With the SAP Analytics Cloud QRC2 2023-update, SAP introduced new features in the SAC story mode. These features come from the SAC Analytic Application and was the first step from SAP to merge the two design modes (story and application) into one: The Optimized Story.

In this new Optimized Story, you can:

• Add scripting as in the Applications

• Add formatting options, such as tab strips, which enables more possibilities and flexibility in your report/dashboard design.

Having worked with the tab strip and formatting features for the past half year, we can look back on how these features took the SAC Story Design to the next level. Curious about the advantage of these new features? In this blog, we will show and explain to you what these features are and how they impact your daily work.

Story design what changed! – Tab strip

Before the release, you were limited to pages without the possibility to make subtabs which meant you would end-up with a long list of pages in the page list/bar menu with no possibility to group them.

With the introduction of the tab strip feature you now have the possibility to create 1 page with several tabs.

Tab strip configuration

An additional advantage of a tab strip is that you can define input controls which react on all tabs within the page, without having to add them as a story filter.

This will reduce the amount of input controls in your story, since you do not have to recreate the input controls on each tab. Also, if you use input controls in calculated measures there is a restriction that they can only be applied on one page where it resides, which meant you had to create multiple calculated measures & input controls per page for the same functionality. With the tab strip, you can bypass the page-structure to apply it on the tabs.

Working with your filters!

Within the Linked Analysis menu, you can change whether the interactions apply to all widgets on the page (so across Tabs in a tab strip), or on Selected Widgets.

For example, when you place an input control within a tab of the tab strip and you only want the widgets within that tab to respond to the filter, you can do this.

This also applies when you set linked analysis between widgets on different tabs of your tab strip.

Sizing your story!

When you are creating a page, you have the choice between a responsive and canvas page. A responsive page has the advantage that it scales (to a certain extent) automatically, depending on the size of the window. Downside is that the grid blocks are rectangles instead of squares which makes sizing of widgets less Flexible, and it makes your widgets snap to the grid.

With a canvas page, you have more flexibility in designing your report and placing/sizing your widgets. Because of this flexibility, designing a layout in canvas also takes a bit more time, to ensure widgets have the same size and the correct position, so they don't overlap when you resize the window of your browser. You have 3 options. Either you size (default) by pixels, in % or auto. We recommend using % in your size and position so resizing of the window will also resize your layout (to a certain extent). This option is in a way similar to the relative position which you can use in SAP Web Intelligence. In a previous blog post we also highlighted this feature when it was only available in Application design.

Conclusion

These two features have made the Story Design more flexible and gives more options to create the next-level dashboard. With the tab strip you can group your data and reduce the amount of (hidden) pages in your story and with the use of % for sizing and position you can make sure the report sizes well, with different screen sizes.

Looking ahead there are some nice updates coming in the Q4 release with regards to:

• Data analyzer – support of new chart types

• SAC Office adding – Live data connection

• Story design – Copy objects between stories (classic and optimized)!

• Story design – Copy story pages across stories (optimized only)

Would you like to know more about SAP Analytics Cloud or Reporting in general? Feel free to reach out to Sander Huisman.