Pass Filter Context with Internal Hyperlinks in SAP Analytics Cloud

In its latest release, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) 2024.01, SAP introduces a new feature to the Hyperlink Panel to pass filters through internal hyperlinks. With this enhancement, story designers can choose which filters—be it story, page, local, or linked analysis—get passed via internal hyperlinks. This update offers three distinct options:

  1. Only Apply Selected Dimension (Current Behavior): Maintains the current behavior, applying only the selected dimension’s filter.
  2. Apply All Filters that impact the widget: Ensures comprehensive filtration by applying all filters affecting the widget.
  3. Only Apply Specific Filters that impact the widget: Allows selective filtering, enabling precision in the analysis process.

Moreover, filters transmitted via hyperlinks automatically become read-only story filters, facilitating streamlined analysis without compromising integrity.

Pass-Filter-Context-with-Internal-Page-or-Story-Hyperlinks

Advantages:

The introduction of contextual filters through internal hyperlinks presents several advantages:

  • Enhanced Continuity: Story viewers can seamlessly maintain the analysis flow by passing contextual filters, ensuring accuracy and relevance.
  • Improved Precision: Selective filter application empowers users to fine-tune their analysis, focusing solely on pertinent dimensions and metrics.

Limitations:

However, it’s crucial to acknowledge certain limitations associated with this feature:

  • Dynamic Time Filters with Custom Current Date: Dynamic time filters with custom current dates may not be fully supported, potentially limiting flexibility in time-based analysis.
  • Measure-Based Filters: Filters based on measures might encounter constraints, possibly restricting their applicability in certain scenarios.

Conclusion:

By allowing story designers to tailor filter applications, SAP empowers users to extract deeper insights while ensuring seamless continuity. While some limitations exist, the overall benefits of this feature outweigh the drawbacks, promising a more refined analytical experience for SAC users.

Custom RESET in SAP Dashboards

There are times when users want to clear all selections and return to the default state on a Dashboard. In SAP Dashboards, this can be achieved by using the “Reset Button” component. Although the “Reset Button” is of great utility in many scenarios, it has its limitations when it comes to resetting just parts of a Dashboard. Here is a simple trick you can use to overcome this limitation using the “Push Button” component.

sap-dashboards-custom-reset

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Multi-Colored Column Charts

When looking at dashboards produced by other data visualization tools, we often see multi-colored column charts. While this technique can be reproduced in SAP Dashboards, it doesn’t always make sense to do. Below are a couple examples of the effect, and you can see how the second instance is far more appropriate.

multi_colored_by_label

multi_colored_by_year

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Ranking in SAP Dashboards

I was recently working on a Personal Finance Dashboard and had to rank the returning data in descending order based on spending. I know this can be done on the query side using the sort functionality, however, I was trying to apply ranking on a subset of data returning from a main query, which was not in the desired sort order. In the end it was pretty straight forward.

Ranking in SAP Dashboards

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Mobile Supported Components: Dashboards SP05

As most of you already know that Dashboards SP05 comes with “Export to Mobile” option (HTML5), what is not widely known is the fact that not all existing components will be available to make use of this feature. The product team has worked on some of the most commonly used components and made them available for the initial version. I’m sure the rest of the components will join this list in the future releases. This is a great start towards a common interface/platform strategy.

Here is the list of components that are available starting Dashboards 4.0 SP05 to create mobile based dashboards (HTML5) that can be rendered on iOS platform.

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