Search engines like Google or Bing give you the ability to find the answer for anything that’s available on the internet. But what do you do when you need an answer from your company’s data that you’re working with? A search engine to just answer questions about your data? That’s exactly what SAP Analytics Cloud is offering you with Search to Insight!

How to access Search to Insight?

Until the version 2019.10 of SAP Analytics Cloud, Search to Insight was included within the actual search option of the tool.

Now, the Search to Insight option has been separately given to the users with the “Bulb” icon as shown in the screenshot below.

Apart from the icon, SAP has also positioned this feature in the best possible way by placing it right on the home screen of SAP Analytics Cloud. The moment you log on to SAP Analytics Cloud, you have this welcome message along with a Search bar that intimidates you to ask a question.

We do love asking questions. And when you have humungous datasets in and around your plates, the probability of you having a question is even higher.

Your data is indexed

The one primary criterion for any of your models to be under the radar of the Search to Insight feature is for it to be indexed.

Indexing – The process where the metadata of the models within the Cloud system gets indexed to be identified by the machine learning process of SAP Analytics Cloud.

The imported models are indexed the moment they are brought into the system. Though live models are not indexed when they are consumed, a few live models like the ones from SAP HANA, SAP BW, and SAP S/4 HANA can be manually indexed after being brought into the system.

Once you click on the “Ask a question” bar at the home page, you will be presented with the options as shown below.

You can perform Search to Insight either by choosing a model or by checking out for models suggested by SAP Analytics Cloud.

Choose a model

You can choose any model available on the system. When you choose a specific model, the fields available in that model pop up at the bottom of your screen.

You can type in a question about the data that is available in the model or simply click on these available measures and dimensions to gain insights.

Show suggested models

If you are not familiar with the name of the model, you can ask the SAP Analytics Cloud system to show a list of suggested models based on your activity history on the system (mostly used report, recently developed story, etc.,) by clicking on the Show Suggested Models button.

These suggested models keep changing. For instance, when you are clicking on the Search to Insight icon when you are viewing a Story, the suggested models will be based on the data in the Story.

And when you click on any one of the suggested models, the list of fields available on the models, both measures and dimensions come up on the screen.

Type in your query

You can also randomly start typing in your question directly into the Search to Insight bar and the various fields available across different data models will get listed.

This also helps you to choose the right data model for the answers that you need.

The Search to Insight for rescue

Another critical scenario where Search to Insight might be of a hefty value is when you’re into an application but you want to look out for a minor detail in the data which is not available in that Story / Analytic Application.

You can click on the Search to Insight icon anytime and you’ll be brought to the screen where you can quickly find the answers to your questions and get back to the Story / Analytic Application.

According to SAP roadmap, Search to Insight may be available for the entire spectrum of live data sources in the future. Maybe even voice-enabled search to insight would be brought into the Cloud system which doesn’t seem to be too far from where we are today.

To know about the Analytic Applications of SAP Analytics Cloud, please check out our blog series here.