A new Design Experience for SAP Analytics Cloud [Part 2]

[josef_georg_hampp]

Introduction

This blogpost series is about the new design of the SAP Analytics Cloud. The user experience of SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud has been unified to simplify how you interact with our data and analytics solutions, increase your productivity, and provide a solid platform that supports you on your data journey.

This blog is a sneak peak at the new design. It will be generally available for all SAP Analytics Cloud customers in August 2021.

The initial improvements to SAP Analytics Cloud are focused on three main parts: a new side navigation, a unified top shell bar, and enhancements to how you interact with the different data, analytics, and administration applications and tools for your productive work:

This blogpost is about the new side navigation. But don’t forget to visit all the posts in the series.

• Part 1


• Part 3

Unified Shell Bar

The shell bar is the uppermost horizontal section of all products in our platform, displaying breadcrumb navigation and actions relating to the active screen. It also contains universal features including search, notifications, discussions, help, user profile settings, and the product switch. With the revamped shell bar, we wanted to ensure a consistent experience across our products, and have a clear and easy-to-use breadcrumb navigation to orient you no matter where you are.

Unique URLs allow for easy bookmarking and also let you open individual tabs or file instances directly.

Let's take a look at the different options in the shell bar.

 

1 - Back Button [New]

Use to navigate to the last screen you were in. Acts like a browser button for chro­nological navigation to previous screens.

2a - Application or Tool Name [New]

First part of the new breadcrumb.
The name and icon associated with every application or tool is displayed promi­nently in the shell bar. This matches the side navigation and ensures you always know where you are when working on your data, content, or configurations.

2b - File Name and Folder Path [New]

Second part of the new breadcrumb.
The name of the file you are working on is displayed in the new shell bar. Click anywhere in the name to bring up file details, including the description of the file, and the folder path. Click any folder in the breadcrumb to jump directly to that location in the Files area.

3a and 3b - File Actions [New]

Different file actions can appear on the shell bar and they are dependent on the file that the user is in. In this example, there are two file actions.
The Actions menu (3a) provides shortcuts to create something new based on the currently opened file. The Close button (3b) closes the current open file and re­ turns you to the appropriate start page. Additional actions will appear for different file types, such as marking the current file as a favorite.

4 - Search

Search for content across the whole product such as stories, analytic applica­tions, datasets, models, folder names, and Digital Boardroom presentations.

5 - Search to Insight

Ask questions about your data and immediately see your answers as visualiza­tions. These visualizations can always be added to your story.

6 - Notifications

Open your notifications, where you can see system messages informing you when files have been shared with you, comments added to your story, when you've been added to a discussion, calendar tasks and processes, and other administra­tive reminders.

7 - Collaboration

Opens the Discussion panel where you can send messages and collaborate with other users.

8 - Help

Opens the Help Center where you can find contextual help articles to help answer your questions, and links to videos and additional learning resources.

9 - Profile

Change your user profile preferences (such as language and date-time settings), customize your Home screen appearance, request additional roles, and sign out of the product.

10 - Product Switch

If you have multiple products, the Product Switch lets you quickly navigate be­tween your SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and SAP Analytics Hub tenants.

Conclusion

As mentioned in the introduction, this is the first of several blogs in my series on the new design of the SAP Analytics Cloud. All information from this blog and further improvements can be found in the IT Handbook. To get an overview of all SAP Analytics Cloud innovations, it is best to use the Roadmap Explorer. As an interactive tool, you can view all new features there.