SAP Analytics Cloud Overview PDF

1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Copyright 2020. SAP PRESS. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Those dashboards, which are often also called applications, are very diff...

1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Copyright 2020. SAP PRESS. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Those dashboards, which are often also called applications, are very different from the reports that are built in the area of business intelligence, and their creation requires deeper knowledge and coding skills. They also behave differently as they are usually customized and built for individual use cases. Because SAP Analytics Cloud is designed as an analytics platform, it offers additional solutions or tools, which are based on the platform and strongly interact with it: 쐍 SAP Digital Boardroom 쐍 SAP Analytics Cloud mobile app 쐍 SAP Analytics Hub 쐍 SAP Analytics Catalog SAP Analytics Cloud is necessary to run those solutions. We’ll present them in more detail in Chapter 5, Chapter 9, and Chapter 10. SAP Analytics Cloud: Platform or Solution? With regards to SAP Analytics Cloud, this book will often use the wording solution or platform. Indeed, SAP Analytics Cloud is both a platform and a solution. When looking at it as a solution, it’s offering functionality in the areas of business intelligence, planning, predictive analytics, and the analytics designer. At the same time, SAP Analytics Cloud as a platform offers unified access to those areas. The on-premise SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform is different as it’s primarily offering platform services. For specific functionality, additional solutions like SAP Lumira have to be installed. 1.3.2 User Interface and Core Functionality This section will introduce the user interface of SAP Analytics Cloud and explain how to work with it in general. To do so, we’ll provide an overview of the core functionalities in the areas of business intelligence, planning, predictive analytics, and the analytics designer. A detailed description of these areas with explanatory examples can be found in Chapter 5 through Chapter 8. We’ll start by walking through some general navigation concepts, then we’ll provide details about the business intelligence, planning, predictive analytics, and analytics designer solution components. 27 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS AN: 2490330 ; Abassin Sidiq.; SAP Analytics Cloud Account: s1225585.main.ehost SAP Analytics Cloud as a platform 1 Introduction Navigation Home screen The entry point into SAP Analytics Cloud is the home screen, shown in Figure 1.2. Every user can completely customize his home screen and define his own elements, which are displayed when opening SAP Analytics Cloud. Figure 1.2 Home Screen of SAP Analytics Cloud The home screen provides access points to all functionality within the solution and to all reports. On top of that, the default home screen also offers some first steps for new users as an initial overview. Those steps include basic tasks for users, which only cover some core functionality. The examples you’ll find in this book are designed to cover the whole scope of the 28 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud solution. Therefore, this book is a great way to extend the built-in instructions and help material. On the top right of the home screen, you’ll find the notifications icon: . The number displayed indicates how many unread notifications there are (in this case, it’s one). Here you’ll find information about recent releases and messages from other users. You’ll also get notifications when a report is shared with you or a new task is assigned to you. Administrators also get additional system notifications, like the New features are available. message shown in Figure 1.3. Notifications Figure 1.3 Notifications in SAP Analytics Cloud Close to the notifications, you can also find the product help icon: . Here you can access various help texts (Help button) or help videos (Videos button) or perform other activities (see Figure 1.4). Figure 1.4 Product Help Overview 29 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Product help 1 Introduction These include searching the help library (Search Knowledge Base button) or providing feedback to SAP (Send Feedback button). The Submit Ideas button allows users to request new features. Help can be launched from anywhere in SAP Analytics Cloud. The video library offers videos for almost all areas of the solution and covers many workflows by showing examples or explaining different features. Business Intelligence The field of business intelligence unifies all tasks that you perform in a typical analysis. In general, you begin with data acquisition, move over to data visualization, and then close the scenario with publishing your findings, as we’ll discuss in the following sections. Data Acquisition Data acquisition can be performed by a business user or power users, depending on the use case and complexity. In this example, we assume that the user wants to upload a file to SAP Analytics Cloud. There are multiple ways to provide data in SAP Analytics Cloud: 쐍 Power users or business users that are building up data models that will be accessed by a broader audience will use the modeler to build data models. 쐍 Alternatively, users can directly upload flat files (e.g., a CSV or Excel file) into SAP Analytics Cloud and build reports on top of that. In this case, they will start directly within the reporting environment. Data wrangling After uploading a flat file, you can start editing or transforming the data within the solution directly. This process is also called data wrangling. Figure 1.5 shows an example of an Excel file that was uploaded during the creation of a new story. We’ll provide more details on this process in Chapter 5, Section 5.11.1. During data wrangling, you have multiple tools at hand to fix data quality issues or transform your data. On top of that, you get a first overview of your data and the possibility to create relations between columns—like hierarchies, for example. 