Optimized Story Experience Improvements

Story scope linked analysis (shown as story filter) enabled for charts and geographical visualizations:

• New user interface token for story linked analysis filter.

  When the same dimension story filter is used, story linked analysis filter overrides it.

Additional new behaviors:

• Linked Analysis will no longer create a local filter on the visualization.

• Visualizations shows linked analysis filter when page/specified scope linked analysis is used.

• When the local filter resets, the associated linked analysis filter gets deleted. Also, when the linked analysis filter is deleted, the associated local filter gets reset.

• When the designer interacts with the local filter in the builder panel, the associated linked analysis filter gets deleted.

• When multiple widgets act as driver widgets and linked analysis is applied to the same dimension, it merges the linked analysis filter for the driven widget.

There are performance improvements when filtering across models using links on matching hierarchies:

• Optimized stories will automatically treat flat presentation as a matching hierarchy between two parent-child hierarchy links, which improves the performance of direct filters.

• The default link is now automatically set to flat presentation, which enables server-side filtering across models and improves the performance of indirect filters (for models that support server-side filtering across model).

In addition, there's a UI enhancement for displaying information in the tooltip, including the ability to use a dropdown menu to specify the default link.

There are behavior improvements when using user-managed time dimensions in optimized stories:

IF and ResultLookup Functions:

• IF and ResultLookup functions are supported for non-standard time periods in story formulas.

• IF and ResultLookup functions will work if a member is unique below a single parent or present under multiple parents.

Difference From Calculation:

• The Difference From calculation is supported in optimized stories.

• You can apply a variance for hierarchies from a user-managed time dimension that contains the level Other.

Date Range Restrictions:

• Hierarchies that include non-standard user-managed time dimensions (that use the semantic type Other) are supported in optimized stories.

• You won't be able to use or edit the custom current date if the hierarchy is changed.

• For charts that have a user-managed time dimension with flat hierarchy presentation:

  Adding a local time range filter applies the filter and changes the dimension to use the same hierarchy presentation as the range filter that is selected.

• The term Period is changed to Time Interval.

• The option Range up to Current Time Interval is disabled in the range dialog when the finest granularity level is selected.

Filtering Across Models:

• Linking user-managed time attributes of the same type between user-managed time dimensions is now supported.

• Linking user-managed time attributes of the same type between system-managed time dimensions with week pattern enabled is now supported.

• When linking on user-managed time attributes, the following option is enabled by default: Only use key attribute to propagate unlinked dimension or attribute filters.

• Attempt to optimize filter propagation: the option is enabled by default.

Exporting to PDF has the following usability and accessibility improvements:

• The Export to PDF dialog is fully accessible and now supports keyboard navigation.

Previously, when you renamed a measure or dimension, the new names weren't used in the exports to CSV (scope All).

Now, when you rename a measure or dimension, the new names will be used in exports to CSV (scope All).

When updating, creating, or deleting a bookmark, there is an improvement to the user interface of the dialog.

In addition, the dialog now supports theme preferences, and it is also fully accessibility through keyboard navigation.

To see the filters that aren't displayed on the horizontal filter bar, select See More Filters.

• All the extra filters appear in a dropdown menu.

• If there are more filters than can be displayed in the visible area of the dropdown menu, a scroll bar allows you to navigate through the whole list of filters.

A visual update to story filters and collapsed input controls now makes the dropdown easier to find.

• The dropdown menu has been expanded for better readability and higher discoverability.

In hierarchies, children are loaded on demand and inactive members are hidden.

• Complex hierarchies (multiple levels deep) now load faster, as children are loaded on demand when the parent node is expanded.

• Hierarchy members that would result in no data, because other story or page filters were applied, are now hidden by default.

• Provides better discoverability of the active members. Inactive members can still be loaded on demand.

Dynamic scrolling and sticky parent node in hierarchies

• Hierarchical input controls now automatically shift left and right when a viewer navigates through the input control. The corresponding parent node of a hierarchy will be displayed at the top.

• Improves overall readability and navigation as we maximize the displayed members under the corresponding parent node and provide a quick and easy way to collapse hierarchy nodes.

The overall accuracy of filtering across models is improved:

• Indirect time filters function like direct time filters in the way that they find a match on a secondary model. This behavior ensures higher accuracy of data when fiscal time is mapped directly to calendar time.

