Create a New Story (Optimized Story Experience)

SAP Analytics Cloud stories combine your data with visual elements that help you to describe and analyze your data.

Context

A story is a document that uses charts, visualizations, images, and other objects to describe and analyze data. You can share your stories with other users and grant permissions for these stories. When you share your stories, users with view permissions can analyze the data by navigating within the stories.

Learning Tutorial - Basic Story

Click through the interactive tutorial illustrating how to create a story in the optimize story experience in step-by-step instructions (4:00 min); the tutorial is captioned exclusively in English:

[To start the interactive tutorial, click here or on the picture.]

Follow these steps to create a basic story.

Procedure

  1. From the side navigation, select Stories.
  2. Choose how you want to start your story:
    Option Description

    Add a Responsive page

    Responsive pages allow you to create layouts that automatically resize and reflow when viewed on different screen sizes.

    Responsive pages can be added to Digital Boardroom agendas and dashboards.

    Add a Canvas page

    Use one or more canvas pages to explore and present your data. Lay out charts, tables, geo maps, images, and other objects.

    Use the Designer panel to format and manipulate the data in your canvas elements.

    Use Templates

    You can apply formatting to your story by using a template, which provides predefined layouts and placeholders for objects to help you build a story.

    For more information, see Create and Use Story Templates.

    For more information on the story pages, see Story Pages.

    The Select Design Mode Type dialog appears.

  3. Select Optimized Design Experience, and then select Create.

    The story opens with the Assets panel displayed on the left. In the Assets panel, you can find a full list of available widgets in categories, and directly drag and drop one to a page to build your story. The widgets here are same as the ones from the Insert menu in the toolbar.

    If the Assets panel is not open, from the toolbar, select Start of the navigation pathView Next navigation step Left Side PanelEnd of the navigation path.

  4. From the Assets panel, expand Widgets, select a Chart or Table widget, and then drag that widget to the body of the story page.

    You are prompted to add data.

  5. Select the model or data source that you want to use.

    The data source is added to your story and the Builder panel (Right Side Panel) is displayed.

  6. In the Builder panel, select dimensions and accounts to configure your widget.

    You've added a chart or table with data to your story. You can find it in the Outline panel on the left, which shows the structure of your story. From here, you can also locate the added widget on the page, edit its ID, show or hide it, prevent it from being resized or repositioned, and add scripting.

  7. Save your story.
    1. From the toolbar, select Start of the navigation pathFile Next navigation step SaveEnd of the navigation path.
    2. Select a location (for example, private, public, or workspace folder).
    3. Provide a unique name for your story and an optional description.
      Note
      Your story name can include valid alphanumeric characters and underscores. Spaces can be included but not at the start or end of a name.

Results

The story is saved in the location you selected. If you saved the story to a public folder, it is visible to all users. If you saved the story to a private folder, only you can see and edit it until you share it with other users. For more information, see Share Files or Folders.

You can view your story by choosing View in the top-right corner. If your story doesn't contain scripting elements, you can choose to view in the current browser tab or a new one via (View Story In...). If it does, you can only view in a new tab.

Note

To view the newly created story in a new tab, you need to save it first.

When you view in a new tab, only saved states are displayed.

By default the story is opened in view mode. In Files you can also directly open it in edit mode by selecting Open in Story Edit Mode from its (More Actions) menu.

Next Steps

As a story developer, you can add scripts to your widgets to implement custom-specific behavior in addition to basic user interaction in view time.

Learning Tutorial - Advanced Story

Click through the interactive tutorial illustrating how to create an advanced story with scripting in Optimized Story Experience (3:00 min); the tutorial is captioned exclusively in English:

[To start the interactive tutorial, click here or on the picture.]

  1. In the Outline panel, hover over the widget you'd like to add scripts to.

  2. Choose (Edit Scripts) to its right.

  3. Select one of the supported events, for example, onSelect.

    The script editor opens in a new story tab, where you can write scripts for the widget.

    You can also trigger scripting by selecting Edit Scripts in the widget's (More Actions) menu.

  4. In the script editor, write scripts for the event of the widget, which are executed when viewers changes the selections on it, for example.

Related Information