[Last updated: 26th of April 2019, SAP Analytics Cloud Version 2019.8]

Creating a bookmark gives you quick and easy access to frequently used scenarios. Using this feature, you can save the state of input controls, prompts, charts, tables, and geo filters and revert to them when needed. SAP Analytics Cloud allows you to switch between multiple scenarios with ease by letting you create multiple bookmarks. This blog will describe how to implement the bookmark functionality in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Private and Global Bookmarks

Consider the story below as an example.

After you analyze the story and derive actionable insights, you may want to freeze the data to revisit the same view at a later point in time. You can save your selections by bookmarking the story and avoid repeating the steps again to get to that view. When you are done making the required selections in the input controls and are ready to save the view as a bookmark, click on the bookmark icon from the menu on the top and select ‘Bookmark Current State’.

Save the bookmark with the name of your choice. In this case, it is named as “PAR_VBI_OG_EHS_BM_HIGH”.

You can either create personal story bookmarks which are accessible only to you or share your story bookmarks with others by choosing ‘Global’ as the ‘Type’.

Select the option ‘Set as new default’ if you would like the current saved state to be loaded by default while opening the story next time. Click on ‘Save’.

SAP Analytics Cloud allows you to create multiple bookmarks for each story and switch between bookmarks when you are in ‘View’ mode. This will help reduce the time taken to repeat all the steps required to get to a view and also the need for multiple copies of the same story in order to analyze different scenarios.

Now in ‘View’ mode, click on the Bookmark icon to view the saved bookmarks. You can see them listed under ‘My Bookmarks’ for personal bookmarks, ‘Original Story’ and ‘Global Bookmarks’.

Bookmarks for Explorer Views

Bookmarking for Explorer Views works differently from that for Stories.

In your Story, select a chart and then enable Explore. On launching Explorer mode, click on ‘Add New View’. The new view can be customized with charts and filters, saved with a name and viewed later.

Deleting a component

When you delete a component in a bookmark view, the component gets removed from all the bookmarked views as well as the parent story upon saving the view. A warning message like the one seen below will be displayed. Similarly, when a component is deleted from the parent story, it impacts all the bookmarked views based on that story.

Mobile Support

SAC bookmarking functionality is supported on mobile devices. If bookmarks exist in the story, the user’s default bookmark opens up when opening the story. The name of the bookmark is visible in the Input Controls panel. One known limitation is that the default bookmark can be changed only in the browser.

The roadmap from SAP for SAP Analytics Cloud promises some exciting features and improvements to the bookmarking feature. We will keep updating this blog as and when new features are released.

Reach out to us here today if you are interested in evaluating if SAP Analytics Cloud is right for you.