Thanks Xavier... Hi Antoine, for me really the designing part of SAC is very weak compared to other tools. How…
Book review: Security for SAP Analytics Cloud – Authorizations and Provisioning
It’s been a while since I reviewed some SAP related books here at HackingSAP.com and what better way to pick this up again than with a book on SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) that was even written by my very own Interdobs colleague Martijn van Foeken!
Security for SAP Analytics Cloud – Authorizations and Provisioning is a so called SAP Press E-Bites. These are digital-only (PDF, ePub, online) books on specific topics and tasks, with a length of around 100 pages.
The configuration of your SAC platform is (hopefully) something you do only at the start of a new SAC implementation and – if properly done – take advantage of for years after. For authorizations this means that you design and apply a solid authorization setup and only need to extend this with additional folders and/or teams whenever this is necessary. That’s what this book will help you with.
Martijn walks you through the steps of managing users, teams, roles, folders and other SAC objects that users can create. He shows you how to do all this manually within the SAC platform itself, but also how to move the whole user management completely out of SAC by connecting the SAC tenant to a custom Identity Provider (IDP). Microsoft Azure is often used for this and is therefor also used as an example in the book. With such a setup we can for example let users login with their Microsoft credentials and let the system automatically generate a SAC account when a new user logs in for the first time. Martijn also describes how to assign users to teams and roles by using SAML attribute mapping. With this you can use security groups in your custom IDP to manage team and role memberships in SAC. The book ends with a chapter on automated (mass) user and team provisioning via a REST API.
So in conclusion, this E-Bite is a quick read on SAC authorizations and it will give you a good understanding of what is possible and how to apply the various options in a step-by-step manner. As this is a very fundamental topic for a successful implementation of SAC, but probably not something you work at on a daily base, this E-Bite is definitely something to check out if you want to get up to speed fast!
Security for SAP Analytics Cloud: Authorizations and Provisioning
Martijn van Foeken
98 pages, E-book formats: EPUB, MOBI, PDF, online
ISBN 978-1-4932-2254-4
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2022
It’s that time of the year again: Gartner just published its holy Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence (ABI) Platforms for 2022! Our beloved SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP’s offering in this area and is compared to tools as PowerBI (Microsoft), Tableau (SalesForce) and Qlik.
Status Quo?
When I look at the sections in the report for these four players I’m surprised how little has changed since the 2021 quadrant. I could basically just repeat most of the comments that I wrote in last year’s blog here.
Microsoft is still the top leader with PowerBI, Tableau is a strong number 2 and even Qlik is still regarded as a “leader”. Besides the (obvious) ability to deliver a proper technical solution, PowerBI and Tableau already have a very high adoption and with their extremely rich and active user communities it is very unlikely that they will loose this position any time soon. On that topic, SAP is still paying for trashing their (BOBJ) community years ago and has to build this back up from scratch. Fortunately, I do see that SAP is actually showing some very good progress on this and it is definitely going into the right direction again (I’m still not a fan of the community site in its current form though, but that’s another topic).
SAP Analytics Cloud Fast Track Release Notes 2022.2
As SAP decided to stop publicly sharing the SAP Analytics Cloud Fast Track release notes with Quarterly Release Cycle customers, I’ll just share them here on my blog for those of you who are interested on what’s coming up.
UPDATE: SAP reverted the decision and is sharing the release notes again! 🎉
SAP Analytics Cloud Version 2022.2 Release Notes
General
- It’s now possible to add additional hierarchies to the account dimension of your models. You can either model your hierarchies manually in SAP Analytics Cloud data modeling or directly import from your source system. This brings you not only more capabilities in data modeling but allows also for more flexibility in designing your planning and analytical assets, in Stories as well as in Analytics Designer.
Multiple account hierarchies are useful if you want to aggregate the values of your accounts differently according to your planning and analytical needs. You could, for instance, create dedicated hierarchies for specific accounting standards (for example, IFRS versus non-IFRS). Or you could define hierarchies that are only for specific reports (for example, OPEX versus Profit & Loss report) while others are used in planning processes to collect data.Planning-specific features, such as Validation Rules or Data Actions, are capable of consuming multiple account hierarchies and will benefit from this feature as well.
