How to create a story in SAP Analytics Cloud based on data from Google Drive (and how can I use it in real life)

When you start building new stories in SAP Analytics Cloud, you face the challenge of getting data.

In this blog post, I will show you how to setup a connection to Google Drive, and elaborate a bit on how it can be used in real life scenarios.

First, you need to create an account on Google, and have data ready in Google Sheet.

Then we will have to create a connection from SAC to Google – this connection is standard in SAP Analytics Cloud, and you only have to log in with your Google-credentials.

Secondly, you will have create a model, you have select the Google-sheet you wish to use data from, and import these data into SAP Analytics Cloud –

If data does not match – you will se an error in form of a red indicator – please correct these errors, before building the Data Model.

Each Datamodel contains data, and is not based on a live connection. But instead of manually uploading data, you can set a schedule – this can be done hourly/daily/weekly – this will give the users a sense of dynamic, since it does not require the IT department to perform an action.

Once the model is populated with data, you can build a story based on the Datamodel.

Conclusion: It is out-of-the-box functionality to connect Google Sheets from Google Drive to SAP Analytics Cloud, and the use-cases are many.

• You can have python-scripts populationg Google Sheets with data from different web-sites
• You can have Google Forms-results being populated to Google Sheets and results shown directly in SAP Analytics Cloud without interaction from anybody
• You can use it for prototyping, copying data from Excel or any other source into Google Sheets, and build your Prototype in SAP Analytics Cloud