Commenting on table cells & SAC widgets, highlighting and overwriting values
SAP Analytics Cloud provides a built-in commenting solution, which we have already enhanced with our biSharing Widget. This comment solution is very convenient if you are building your reports on top of native SAC models.
But what if you want to:
- Consume on-premise SAP BW data via a Live-Connection?
- Business departments have special visualization requirements of comments?
During a POC for SAC, we were confronted with the following business needs:
- Commenting on table cells and showing these comments as footnotes
- Commenting on dashboard widgets instead of data, e.g. titles and charts
- Set markers to table cells for other users to focus their observation
- Overwrite individual values in the tables before releasing them for external reporting (yes, that’s the perfect start for a long argument!)
Last but not least, the customer wanted to consume the data via a Live Connection, so we had to find a way to use SAC Planning Models even with a Live Connection.
The example report
In this post I want to show you what we have implemented: Our simple example report contains a title, a table and some buttons to trigger the annotation process.
Of course, the solution is flexible enough, so you could use SAP UI5 icons, other user navigations etc...
Commenting a dashboard element
If users want to leave a comment for an element such as the title, they simply have to click on the element. They can enter their annotation in the popup.
After clicking OK on the popup, a footnote index is shown at the element, and the comment is displayed as a footnote to the report.
Commenting a table cell
To leave a comment for a table cell, users have to select it first by clicking on it.
Then they click on “Leave a comment”. Again, they are able to enter their annotation.
After clicking OK on the popup, a footnote index is shown in the table cell, and the comment is displayed as a footnote to the report.
Highlighting
In addition to leaving a comment to a table cell, users might also want to highlight certain figures for their colleagues. To do so, they simply have to select the cell and click on the “Set a marker” button.
Of course, it is also possibile to clear the marker again.
Overwriting
Similar to the comment feature, users can select a table cell and choose “Overwrite value”.
The value they entered will then be shown in the table. How the value shall appear (overwrite, strike-through orginal value, etc.) can be customized.
How this was implemented
To fulfill all these requirements, we have created a new Custom Widget named biAnnotation. To find out how above results were realized, please read Annotating & highlighting in your SAC report.