  Indirect multi-dimension links between level-based hierarchies and non level-based hierarchies increase the number of links, resulting in more accurate matches.

  Direct filters that are linked on Description are excluded, which improves generation of target filters and accuracy of data.

  The Exclude descendants setting is now on by default when creating new dimension links. This configuration is recommended as it improves performance and accuracy of data.

BW Link Remapping:

• To ensure that it reflects the actual state of the model in all cases, optimized view mode will check for an active hierarchy in the model before mapping to a secondary model.

BW Time Links:

• BW Time Links are improved for more accurate matches.

Single Select Page Filter will not show All as default:

• Story designers can choose to show All using the Show/Hide settings.

Story viewers can't delete the custom current date: this prevents them from accidentally resetting dynamic time filters to the system date.

When you have access to only one member out of multiple members in the hierarchy and you select that one member, the input control selects only that child member instead of the parent member.

Data access language for story, page, and local filters is now supported.

• If the story is viewed with a different data access language than the one saved with the story, the user will see the data in their current data access language.

• For example, if the story was saved with English as a data access language but the language was changed to French (Français), the filters will show in Français rather than English.

To use this feature, the following option must be enabled in the System Administration configuration settings: Refresh member description for filters.

Changing Hierarchy using a variable: The drill is removed, and the filter is preserved with its token. However, a warning will be displayed to indicate that the filter might conflict with the new hierarchy.

Changing Hierarchy using a hierarchy dialog (Flat or Hierarchy): The drill and filter are removed.

Changing Hierarchy to Flat using a variable: The drill is removed, and the filter is preserved.

Hierarchical input controls will not apply the default anymore. However, the configuration from the input controls is still applied.

BW Dynamic Filter tokens are now selectable, which means that items can be deselected from the token.

When the exit variable is reset the filter is overwritten.

Opening the variable dialog will now show the exit value. The old behavior can be restored by disabling exits on the local widget.

When the hierarchy variable is submitted, page filters and story filters remain on the old hierarchy.

There will be a warning on input Controls to make user aware of the fact that the filter is NOT on the current hierarchy.

Dependent on BW-InA Patch

• With the BW-InA Patch: the migration to Optimized View Mode is fast as we only fetch the selected nodes and their ancestors.

• Without the BW-InA Patch: the migration to Optimized View Mode will be slow as the entire hierarchy needs to be fetched.

The linkedNode appears in multiple places, but you can't select or unselect it. (The rest of the nodes can be selected or unselected).

 The linkedNode only appears on the first expanded parent.

Expanded dimensions:

• When the dimension is expanded, applying a rank will now flatten the list while preserving the rank that is applied.

Version:

• The version dropdown list is hidden when Version (Category) is not included in the Color section.

Variance is grouped under Applied to Chart in the Context Menu.

When Time is the outer-most dimension, auto-limits are applied to the chart and a descending order is applied on the Time dimension.

In Optimized View Mode, because the inner dimension ordering isn't changed, there may be a difference between the visualization that is displayed in Edit Mode versus Optimized View Mode.

You can group or ungroup color dimensions from other dimensions:

• Ungrouping the color dimension from other dimensions will move the color dimensions to the columns axis, which will improve the color legend sorting and allow color dimension ranking to ignore the outer dimension grouping.

• Grouping the color dimension with other dimensions will move the color dimension back to the row axis, where the sorting of color legend reflects the data point sort order. The color dimension ranking will be applied per outer dimension grouping.

You can rank your charts on multiple dimensions.

• Rank All Dimensions Individually: Allows the user to apply the same rank (Top/Bottom N) across all dimensions individually.

• Rank per Dimension Separately: Allows the user to apply a different rank (Top/Bottom N) per dimension.

Rank and Sort:

• Sorting on measures is now preserved when removing a rank on a dimension.

• Sort on a dimension is now preserved when adding additional dimensions to a visualization that has a rank applied.

BW Ranking Behavior with Multiple Dimensions

• The ranking behavior for BW is now aligned with Live HANA where ranking with multiple dimensions returns the Top / Bottom N results across the dataset.

BW: Drilling with Filters

Whenever a filter is added or updated after a drill, the drill is removed.

BW: Chart Drilling on REST Node

When drilling on a REST node, the result set contains the REST node and its children. The chart only displays the children because we've filtered out the REST node.

There are multiple improvements to the minimum drill state, including the following.

