Bookmark and Share Story Views

Create bookmarks to save or share different states of an SAP Analytics Cloud story.

About Bookmarks

When viewing a story, you may want to come back to the same view of the data every time or you may want to set up different states or scenarios.

For example, you have several pages in your story that have filters, input controls, or prompts applied to them. You don't want to spend time resetting all of them each time you want to see a different scenario. You would like to open the story, see one scenario, and then quickly switch to another scenario. You can even create global bookmarks so that anyone who can view the story can also see the different scenarios.

For classic stories, bookmark only includes filters, input controls, and prompts.

Bookmarks in Optimized Story Experience

For optimized stories, in addition, you can bookmark the change of a widget itself and the display of data on it, including but not limited to the following:

  • Width and height of all widgets

  • Visibility of a widget or components in a widget

  • Dimensions and measures added to or removed from a chart or table

  • Hierarchical level of the data in a chart or table

  • Sorting, ranking and drilling of data in a chart or table

  • Show/hide information of a grid, header, title, subtitle, unbooked members and total values in a table

  • Items added to or removed from a dropdown, radio button group or checkbox group

  • Selected values in a dropdown, radio button group or checkbox group

  • Hyperlinks set for an image or shape

  • Texts applied to a text widget or text changes in an input field

  • Maximum, minimum and current value of a slider and range slider

  • Value changes to dynamic variables

    You can save bookmarks with dynamic variable values defined at the model level, as well as last changed ones that might override the model-level variable settings.

    Note

    SAP BW dynamic variables are saved in backend, so bookmarks won't include their value changes.

    You cannot bookmark changes you make to the nonprimitive type script variables (types other than string, boolean, integer and number).

Note

You cannot bookmark translated contents, except for the bookmark name.

Note

If you import a story from a .tgz file with the option Drop Objects selected and the story already exists on your system, both the story and its bookmarks are overwritten and its data are updated.

Tip

To make sure that you bookmark everything you want, check with story developers or in edit time whether bookmarks include all the components in story, only state-changed ones or selected ones, and whether you're allowed to keep last changed dynamic variable values in your bookmarks. For more information about bookmark settings, see Configure Bookmark Settings and Use Related APIs (Optimized Story Experience).

Now for optimized stories, global and personal bookmarks permissions can be customized. If you’re a custom role, ensure that you have the relevant permissions so that you can create bookmarks, for example. For more information, refer to Permissions.

Bookmark Current State

When you're satisfied with how your story looks, save the current state:

  1. From the menu, select Start of the navigation path (Bookmarks) Next navigation step Bookmark Current StateEnd of the navigation path.
  2. Provide a name for your bookmark.
  3. Choose whether to make it a Personal or a Global bookmark.
  4. Decide whether to set it as the default view when the story is opened.

  5. (In Optimized Story Experience) Decide whether to keep last saved values for dynamic variables in this bookmark.

  6. Select Save.

Your bookmark is added to the list of bookmarks.

Open Saved Bookmark in View Time

When you create your story and save it, you automatically get a default bookmark.

Restriction

If you apply a bookmark that was created before the story was optimized, you won't be able to create new bookmarks for that story. To update the bookmark or to include additional functionality (such as Drill, Rank, Sort, and so on), delete the legacy bookmark and create a new one.

To access the default bookmark or any saved bookmarks, do the following:

  1. From the menu, select Start of the navigation path (Bookmarks) Next navigation step Open Saved BookmarkEnd of the navigation path.
  2. Select the default bookmark or one of your saved bookmarks.

The story opens with the customized settings for filter, input control, prompt and so on.

Note

If you change the default story settings after you've saved bookmarks, the next time you try to use one of those bookmarks you may get a warning message.

For example, you change a page filter to be a story filter. The next time you open the bookmark that has a page filter, you'll see that the bookmark has been partially applied.

Share Personal Bookmarks in View Time

When viewing a story, you can share your personal bookmarks.

  1. From the menu, select Start of the navigation path (Bookmarks) Next navigation step Open Saved BookmarkEnd of the navigation path.

  2. In the My Bookmarks area, select a personal bookmark and then select (Share).

  3. Add Uses or Teams: add all the users that you want to share with. You can either type a username or select (Add usernames or teams) to open a list of available users.
  4. Select Share.

For how to modify sharing settings, see Share Files or Folders.

Note

When you share a story with other users, only global bookmarks are shared, while personal bookmarks aren't included.

Manage Bookmarks

To manage your bookmarks, from the side navigation select Stories, and on the start page, go to Bookmarks tab. Select a bookmark, and then you can edit, share or delete it:

  • Select (Edit Details) to change the name or type of the bookmark, or whether to make it the default view of the story.

  • Select (Share) to share the personal bookmark with other viewers or teams.

  • Select (Delete) to delete a bookmark that you no longer need.

To open and view a bookmark, you need to select a valid one. It'll be opened in view mode.

Note
For optimized stories, a bookmark is valid only when its version is consistent with the current version of the bookmark set technical object set by the story designer or developer. Otherwise, the bookmark is invalid and can't be opened, and story designer or developer needs to set the version back to your bookmark's version.

To search for a specific bookmark, enter the bookmark name in the search box. To narrow down the filter scope, choose Valid Bookmarks, Invalid Bookmarks or All Bookmarks from the dropdown list to the left of the search box.

To view all bookmarks of a specific story, go to (Files) to find the story. When you hover over the story, select (More actions) to the right of it and choose Browse Bookmarks.

Move Personal Bookmarks to Another System

Restriction

Personal bookmarks require a story ID and the USER ID of the person that created the bookmark.

If you want to include your personal bookmarks when you move your story to another system, you must use the same USER ID on both systems.

If the user ID doesn't match, your bookmarks won't be available on the new system.

For information on how to move a story to another system, see Transporting Your Content Through File System.

Related Information