SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office Release 2.7 and Road Map #ASUG Webcast Recap

[TammyPowlas]

This was an ASUG webcast earlier today



Source: SAP

As usual the legal disclaimer applies that anything in the future is subject to change. Please see the replay here.  Please join us Monday for BI: ASUG Analysis Influence Council Relaunch



Source: SAP

Value add compared to Bex Analyzer

Usability in general
PowerPoint integrations
Rich API for workbook development
Flexible end user features:
Table design: add new lines and Excel formulas as calculations
Add new restricted measures
Conditional formatting/filter by measure
Upload local data and combine with BW models
Native HANA access
BIP support, interop, Co-existence with EPM, BPC support etc….

Source: SAP

Features such as new lines, axis sharing to group cross tabs

Breaking Hierarchies



Source: SAP

Comments are new for BW/4HANA

See the SAP Help here 

BW/4HANA comments joined in OLAP engine; not just for performance but OLAP knows the right context

 



Source: SAP

This is an updated slide for deployment options, including BW/4HANA



Source: SAP

Coming this week, new version – just created for sake of SAP Analytics Cloud customers who only have SAP Analytics Cloud – the option to work on Excel



Source: SAP

This is a comparison for those with SAP Analysis Office vs the Edition for SAP Analytics Cloud



Source: SAP

Comments are in BW/4HANA FP8 only

New search is in BW/4HANA FP8 only

UX has 2 ribbon tabs and GetData enhancements



Source: SAP

 

Recent innovations are in 2.7 (should be GA soon)

 

Question and Answer (subset)

Question	Response
We noticed there is a restriction of 255 characters when using comments.	no restriction
For Comments, what does 'Reusable across queries' mean?	BI platform case, comments are bound with links to the workbook; - BW/4HANA - bound to infoprovider
Would you be able to share more about the report scheduling and distribution functionality in 2.7?  We need to schedule large sets of reports and distribute them to users email and/or shared locations on our network.  How easily can this be handled?	He is covering that later in the slides...
If the user adds a manual column in between 2 measures & then refreshes the workbook. Presently the custom column  gets vanished after REFRESH. So is this feature enabled. Most of the end users want this feature	Yes there is functionality "New Lines" to add a column between measure columns in the structure that will remain in the structure on refresh.
Is the Analysis plug-in available for Linux platforms?	please check the PAM for this - support.sap.com/PAM
Does this function work also for characteristics ?	Yes it does
When will the SBOP Anlalysis Office 2.7 be available for us to download	this week
Is a Connection from Analysis direct to BW without BI Platform still in the strategy. Previously it was said that only with BI platform development would be done.	You can connect directly using the SAP Gui to BW  or HANA as a direct connection
HANA view Hierarchy variable does not work properly in Analysis for Office 2.6 version. Any improvements in 2.7?	not that he is aware; if not working you may want to submit a support ticket
Where custom hierarchy gets stored?	they are stored in BW as a hierarchy; deleted when leave the session to avoid trash in backend
Adding Restricted measure, is this only available on BW4/HANA ?	Available on other versions of BW such as 750
So now it's still ok if we use the direct Connection with SAP Gui, no Problem with future roadmap?	That is what I use today myself
Can comments be added with a native HANA EDW scenario?	no
Is the  comments only applicable on BW4HANA ?. We are currently using BW 7.5 SP 11 on HANA	Comments are also available on the BI Platform
can u print out the comments w the report?	Native Excel option
Regarding the SAP FORMULA, is there still the issue that the formulas break #NV once you open a locally saved report (not connected to the BI Platform) with a different version of Excel ?	open an incident at SAP support at support.sap.com
which BOBI version is supported with AOffice2.7	he is covering that now - BI4.2 SP5
How about Office 365 integration ? Will there be a AO solution in the close future ?	use on-premise version with this license model; browser Excel online? Checking what this means; the API browser is not as rich as on-premise version.
According to our tests there is a restriction of 255 characters. Everything above is truncated.	could be dependent on BW version
Will logon/logoff button be foreseen at some point?	It is there now; go to Components / context menu
Is it planed to have the same functionalities as BW4/Hana for comment with BW on Hana?	no
can we customize the user interface?	yes - you can create custom ribbons; please read the the SAP help

What did we miss?  We had 57 questions during this one hour webcast.