30 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.5 Overview of Data You can use either your mouse or your keyboard to manipulate your data. The solution provides visual aids, which automatically propose possible transformations and provide a quick preview. This way, you get a better understanding of the possibilities right away. An example of such a transformation is depicted in Figure 1.6. Other options are the creation of hierarchies or enriching the data with geographical information. Figure 1.6 Formula in Data Wrangling Every change you perform in the area of data wrangling will be captured in the Transform Log, which allows you to quickly undo or redo your actions (see Figure 1.7). This is an important aspect of self-service. Figure 1.7 Transform Log 31 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Transform log 1 Introduction You can interrupt your work in this process at any time and continue later on. After finishing your data transformations, you can continue to create visualizations. To do so, you can either keep the data model contained or publish it for a broader audience. If you decide to publish the model, you can return later on to the data wrangling process and still perform transformations or changes. Data Wrangling During data preparation (data wrangling), you can perform several actions to transform or enrich your data. Those changes are captured in history and can be easily undone. You can also repeat the process later on. As soon as the data is finalized, it can be published in models and made accessible to other users. A detailed description of data wrangling and the semantic options can be found in Chapter 3, Section 3.3. Visualization Stories The visualization concept of SAP Analytics Cloud is mainly focused on stories. Based on the use case, a story can be a report, a dashboard, or even an input form. They allow the user to create tables or charts and provide several possibilities to interact. On top of that, a lot of tasks around planning and predictive analytics are performed within the story. Figure 1.8 shows an example of a story. What you see is what you get In general, the story uses a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) format. While creating a story, you will directly see the outcome of your work and can easily adjust the results to fit your individual needs. This supports the self-service approach because the technical complexity behind creating a story is hidden from the user as much as possible. It also allows the fast creation of reports without having to have deep knowledge in analytics. Stories are the central way to interact with SAP Analytics Cloud for both story creators and consumers. As a report creator or owner, you have the authorization to create and modify reports. You can easily switch between the report creation and consumption views with one click. This allows you to immediately view your changes. 32 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.8 Example Story Stories can contain multiple pages and data from different sources. They provide the main environment for the majority of users. Besides visualization, you can also link data models, enter data into planning models, or upload additional data within the story. When creating a story, you’ll be assisted by various selections that show the existing possibilities. This way, you can create a story step by step. At the beginning, you can select from templates or various tools (see Figure 1.9). How those templates and tools work will be presented in Chapter 5, Section 5.11.2 in detail. Stories The story is an environment in SAP Analytics Cloud in which users not only perform classical analyses, but also realize scenarios around planning or predictive analytics. That’s why the story is often just called a report. Dashboards, on the other hand, are complex applications, created in a different development environment, which we’ll present in Chapter 8 in detail. 33 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Creating a new story 1 Introduction Figure 1.9 Creating New Stories Data exploration Within the story, you’ll find various utilities and objects to create reports. Those include charts, texts, pictures, and filter controls. There is also a button always present that allows you to switch to data exploration. This mode can also be used as a starting point to create a new story. Within this screen, you can easily create first charts or aggregate data. In the data exploration mode, you can see all measures (e.g., revenue or costs) and dimensions (e.g., country or customer) that are available in a data model. To add measures or dimensions to the view, click on the + button (see Figure 1.10). If you click on a specific dimension like Customer Country, as shown in Figure 1.11, you can create your first chart easily. In this case, it shows the revenue per country. 34 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.10 Data Exploration Mode in Stories Figure 1.11 New Chart in Data Exploration In data exploration mode, you get a good first impression of your data and what information it contains. You can also reuse the chart you just created and copy it into a story. This integrates the process of analyzing and visualizing data into one guided process. 35 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1 Introduction Canvas The data exploration process can be performed multiple times to create more than one chart or table. It’s especially suited for users that have very specific questions about their data but no or low knowledge about the data model. After copying your chart to a story, you’ll automatically jump into the story in edit mode. There you’ll find your chart, as shown in Figure 1.12. Figure 1.12 New Story with Chart Create report If you know your data already or feel confident enough, you can start creating your report by creating a new page right away. In this case, you skip the data exploration mode. After creating a new page, you can add charts, tables, or other objects to it. An overview of the available objects is shown in Figure 1.13. We’ll provide more details on each object in Chapter 5. Figure 1.13 Objects in Stories 36 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Publishing If you’ve finalized your story or you want to interrupt your work to continue later, you can save it. To do so, SAP Analytics Cloud provides a folder structure (see Figure 1.14). You can put authorizations on these folders to control access to them. Figure 1.14 Folder View After you save a story, you can share it with other users in the system. This can be achieved either by applying individual sharing settings to a story or by saving it into a folder that was made accessible to other users beforehand. The story creator is the primary person to control the sharing