytics Use Case
Extend Analytics is an initiative enabling SAP BusinessObjects BI customers to extend and expand BI, Predictive, and Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud. The heart of the initiative centers around popular use cases and how they can benefit SAP BusinessObjects BI customers.

Note: Originally composed by Sofiya Muzychko and re-purposed with permission.

A Shift Towards Valuable Insight

Organizations have shifted from simply extracting and storing data to gaining valuable insights. As some business intelligence use-cases become more and more complex, organizations require a more customized, flexible workflow to satisfy their needs. How can we create complex dashboards while continuing to benefit from the BI, Planning and Predictive capabilities that SAP Analytics Cloud has to offer?

We suggest SAP Analytics Cloud, analytics designer, that enables professional designers to use advanced scripting with a rich set of capabilities to create custom, complex applications. Scripting allows the application designer to define the relationship between different elements on the page, to guide users and adjust widget behavior based on users’ expectations.

So how exactly are stories and analytic applications different?

Stories and Analytic applications are different artifacts with different design environments. Analytics Designer offers tools such as a subset JavaScript scripting and specific custom widgets to allow professional designers to create custom dashboards and analytics applications to satisfy complex business use-cases.

Reuse Story Functionality

Analytics Designer can reuse story functionality, such adding charts, tables, calculations, filtering and other features. By leveraging all SAP Analytics Cloud existing capabilities, including BI, Planning and Predictive, and adding Analytics Design specific functionality enables users to benefit from all SAP Analytics Cloud has to offer while enjoying the flexibility. For example, you can display a pop-up dialog triggered by the specified user interaction, dynamically switch between table and chart at run-time or create a new story by running Smart Discovery from your application.

Deliver “Up to the Minute” Info and Keep Data On-Premise Behind Your Firewall

Moreover, Analytics Designer also leverages all data connections that are supported in SAP Analytics Cloud today. Live connections such SAP BusinessObjects Universe, SAP HANA, SAP BW as well as imported data are supported, to ensure that the designer of analytic applications can take advantage of all SAP Analytics Cloud resources and infrastructure. Keeping data behind firewall and providing most up-to-the-minute information to your users that is available.

Embed with Other Business Apps and Web Pages

The flexibility of Analytics Designer allows for integration with other business applications and web pages. You are able to embed the analytic applications into web pages with bi-directional communication via scripting APIs. As a result, the hosting web page can transform parameters in the analytical application, while the user can pass parameters to the web page by interacting with the analytical application.

Take Action Directly from Your Dashboard

Let me take you even further. Imagine you are analyzing your data and finding valuable insights from your Analytics Designer dashboard. What’s next? You want to act on it – whether that is to put in an order, restock a product or follow up on an unexpected value. With Analytics Designer, you can take an action without ever leaving your dashboard, by triggering an OData call into the transactional system and see the outcome of your action reflected in the same dashboard. Real-time. Support for closed-loop scenarios highlights the flexibility and customization that Analytics Designer in SAP Analytics Cloud has to offer.

On-Premise to Cloud Licensing Opportunity

SAP BusinessObjects BI customers who are interested in using SAP Analytics Cloud have the opportunity to convert unused on-premise licenses and maintenance into SAP Analytics Cloud licenses. If you are interested in using SAP Analytics Cloud, this is a great way to get started. For more information on this conversion program, drop us an email at sapaskanalytics@sap.com.