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This blog post covers the new features and enhancements in the SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom Q1 2021 Release.

Please note that the SAP Analytics Cloud Help documentation is updated at the same time as the upgrade to this release, so the links here may not yet reflect what is described below until after the upgrade is complete.

Make sure to upgrade your SAP Analytics Cloud agent to the latest agent version 1.0.305, to take advantage of all the data acquisition types!

 

Requirements


 

These are the data acquisition minimum requirements:

  • Version 1.0.99 for SAP ERP / SQL databases

  • Version 1.0.235 for SAP HANA view

  • Version 1.0.91 for SAP Universe (UNX)

  • Version 1.0.248 for SAP Business Warehouse (BW)

  • Version 1.0.75 for all other data source types


For more information, see the SAP Analytics Cloud System Requirements and Technical Prerequisites.

SAP Analytics Cloud fully supports Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome for all activities and areas of SAP Analytics Cloud, including viewing, authoring and administration.

 

Top 5 Feature Updates


 

The features listed in the highlights section are the top feature enhancements in Q1 2021.

Click on the links above to learn more about each feature update. Alternatively, take a look at our Q1 2021 What's New video, below, to hear all about each feature from our friends Jessica and Orla:



 

QRC 1 2021 Feature Updates


 

While the Top 5 Feature Updates section pointed out our most noteworthy new features and enhancements, this quarter saw several additional updates. To view them in detail, please refer to the list below.

 

 

Top 5 Feature Updates


 

Data Discovery


 
Save an Insight in Data Analyzer

The much-anticipated Data Analyzer capability from 2019 just got better! Now, Admin, BI Admin, and BI Content Creators can save an insight within the Data Analyzer. These saved insights can contain data source information such as:

  • Selected variable prompts,

  • Filters,

  • Text presentations (ID / Description), and

  • Drill-down levels in hierarchies


SAP Analytics Cloud displays the insights you save in folders. After you have saved an insight, you can launch and manage it through Files, where you can perform operations such as:

  • View

  • List

  • Rename

  • Overwrite

  • Delete

  • Share



 

Planning


 
Flexible Modeling of Calendar Tasks and Processes

You can now use new task types in the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar: composite tasks, general tasks and review tasks. Your existing events are automatically migrated.


Additional features let you set up your workflows in a flexible way:




  • Owners of a composite task can adjust the default time distribution between the assignees' and the reviewers' work.

  • When multiple assignees work on a task, not all of them need to submit it. The task is accomplished once one of them submits.

  • When multiple reviewers work in one review round, not all of them need to accept the task. The review round is accomplished once one of them accepts.

  • To fine-tune their workflow, owners can convert a composite task to a process that consists of a general task for the assignees and one review task for each review round.

  • To delegate their task to others, assignees can convert the composite task assigned to them to a process that consists of a child process and one review task for each review round.


For more information, see What's New in the Calendar.


 

Data Visualization


 
Story Exploration and View Time Toolbar

Great news! With Q1 2021’s enhancement to the Explorer, you can more easily explore your entire story while navigating between pages and widgets. You can also open a story in Explorer by default.

What’s more? Now, you can bookmark, save, and enter full-screen within the Explorer and enable the Explorer for all charts and tables in your story.


 

Furthermore, we are always working to ensure that our SAP Analytics Cloud features are easy to use and navigate to make for a seamless user experience. As a result, for one of our first updates of the 2021 year, we redesigned the view time toolbar for Stories and Analytical Applications:

  • So that you can quickly get to the most commonly used functions, we've grouped the functions into sections with quick access buttons – sparing you search time and helping you get the job done faster.

  •  You can also move more easily through stories with a lot of pages, using the enhanced page navigation, making for a more streamlined consumption experience and equating to an enterprise-ready toolbar that scales to users' needs.

  • For Planning users, the new full-screen mode completely hides the toolbar so that you can focus more on your content. But, if you want to see a condensed version of the toolbar again, just hover over the top of the screen.



 

Smart Assist


 
Define the Context of Your Business Question in Smart Discovery

Smart Discovery now helps you explore your data more effectively by letting you clearly define the context of the business question you want to ask. As well as choosing a measure or dimension as a target, you can now also select an entity, which consists of one or more dimensions.

The entity defines the level at which Smart Discovery will aggregate your data so that it can be analyzed in relation to the target. For example, if you want to explore revenue by customer, you can select ‘Revenue’ as the target and ‘customer’ as the entity. In contrast, if you wanted to understand revenue by product, you could select ‘Product’ as the entity instead.

To access a brief summary of the data selected prior to running Smart Discovery, users can open a Preview dialog. Here, you can find enhancements to the content and presentation of the analysis results generated by Smart Discovery through new heuristics that display charts that are more meaningful and easier to consume.

Now, users are empowered to explore their data in relation to a specific context and entity without the need for any additional data preparation. This way, users can analyze the same target in relation to different entities and get different results that reflect the specific question being asked in a way that is easier to digest.


 

Mobile


 
Voice Support in Search to Insight for iOS

You may have heard about Search to Insight, a powerful feature that allows users to ask questions about their data using natural language queries. With this 2021 enhancement to the SAP Analytics Cloud mobile iOS app, you can leverage the power of Search to Insight from your mobile iOS device by commanding queries such as “show top five British Columbia sales by priority” out loud, and SAP Analytics Cloud will return your desired results.

Note that some queries may require the use of a combination of voice commands and typing in order to prepare your query. Furthermore, suggested tokens require manual selection.


 

If you’re looking to get even more information on these features, please visit the Help documentation here.