settings. However, the authorization to share a story can also be given to additional users. Moreover, SAP Analytics Cloud offers a discussion panel, the icon for which you’ll find next to the notifications icon on the home screen. This allows you to start a discussion with other users or groups of users (see Figure 1.15). Figure 1.15 Start New Discussion 37 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Collaboration 1 Introduction Linking a story Within a discussion, you can send text messages or link stories (see Figure 1.16). When linking a story in a discussion, it will be automatically shared with all discussion participants. Figure 1.16 Writing New Message After sharing or publishing a story, the classic business intelligence workflow is completed. Based on your individual scenario, you can restrict the creation of new reports to a specific group of power users, for example, who then again can provide those reports to a broader audience. You can also establish mixed scenarios in which business users use prebuilt reports, for example, but still can modify them or run their own analyses. Business Intelligence Business intelligence workflow All in all, business intelligence can be summarized in three main steps: 1. Data acquisition In this step, the data needed for the analysis is gathered and modeled. The data is either provided by the user himself or already exists in the form of a model and can be used based on individual authorizations. 2. Visualization After successfully acquiring data, it needs to be visualized. In this step, the user creates charts, tables, texts, or other objects to compose a report. The report will be used to analyze the data and to answer questions about it. 3. Publishing Because reports and their insights are often interesting to multiple stakeholders, sharing or publishing them is an essential step. SAP Analytics Cloud offers built-in capabilities to offer an easy and intuitive sharing experience. 38 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Planning Planning is often considered its own world because it requires a lot of special skills and is often connected to complex processes within companies. Therefore, a lot of companies use separate solutions for solving planning cases. On top of that, they are often run separately from other central solutions and are only used to capture forecasts or budget values, which makes their usage very restrictive. Nevertheless, planning can be connected extremely tightly with other areas of business analytics. It’s the core idea of planning to estimate future developments based on the broadest possible amount of historical data. To achieve this, you can either use historical analyses or predictive forecasts. SAP Analytics Cloud is following this approach by heavily integrating planning functionalities with other areas of the solution. For example, a lot of BI functionality also contains planning workflows if needed, which creates a beneficial synergy. On top of that, there are also planning-specific utilities that can’t be reused in any other component. However, the overall user interface is kept very similar to guarantee a holistic experience throughout the platform. Synergies with other areas An example of this is the data wrangling process discussed in the previous section. It’s also used for modeling planning data as it offers an optional checkbox to make a model planning-compatible (see Figure 1.17). Once you check the Activate Planning box, you can configure additional settings needed for establishing planning workflows. Data modeling Figure 1.17 Option to Activate Planning in Data Wrangling If you don’t check this box, an analytical model will be created. This can be used fully for analyzing and uploading new data but allows no entry of data by users in entry forms or tables. On top of that, various other planningspecific workflows only support planning models. 39 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Planning models 1 Introduction The structure of a planning model generally follows the concept of an account-based model. In this concept, a dedicated account dimension is created that contains all measures and KPIs and allows the creation of measure hierarchies. Both accounts and all other dimensions are structured and maintained in the modeler (see Figure 1.18). Figure 1.18 Account Dimensions in Modeler The visualization portfolio of SAP Analytics Cloud offers various ways to edit a planning model. One place to do so is in the grid pages, which allows for the creation of tables and performing calculations in a sheet (see Figure 1.19). On a grid page, you can directly enter data into a model. To do so, you can create new versions and fill them by either applying formulas or entering the data manually. You can even use those values directly in visualizations. A detailed presentation of planning functionalities is provided in Chapter 6. 40 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.19 Grid Page with Table Besides the grid page, SAP Analytics Cloud offers various additional utilities that allow you to establish planning workflows. An essential component of planning flow is the creation of allocation processes. These allow you to allocate and split aggregated values or entered data from one source dimension into multiple target dimensions. Because planning activities are often performed on aggregated levels, you have to define allocation steps. Adding multiple steps together results in an allocation process that can be triggered in a story or application to allocate data entries, for example. The allocation step shown in Figure 1.20 allocates IT expenses from a general cost pool into a product dimension and uses the gross sales measure to determine the cost share for each product. Figure 1.20 Simple Allocation Step 41 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Planning workflows 1 Introduction Value driver tree Another tool in planning is the value driver tree. With a value driver tree, you can break down a KPI into its single components and view them in a tree structure (see Figure 1.21). The value driver tree also supports the implementation of simulation calculations, which show how the change of a single measure (or a leaf of the tree) impacts the overall KPI. Figure 1.21 Example of Value Driver Tree We’ll create a value driver tree in Chapter 6, Section 6.3.5 as an example. These tools are very helpful; their simulation capabilities provide instant feedback on proposed changes. Data actions Data actions make it possible to build and provide data entry forms (see Figure 1.22). 