What's New with Application Design in SAP Analytics Cloud #ASUG Webcast Recap

[TammyPowlas]

 

This was an ASUG webcast today given by SAP's Jie Deng.  Be sure to register for more upcoming webcasts here.

Anything in the future is subject to change; legal disclaimer applies



Source: SAP



Source: SAP

Today you can use SAP Analytics Cloud to build stories

New capability Application Design - able to build enterprise dashboards, sophisticated planning/predictive application

Integrated into SAP Analytics Cloud platform; leveraging artifacts, data sources such as live/imported connections, leveraging visualization, planning functionality and integrate predictive applications into applications. Leverage the existing artifacts provided

Developing custom widgets, scripting capabilities, providing additional functionalities for developer/designer to create complex enterprise dashboards

Consume applications in Digital Boardroom, Mobile, Analytics Hub

Targeting enterprise, professional dashboards

Use scripting capabilities to build enterprise dashboards and sophisticated analytical applications



Source: SAP

What is an application? If using SAC to build story

Story is targeted for self-service

Application is an enterprise aspect

Analytical application is a centrally designed application

An application - need scripting capability to build application and customer specific scenarios

Provide widgets, visual component such as filter line, drop down box, scripting capabilities for application design

Coding defines interaction between widgets, pages, applications and from application to story

Application Design has a dedicated development environment

Enterprise aspect, standardization aspect, create reusable part (same application header/footer)



Source: SAP

Picture to see difference between story and application

Story - walk bridge, guided way, not technical equipment, no specific IT knowledge, self service

Application: walk in glaciers with special equipment - professional equipment, body conditions and technical skills

Need IT knowledge, scripting capabilities, no guided way (or bridge) - application doesn't have guides ways, full flexibility to do what you want.



Source: SAP

Map to SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud)

Story is for self service use cases; covers standard scenarios

For applications - filter products in a group, key figure in a group, not use standard input control but use drop down, list boxes

You can write your own filter logic using scripting capabilities

2 different artifacts but share tables, charts, same user experience

End user should not notice which artifact they are consuming



Source: SAP

Targeting enterprise dashboard scenario, application developers create application and end users consume

Different category of capabilities - typical dashboard capabilities, build interactive enterprise dashboards, providing widgets, data driven widgets, R widget, will provide a dynamic layout

Define interactions between table and chart and widgets using scripting capabilities

Reuse code in different places - create script objects for onclick on table or chart



Source: SAP

Another category is extensions to allow developers to extend applications with visualizations

Can use R widgets to do this; R coding from internet and put them in design time for R widget; with app design you have scripting for the R widget

Later will provide composites - a reusable object

Will provide custom widgets - developer can use interfaces to create visualizations

Does not mean this is all provided today



Source: SAP

With app design, cover closed-loop scenarios, cover planning/predictive and then using app design scripting to do simulations, create an action (create purchase order using OData calls to go to S/4HANA system)



Source: SAP

Another category - navigation and integration

Navigation - explorer, Smart features, able to integrate with analytical applications

Provide API to use image/button to use Explorer - jump to explorer, smart grouping

Generate story based on result of table

Jump from analytical application and story automatically created for you

Embed aspect - embed into any other business applications - SuccessFactors, Concur

Communicate to other web pages

Scripting API's available too



Source: SAP

Enterprise readiness - translation, bookmark, composite, export, shared data source object, performance - deliver lazy loading, parallel execution

where at today

Source: SAP

In Beta today, GA is planned Q2



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

This was featured in the demo



Source: SAP

Some POC's (proofs of concept) were shown in the demos



Source: SAP

Some POC's (proofs of concept) were shown in the demos



Source: SAP

Q1 - planning and predictive support with smart insights, discovery, embedding scenario, jump to explorer with scripting

Q2 - GA release, provide additional predictive scripting support; planning scripting access for toolbar, OData functional calls, container widget, create story from widget (in demo), geomap/blending catchup, new API's

After GA, future direction includes mobile support, standard analysis for BW data (BEx WAD template, Lumira Designer Generic Analysis template), digital boardroom capabiltiies.

 

Please note that we had several open questions - I sent them to Jie and will update when I have them.  Thank you to Jie Deng and our SAP Point of Contact Ingo Hilgefort.

 

You can watch the replay with demos here.

Question and Answer

Question about functionality gap between stories and applications - will it be reduced/removed as stories give more functionalities as of now?

 

Yes, we will close the function gap between stories and apps over the time. Our goal is to have feature parity between stories and apps

 

how long do you believe it will take until SAC will match scripting capabilities of Lumira Designer?

 

One of the goal for SAC Application Design is to cover the business scenarios that Lumira Designer is covering today.  So the goal is not to build all APIs that Lumira Designer has today into SAC. We don’t compare these 2 products on the level of API.

 

How to control performance in Application design. Should we be "afraid" of slower performance than with SAC dashboards?

No reason for being afraid of slower performance than SAC dashboards/stories. Stories and Applications are leveraging the same SAC Infrastructure and should have comparable performance.  For application we are working on performance features that you can have the control/flexibility of where and when the time is being spent for analytical applications.

 

Is application designer working with models based on live connection? What kind of licensing is needed?

Yes, Application Design supports all the connections that SAC is supporting. So live connection /BW connection is supported as well.

The same license as story.

 

Will there be a way to reuse Lumira Designer Applications in SAC Application Design? So perhaps a Tool that transforms the Lumira Application to the SAC Application

No, the 2 product has totally different technology,  its not planned to provide automatic conversion between SAP Lumira Designer and SAC Application Design.

 

Is BW live connection avialable?

Yes, we support BW live connection as SAC is supporting today.

 

Are there any plans to do  cell-level formatting of table widget with scripting?

If you want to do that via scripting, can you please let me know the exact use case?

 

Does the Live query feature works on Universe data source utilizing HANA database?

The same as what SAC is supporting regarding of DataSource

 

As SAC designer and Lumira Designer may be using the same technical framework like Javascript can the code lines be exported from Lumira designer and imported from SAC app designer .. This is going to help our adoption and other customer who have highly invested in Lumira designer

SAC Application Design is using a subset of JavaScript, very similar to Lumira Designer. But with SAC Application Design, user has more flexibility to use the java script as the language itself. That means SAC App Design allows a different subset of JavaScript comparing to Lumira Designer.  In addition, the widgets/components are different from SAC Application Design and Lumira Designer. So its not possible to directly reuse these scripting’s from Lumira Designer into SAC Application Design.

 

How does Authorization work with embedding the Application in e.g. a Webpage?              especially with a liva Data connection to SAP HANA

In general there is no difference when it comes to authentication for stand-alone app or embedding app. Basically the parent container has no influence to the imbedding container. However, there could be cases where the logon the user did in the parent container results in a logon happening automatically inside the analytical application (or to the underlying live HANA or S/4 connection), for example, due to some authentication cookies being set.

 

what is the expected training path

We are going to deliver tutorials and samples to help customer to getting start with application design.