Linked analysis with SAP Analytics cloud

This is the second segment of my blog series on SAP Analytics cloud, and in this blog, I am going to give a quick take on Linked Analysis— an essential feature of this tool.

What is linked analysis in the first place, and why will we need it ? Well, the answer is simple — it makes analysis and identification of variables easier and is a very efficient process of drilling down data. As analytics projects become bigger and has more charts and data, this feature plays a pivotal role.

Let me show you with a hands on example on why it is important !

If you have stumbled upon this blog randomly and want to get the context of what SAP’s Analytics Cloud or data visualization is about, check this blog to get a comprehensive understanding — https://medium.com/@rajkumarbenny/introduction-to-data-visualization-using-saps-analytics-cloud-e7fb41c5c622

I have loaded the dummy data from this website- https://mockaroo.com/

So, I have built a bar chart that displays the Investment amount for different countries. But the catch is — there are A LOT of countries in this dataset, and I do not have the need to look into every one of them. So, I used a feature the Top N feature to display only the top 10 countries.

Next, I have incorporated a table that contains the details of different people, their location and their investment amount, and I have formatted the table by clicking on the paintbrush icon at the top.

There are a myriad of formatting options to choose from- and I chose the template as Alternating Rows since that’s my personal preferences over the default styling.

There are other options to choose from, if you are interested in going further — from formatting the cells to changing the number format.

Once the formatting done, we get to the crux of the topic of Linked analysis. After ensuring that the linked analysis of the chart is applied to every widget on the page, we can see that when we select one particular person, the bar chart also changes — and the chart only displays the country where he’s from and the investment amount he has.

Supposing I have a question — and I want to know who were the investors in the Top country in this dataset, which is China , all that is necessary is by applying the linked analysis on the bar chart, and with a mere click, we get all the details of the Chinese residents who invested money.

This is a very efficient method of drilling down data. I hope this simple blog has elucidated the concept of Linked Analysis and how it can be helpful with your data visualization journey.

In the next blog, I shall introduce you to Geo Maps and how we can use them in SAP Analytics cloud.