Booked Data in Variance Waterfall Charts

• Displaying booked data results in no empty gaps between nodes.

• Delta only exists for booked nodes that have the delta beginning with the fist booked root node.

Waterfall Chart with Zero Suppression

• For zero suppression on rows, when there is no visible combination left between outer dimension and inner dimension, the outer dimension members are hidden.

Granularity Option

• The granularity option is merged into the drill workflow and is added to the context menu.

Drill Menu

• The drill menu is hidden when the time dimension is a non-hierarchical dimension.

Sorting behavior may change depending on what data is included in the sort.

Measure sort: measure sorting uses the data intersections as the sort type, but the sort is disabled when there are two dimensions.

Dimension sort: break grouping is always disabled when using dimension sorting.

Unbooked data: the heat map will respect the sort that is applied even though unbooked data (nulls) is present.

Version in auto-generated titles:

• The version will be removed from auto-generated titles (for example, “for Actuals” is removed).

Version in chart details:

• The version filter will be displayed the same as other widget level filters, except that it cannot be deleted.

Filtering on all data points using interaction:

• When attempting to exclude all data points in a chart, the exclude button is disabled and shows a helper tooltip.

Version (Category) Dropdown Menu

• Within the Rank (Top N Options) menu, the Version (Category) dropdown menu will no longer be visible unless Version (Category) is within the color binding of the visualization.

Auto-generated titles in a chart will no longer display the Version (Category). This change is because IBCS no longer requires the versions to be shown in the latest specification.

• Non-optimized story: “{Measure} per {Dimensions} for {Version}”

• Optimized story: “{Measure} per {Dimensions}”

The Optimized Story Experience now follows IBCS formatting for negative percentages with parentheses:

• IBCS formatting places the number and percentage sign on the inside of the parentheses with no spaces in between.

• For example, the number -21% displayed with parentheses in the non-optimized version would have been displayed as (21) %, (21)%, or (21%) but they are now all displayed as (21%).

When a chart has a measure, a dimension, and a separate color dimension, applying a sort on the measure (ascending or descending) enables the Break Grouping option. This is because the color dimension is now included within the sort.

Default sorting rules are respected in Charts:

• Charts will respect the SAP BW default sorting rules: this behavior aligns with the existing behavior in tables.

Improved handling of invalid hierarchies:

• An invalid hierarchy cannot be selected in the hierarchy menu and filter member selector.

• An error is shown when a hierarchy is detected to be invalid.

• Improves consistency in the visualization and actual hierarchy in use

Tooltip and Data Point Interactions

• The actions are consolidated into a single menu that is shown based on the interaction with the data point.

• Tooltip will be shown closer to the position of the mouse, leading to easier access, a cleaner look, and better readability.

• Additional actions are still available via the right-click context menu.

Dimension Tooltip

The measures listed in the tooltip dimension will be the measures associated to the data point that is clicked / hovered on. If there is a color measure, it will be included.

There is a UI enhancement that allows you to apply multiple account hierarchies (MAH) per chart:

• You can define the account hierarchy from a new dropdown menu on the builder panel, which allows you to easily apply various hierarchies into a chart.

• There is improved error handling through enhanced error validation – if you switch the hierarchy to another hierarchy, any member that is unassociated with the newly selected hierarchy will appear in an error state.

• You can use the undo/redo function with the account hierarchies.

Improved error handling in Charts:

• Charts will show InA warnings/errors from the back-end (server) that are non-fatal; this is similar to errors that are shown in tables.

• An icon for warnings/errors will be shown in the subtitle of the Charts.

• On click of the icon, users can see more details about the warnings/errors from the Applied to Chart menu.

When a data model is changed (for example, removing a dimension), charts will show the following behavior or messages. This applies to any public, live, or embedded models.

• The chart query tries to recover based on the last persisted or cached data query.

• The chart shows an error when a dimension is removed from the model, and the error disappears when the dimension is added back to the model.

• When the chart contains a missing dimension, a message banner is shown in the Builder panel. The message warns you to fix the missing dimension issue before performing further actions on the chart.

Existing charts in stories won't include versions filters in the visualization definition or query in the following circumstances:

• Charts were created prior to version mapping being defined in the model.

• You add version mapping to the model, save it, and then re-open the story.

In the optimized story experience, a ghost chart is displayed with the following warning message:

• You must add the version to the dimension bindings or as a single value filter.

