As active users for SAP Analytics Cloud(SAC), we all would have come across limitations regarding the commenting functionality in SAC.
Although SAP has come up with the commenting widget recently in Q3 2020 Release,
It has few limitations as of now:
You cannot add comments from Live models, currently, the commenting widget supports only Acquired models.
Have authorizations defined specifically for the Comments.
However, with the availability of an Application Designer and flexibility of creating our custom analytical applications helps us overcome these limitations.
Let me go through the solution I have developed.
We need the following objects to get the custom-built commenting functionality in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Database table(preferably in HANA) to store our comments (with the desired columns).
SAP UI5 web application to provide a UI for users to input the comments, as we cannot perform the CRUD operations directly from the SAC application. (You can choose any front end web programming language of your choice).
Live Connection to the HANA system to create the live HANA model to fetch and display the comments real-time, as and when it is updated through the UI5 web application in SAP Analytical Application.
Fields/columns of the Comment table can be designed as below:
Once we have all these objects ready, we will look at the architecture on how we achieve the live commenting functionality in SAC Analytical Application.
As shown, the Web application will be embedded in the Analytical Application.
Once the user clicks on the button/pop up, they can input comments that are in turn stored in the HANA table along with the filters which are captured from the other charts/graphs which are available in the Analytical Application.
Later a live HANA model created on the calculation view of the comments table can be used to display the comments in the Analytical Application based on the context.
In the next blog here : https://www.techgenius.in/post/commenting-functionality-in-sap-analytics-cloud-sac-part2
we will see the implementation and other specific details of the solution.