42 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.22 Creating New Data Actions After their execution, data entry forms will follow a defined process. This allows you to govern any modification that is performed on data in models by following predefined sequences. After their creation, you can embed data actions into a story. You can set various parameters that define how users can modify data when executing the data actions. We’ll walk through the creation of data actions in Chapter 6, Section 6.3.6. 43 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1 Introduction Calendar SAP Analytics Cloud also offers a built-in calendar (see Figure 1.23). It can be used to keep important dates or assign tasks to specific users. Tasks that are added to the calendar will be automatically shown to assigned users, who can then create reminders or even stick the tasks to their home screens. Figure 1.23 Calendar in SAP Analytics Cloud Multistep planning processes The calendar simplifies the establishment of multistep planning processes, which involve multiple people. It also allows you to link specific data actions to a task so that users always have a clear overview of open tasks. 44 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Planning SAP Analytics Cloud offers a strong planning engine with a lot of functionalities. It allows you to define planning processes and execute them. These are integrated seamlessly with other areas of the platform, like business intelligence or predictive analytics, which creates synergies when using them. Predictive Analytics Another area of SAP Analytics Cloud tightly integrated with the platform is predictive analytics. It can be separated into two main fields: 쐍 Smart assist tools require no to almost no knowledge in data science from users. They use automated functionalities and can be triggered by a few clicks only. 쐍 Smart predict tools allow scenarios in which users have more options to define individual parameters. However, they also require more knowledge to use. One of the smart assist tools is smart discovery. It allows you to investigate data models and learn more about key influences and other relations. To use it, you just have to choose a measure or dimension that you want to know more about (see Figure 1.24). You can also exclude dimensions or measures that are obviously influencing your analysis target to get reliable results. Smart discovery will automatically execute machine learning algorithms and identify key influences and relations in data models. It also generates texts that provide detailed explanations of the insights. We’ll show how to use smart discovery in Chapter 7. You’ll also learn about other smart assist tools like smart insights, search to insight, or R visualizations. Because all smart assist tools and processes are clearly targeting business users, they are fully integrated into either the home screen or story and can be executed from there. 45 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Smart assist 1 Introduction Figure 1.24 Running Smart Discovery Smart predict To create smart predict scenarios, SAP Analytics Cloud offers a dedicated environment. That environment offers various scenarios in which you can answer different questions about data patterns and forecasts. It includes the creation of analyses of classifications, regressions, or time series forecasts, which allow you to predict future developments or identify critical customer segments, for example (see Figure 1.25). Every scenario requires you to provide data and define various criteria to train the most accurate model. The more parameters you define, the better your model becomes. 46 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1.3 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud Figure 1.25 Creating New Predictive Scenario Predictive Analytics SAP Analytics Cloud’s predictive analytics component offers automatic and manually triggered tools that are classified as either smart assist or smart predict functionalities. You can detect patterns or relations in your data, create time series forecasts, or create classifications or regressions. Once finished, you can use the results in planning and business intelligence scenarios. 47 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 1 Introduction The previously presented workflows are mainly guided and don’t require deep coding knowledge. Nevertheless, there are a lot of requirements to further customize specific functions or workflows. SAP Analytics Cloud offers a broad set of tools to achieve this. Analytics Designer The analytics designer for SAP Analytics Cloud allows you to create complex analytical applications that extend the standard functionality by using your own code or logic. This also allows you to completely customize a dashboard’s behavior. Target group The analytics designer environment is primarily designed for developers or power users who are capable of programming or scripting. On top of using standard functionality, the analytics designer allows you to extend a dashboard by using complex coding. However, the consumers of such applications are still business users. In an ideal scenario, they request a specific dashboard from a developer or power users to meet their individual needs. Applications use a subset of the programming language JavaScript. The same syntax is also used in the SAP Lumira, designer edition solution (formerly known as SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio). Users of those solutions especially can easily adapt to the new cloud environment and quickly build their first applications in SAP Analytics Cloud. Analytics designer is exposed in a dedicated development environment used to create new applications (see Figure 1.26) and allows a stronger customization of dashboards. However, a deep knowledge of scripting or coding is needed to work in this environment as it’s very different from a story. Analytics designer will be covered in detail in Chapter 8. Analytics Designer Analytics designer provides users (who are typically developers) with an extended toolset to create complex dashboards (applications). It enables them to use coding or scripting to embed complex logic and meet specific and custom requirements. 48 EBSCOhost - printed on 9/7/2023 7:21 PM via UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use