The Optimized Presentation table is the only table type supported for optimized story experience.

• Optimized Presentation table setting is on by default for newly created stories.

  This option provides faster loading of in-cell charts and thresholds, consistent row height, and smooth scrolling.

Within a table, the children of a hierarchy will be loaded on demand.

The chart Builder panel has been redesigned to improve the design experience. These improvements include:

• Removal of the Chart category for better discoverability

• New entry points for the Available Objects panel and Chart Add-ons.

For more information, see Chart Builder Panel in Optimized Design Experience.

Maintain Alignment with Chart Builder Panel

• The Geo Builder panel (geo map) has been redesigned to stay aligned with the design experience of the Chart Builder panel.

Location Clustering

• When creating a Geo Map, Location Clustering automatically turns off in the Builder panel depending on the number of data points.

• If the number of data points is less than the clustering threshold (5000 is the default), location clustering will automatically be turned off.

• Users can manually enable location clustering: it will display a Performance Optimization Tip if the number of data points is less than the clustering threshold.

When no widgets are selected on the page, instead of seeing a single line of text at the top of an empty Builder panel, you now see a placeholder image with the text below it.

The Available Objects panel allows Story Designers to see all measures, calculations, and dimensions. They can easily add objects to the Builder panel using drag-and-drop or the quick action menu.

For more information, see Available Objects Panel in Optimized Design Experience.

You can manage custom groups for a dimension in Charts and Geo:

• For dimensions that have grouping options, the more action icon (…) will now have a submenu option called Manage Custom Groups.

• Manage Custom Groups allows you to create, edit, or delete a custom grouping.

A new custom group that is created from this submenu will not automatically be applied to the chart.

The following actions can't be used in the classic design experience; they are only available in the optimized design experience.

• New Chart Palettes and Color Swatches are added into the Color Picker to stay aligned with Fiori Horizon color guidelines.

• Customization in the Styling panel overrides Story Preferences, except for fonts and color palettes.

  • Fonts: if there is a user-defined font color or font family for the visualization, updates from Story Preferences for those options will be ignored by the visualization.

    If there is no user-defined font color or font family for the visualization, the updates from Story Preferences for those options will be applied.

  • Color palettes: the last update that was applied - whether from Story Preferences or the Builder panel - is used.

• The choice to apply story preferences to "All" or to new pages/lanes/tiles is removed; this behavior aligns with Theme Preferences.

• Because the chart types can have different colors for their default axis lines, the default axis line color in Story Preferences is now transparent, or no color.

• When Axis Color or the widget background/border is updated in the Styling panel for a chart, those changes override the story preferences settings; subsequent story preference default changes will not change those properties.

• With an optimized story, users can apply either a classic template or an optimized template.

• Users can also save an optimized story into an optimized template.

• There are new placeholder widgets.

• Story preferences in optimized design experience can also be used with templates/layouts.

• Templates created in the classic experience will automatically migrate to the optimized experience to create a seamless transition for users.

With an integrated story and analytic application module, we now support creating new analytic applications with the Optimized Design Experience option. (This option redirects you to the Stories page.)

Also, the Stories landing page has been enhanced to include the following options:

• Stories

• Bookmarks List

• Custom Widgets (only visible for story developers)

Integrating Stories and Analytic Applications is the next step in the Optimized Story Experience process, and provides the following benefits:

• Convert to Optimized Design Experience now converts classic stories as well as analytic applications.

• Stories that are already enabled for the Optimized Design Experience (ODE) are automatically converted to the new ODE that is part of the optimized story experience.

• Stories/Applications that are already enabled for Optimized View Mode (OVM) can be directly opened in the new OVM that is part of the optimized story experience.

Reference Line - New aggregation types

Custom Sort

With the detection of Filter by Range or Filtering Across Models, the visible section for Custom Sort will be ignored to prevent data incorrectness.

Legends Visibility

We've improved the visibility of the legend by allowing users to explicitly Show or Hide the Legend using the Show/Hide options.

Chart Title, Subtitle, and Footer Styling

Chart Text Styling options are unified with the Text Widget. With this, there are more Styling Options available such as text alignment.

For the footer, the right-click option will now show the Add Dynamic Text option.

Hierarchy & Drilling Appearance

The first hierarchy dimension listed in the dropdown will be chosen as default for non-BW models.

For BW models, the hierarchy must be set in the metadata cube and must not be mandatory for the dimension. For other BW models, the dimension will be shown flat.

