All About Linked Analysis in SAP Analytics Cloud

Dynamic interaction is a key feature that helps to explore and understand data better for any dashboard or story. SAP Analytics Cloud Linked Analysis feature allows us to perform dynamic interaction between widgets. Earlier, each story page has a single linked set, upon which the selections can be passed down as filters. But from version 2019.11 onwards, each chart can have its own set of widgets linked. This blog features on how to fully utilize the Linked Analysis feature for better interaction.

Consider a scenario where you have a Sales Summary page that has various charts for Region, Category, Sub-category, Trend and Top 10 Products. Let us see various options used to enable dynamic interactivity.

Linked Analysis in Action

Widget-Specific Linked Analysis

Prior to version 2019.11, the option to enable Linked Analysis was available in the Toolbar. There was only a single linked set for each page. Now since the Linked Analysis is specific to each widget, you can find the option in the Quick Menu of widgets.

Linked Analysis option in Quick Menu

Linked Analysis can be enabled for the following widgets.

1. 1. Chart
   2. Table
   3. Geo Map
   4. Input Control

Widget as a Story Filter

In the scenario mentioned above the Donut Chart showing Sales per Region can be used to filter the entire story so that it is easy for Regional Managers to analyze their data. In the Linked Analysis panel the option ‘All widgets in the Story’ is enabled. Under Settings, there also an option to override any existing cascading effects.

All widgets in the story option

Once the user filters a member in the Donut Chart a Story Filter is automatically added. The user can manually remove the Story Filter without affecting the Donut Chart. One limitation is that there is no option to enable the filter on data point selection if the widget is used as a Story Filter.

Story Filter added by default

If you want the selection to only affect the page, you can choose the option ‘All widgets on this Page’. To enable filters on selected data point choose the option widgets as Page filters.

All widgets on this page option

Linked Analysis for Input Control

In the Sales Summary scenario, the input control to choose Years must not affect the Trend Chart. The option ‘Only selected widgets’ is enabled. Then the Trend Chart is removed from the list of widgets that can be linked. This way, selections made in Input Control will not affect Trend Chart. Unlike Charts, for all Input Controls, there are only two options in Linked Analysis. The Input Control can either affect the whole page or selected widgets.

Custom Linked Set

Filter on datapoint selection

In the bar chart ‘Sales per Category’, the common selection mode is to choose a single bar. The option ‘Filter on data point selection’ is enabled. In case of the scatterplot for Sub-categories the common selection mode is Lasso and the option data point selection is not enabled so that the user can filter the values in a scatterplot for it to affect other linked widgets.

Linked Analysis of Category and Sub-Category chart

There is also an option to automatically connect newly created widgets while configuring Linked Analysis.

Please note that Linked analysis is supported in all import and live data connections. If there are two models used in Story, make use of the Link Dimensions option which allows us to apply linked analysis for widgets from two different models.

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