Stories
- You can now use SAP Analytics Cloud to save BW Query variants.
- You can now manually export stories to PDF format from Optimized View Mode. You have these export options:
- Insert Appendix
- Export All Pages OR Range
Mobile
- The Android App now supports proxy settings pushed through MDM tools.
SAP Analytics Cloud, add-in for Microsoft Office
- The SAP Analytics Cloud, add-in for Microsoft Office has been updated. For a list of new features, see the What’s New.
System Administration Notes
- With the 2022.2 release of SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud agent’s minimum version remains at 1.0.75, with the following exceptions:
- If you require data acquisition from SAP ERP / SQL Database, the minimum version is 1.0.99.
- If you require data acquisition from SAP Universe (UNX), the minimum version is 1.0.91.
- If you require data acquisition from SAP Business Warehouse (BW), the minimum version is 1.0.233.
- If you require data acquisition from an SAP HANA view, the minimum version is 1.0.235.
- If you require data acquisition from File Server, you need to upgrade to version 1.0.248.
- NoteAlthough it is not required, you can upgrade to the agent version 1.0.345, no matter what data acquisition type you use. Do this to take advantage of updates made to SAP Analytics Cloud agent.For more information, see System Requirements and Technical Prerequisites.
- Regarding supported features and required updates for the integration of SAP BW with SAP Analytics Cloud, refer to SAP Note 2541557 for further details.
- Regarding supported features and required updates for live universe access through SAP BusinessObjects Live Data Connect with SAP Analytics Cloud, refer to SAP Note 2771921 for further details.
SAP Analytics Cloud Fast Track Release Notes (2021.21 – 2022.1)
As SAP decided to stop publicly sharing the SAP Analytics Cloud Fast Track release notes with Quarterly Release Cycle customers, I’ll just share them on my blog for those of you who are interested on what’s coming up.
You can check your SAC version via System > About in the SAC menu bar. The current QRC version is 2021.20. So to be clear, as apparently there is still a lot of confusion about this, if you are on this QRC version the features mentioned below are not available on your SAC tenant until the next QRC release.
You can find the release calendar for all SAP Cloud products in SAP KBA 2888562. For 2022 there will be a QRC release in February (weekend 18-20), May (weekend 20-22), August (weekend 19-21) and November (11-13).
SAP Analytics Cloud Version 2022.1 Release Notes
Modeling
- For story users, support has been added to the new model for identifying missing currency conversion rates:
- There is improved conversion error handling for new models with currency conversion.
- Users can trigger a missing rate analysis with required parameters directly from an error pop-up in stories.
- Conversion errors in tables based on new models are now logged in the rate table’s conversion error log.
Planning
- In advanced formulas, you can now define the scope of a linked model, just like what you normally do for the default model, by using MODEL…ENDMODEL statement. In combination with the definition of the linked model scope, dimensions existing only in the linked model but not in the default model (missing dimensions) can be omitted in the definition of the LINK function.After the linked model scope is defined:
- You can use the LINK function to return a certain range of data from the linked model and redirect the calculation scope of the default model by using attributes of dimensions from the linked model in the DATA function.
- You can use dimensions from a linked model in the IF or FOREACH scope.
- We have extended the data entry experience of Mass Data Entry mode. All calculations that have been created via ‘add column’ and/or ‘add row’ and have been modeled using the formula bar are affected. While performing data entries in Mass Data Entry mode, all previously mentioned calculations will update accordingly within Mass Data Entry mode. This allows planners to see data changes even before data has been processed/submitted by Mass Data Entry Mode.
Video: SAP Analytics Cloud Story Translation [2021.23]
Did you know you could completely translate your SAC stories? You can adjust the language of the following:
- The SAP Analytics Cloud user interface itself.
- Data coming through a live connection, for example the dimension member values and the descriptions/names of measures and dimension.
- All “local” texts that you added or adjusted in the SAC story and its widgets.
Let’s have a look how this works!