In addition, to avoid loading all hierarchies at the same time, the hierarchy icon may appear after the dimension is selected.

For dimensions that contain no hierarchies, only the Flat Presentation option will be available in the Set Hierarchy drop-down.

Token Actions and Menu Button Visibility

The Display As option will now apply to the entire dimension. This behavior means that if the dimension is switched from hierarchical to flat, then the Display As option that is set won't change.

Tooltip Measures + Dimensions Entities Limit

There is no longer a limit to the number of entities that can be added to the Tooltip Measure or Dimension section.

Deletion Handling for Measure and Dimension Input Controls

The deletion of a Measure or Dimension Input Control is now aligned with Calculation Input Controls. This means that any Chart that consumes the respective input control will display an error state.

When creating a new version filter or editing an existing version filter, the dialog that appears always allows multiple selections.

• The All Members option will also appear, allowing the user to create a dynamic local version filter.

• The new version filter will use the same validation conditions that apply to deleting version filters.

Version Filter Deletion

Users now have an option to delete the default version filter in charts. Upon deletion, one of the following version conditions should be satisfied to see the visualization:

• The version dimension is added to the chart as a binding.

• The secondary structure is restricted to a single version.

  For example, in classic account model and model with multiple measures, the cross calculation is restricted on a version. However, in the model with multiple accounts, measure is restricted on a version.

• There is an external filter restricting on a single valued version:

  • Story/Page Filter

  • Filtering Across Models

  • Linked Analysis

If none of the conditions apply, then an error state is presented to the user.

Chart Builder Panel Terminology Alignment

With the support of planning-enabled models in the optimized design experience, the chart builder panel terminology has been updated to reflect more accurate and consistent terminology with the Modeler.

The primary improvements are:

• All account models (Classic Account Model, Model with Multiple Account) now show Accounts as the primary option for numeric values.

  All models with measures (Model with Multiple Measures, Acquired Analytic or Live Model, Classic Measure Model) will continue to show Measure as the primary option for numeric values.

Hover tooltips in view mode will also reflect this terminology change.

Chart details that were displayed in the subtitles are now displayed in the Applied to Chart dropdown menu:

• Show/hide options for individual chart detail items are removed (model, currency, drill, filter, rank, variance details, bin token, null token, prompts, explorer view, and BW conditions).

• The options to show/hide warnings or errors on the chart are now in the subtitle submenu. (For example, Show/Hide  Subtitle  Errors.

When you reset the font for a Numeric Point Chart in the Styling Panel, and there is only one modified element left, the chart is put back into a dynamic font size state.

The size of the selection token beside the description remains consistent with the size of the text with restyle.

New improvements for chart local filter include:

• Like story and page filter, designers will be able to select all members in the chart local filter. The filter selection is dynamic: this behavior means that if any new member is added to the flat dimension or version, it will automatically be included as a part of the applied local filter.

  Direct filtering of data points on the chart will override the dynamic local filter created in the builder panel.

Bookmarked information is stored and saved based on User Interaction with the story.

Example: A story designer creates a story with three story filter: A, B, C.

• A story viewer updates story filter A and creates a bookmark.

• The story designer updates the story and removes story filters A and B.

The next time the story viewer opens the saved bookmark, the bookmark is updated based on the following:

• Story Filter A: Appears in the bookmark as the viewer had interacted with it to narrow down the search results when creating the original bookmark.

• Story Filter B is removed from the bookmark, as it was interacted with by the story viewer and removed by the story designer.

  Had the story viewer made changes to this story filter, it would not have been removed from the bookmark, like filter A.

• Story Filter C appears in the bookmark.

  Even though the viewer had not interacted with it, no changes were made by the designer that impacted story filter C.

There are several behavior changes for blended visualizations that use Blended Calculations and Thresholds.

• There is now a warning for data inaccuracies when Blended Calculations are used in Linked Analysis while Filtering Across Models.

• In the Classic Design Experience, required dimensions that are linked dimensions are not available for out-of-context blends.

  In the Optimized Story Experience, required dimensions that are linked dimensions are avaiable for out-of-context blends.

• In the Classic Design Experience, adding a Blended Calculation to a non-blended chart will automatically add all the required data models and automatically blend the chart.

  In the Optimized Story Experience, adding a Blended Calculation to a non-blended chart will no longer automatically blend the chart.