SAP Analytics Cloud: New ‘Present’ mode Settings Impact on SAP's Planning Business Content

[Michael_Fox]

Background:

With the 2024-Q2 QRC release (2024.08) of SAP Analytics Cloud, the Present Mode will be changed significantly in order to close many of the functionality gaps caused by the sunset of Digital Boardroom.  These changes have been introduced already to fast track tenants with Wave 2024.07 causing significant deviations to the default behavior for SAP's Extended Planning and Analysis business content. In the screenshot below, you will see a standard Navigation/Filter pane displayed on the left, as well as a floating toolbar overlaid across the top-middle of the screen. This is now the default “present” view if no toolbar configurations have been made already.

This document details 3 options to clean-up this view.  The current recommendation is to choose Option 1.  Option 2 and Option 3 require more evaluation to determine their fit to our pre-existing business content packages.

Cleaning up the default ‘Present’ mode view:

Option 1: Change from ‘Present’ to ‘View’ mode

If a story is opened in ‘View’ mode instead of ‘Present’, it appears much closer to the style we have had before.

The main difference with this ‘View’ mode compared to ‘Present’ mode in prior releases is that we still see the dark blue shell bar of SAP Analytics Cloud across the top as well as the menus and toolbar below it.  Previously we were hiding these in ‘Present’ mode.  Despite that change, this will be the easiest and most familiar option at this time.

If adapting SAP Extended Planning and Analysis content to this option, you will need to change the DisplayMode parameter when referencing any links.  Links are typically found in the Overview stories, as well as the navigation menu of all of the other stories in our content packages.  In most cases, you will find a line of code in the “onInitialization”  script of the main page for each story that sets the default mode for links:

cfg_displayMode = ‘present’;

Replace ‘present’ with ‘view’ and save the story.  That’s all that is required.

cfg_displayMode = ‘view’;

This is a good time to also mention that with the 2024-Q2 release, we are updating several of the Extended Planning and Analysis business content packages to centralize the package-specific Navigation Menus we provide into Composites.  With such an update you would then only need to update the displayMode in two places:

1. The “onInitiatilization” script of the Overview story as detailed above
2. The Default Value of the ‘cfg_displayMode’ Script Variable found in the package-specific NavMenu composite:

Option 2: Configure the new ‘Present’ mode to match the prior style

In this option, we will make use of new story-level settings in order to hide various elements of the ‘Present’ mode and make it appear more familiar.

1. Open each story in ‘Edit’ mode, and use the wrench in the toolbar to navigate to ‘View Time Settings’ > ‘Toolbar’

2. Change the ‘Select mode’ to ‘Present’ in order to modify the relevant settings for ‘Present’ mode.

3. Select the ‘View toolbar’ drop-down and choose ‘Set’

4. Remove the ‘Navigation Panel’ button from the toolbar, by hovering over that button, and clicking the ‘x’ in the upper right corner of the button.

Your final settings should now appear like this:

5. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘Save’ your story.

You can now open the story in ‘Present’ mode for a more familiar maximized application experience.

When hovering at the top edge of the screen, the toolbar you just configured will appear:

You can pin the toolbar to the top if desired, or you can simply move the mouse away and it will be hidden again. It is also worth mentioning that the Filter pane accessible from this toolbar is only available as a Vertical Panel now in Present Mode.  It can no longer be pivoted from Vertical to Horizontal.  If you wish to disable this native Filter pane completely, you can remove the Filter icon from the toolbar using the same approach as we did in Step 4 above to remove the Navigation Panel.

Option 3: Leverage the new ‘Present’ mode navigation and filtering

Similar to the legacy Digital Boardroom capabilities, the new ‘Present’ mode allows for pages of multiple stories to be assembled into a presentation which can then easily be browsed from a simple navigation pane. There is also a filter pane that provides information about the filters applied to the current page open, as well as the ability to add additional filters.

Here is a sample screenshot of what this might look like:

The configuration of this option is beyond the scope of this article at the current time. 

Conclusion:

In this article, we discussed the introduction of the new ‘Present’ mode capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud 2024-Q2 release, and specifically the impacts on pre-existing Extended Planning & Analysis business content.  We reviewed 2 detailed options and potentially 1 additional option to adapt the business content to this new release.

We will continue to analyze the options and interactions with our business content and adapt as-needed to provide the optimal user experience.