Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud New Year Release High­lights – Janu­ary 2024

Wel­come to the first Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud (OAC) blog post of 2024, full of excit­ing updates and innov­at­ive fea­tures to improve the Oracle data jour­ney for developers and busi­ness users alike! This year, we’re com­mit­ted to com­pre­hens­ively cov­er­ing every OAC and Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Server (OAS) release, explain­ing the key fea­tures and enhance­ments high­lighted by our team of experts, so don’t for­get to sub­scribe to get the latest insights.

This time there are lots of improve­ments across dif­fer­ent aspects of the tool, so join us as we explore the high­lights of the Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud Janu­ary 2024 Update!

1. Zoom Con­trol for Dashboards

A sig­ni­fic­ant user exper­i­ence improve­ment in OAC is the newly intro­duced zoom con­trol for each dash­board can­vas, although cur­rently this func­tion­al­ity is not avail­able for all can­vas types. It is designed to improve access­ib­il­ity for users with visual impair­ments, as well as cater­ing to com­mon situ­ations like video calls, where screen shar­ing and zoom­ing in on graphs and visu­als are essen­tial for clear com­mu­nic­a­tion. This integ­rated tool sim­pli­fies these scen­arios, mak­ing present­a­tions more access­ible and engaging.

Set­ting it up is straight­for­ward: open the Can­vas Prop­er­ties win­dow and adjust the Height and Width set­tings from Grow or Screen to a fixed value, as demon­strated in the image below:

Con­tinu­ing to the Present­a­tion Layer and Work­book set­tings, you’ll find the Zoom options. The first set­ting allows you to estab­lish the default zoom level, while the second option enables you to grant or restrict user access to this feature:

On mov­ing to the user view, the zoom option becomes access­ible, offer­ing an extens­ive range, scal­ing up to 500%. Addi­tion­ally, it includes con­veni­ent fea­tures like Fit to Page and Fit to Width, enhan­cing the user exper­i­ence and the adapt­ab­il­ity of the display:

2. Data Flows: Data mer­ging by column name

Over recent years, OAC has evolved sig­ni­fic­antly as an ETL cloud tool, par­tic­u­larly in Data Flows. At synvert, we have been integ­rat­ing it extens­ively into our pro­jects, so we’re excited to see such innov­at­ive fea­tures that fully lever­age its cap­ab­il­it­ies. This is where you can find them:

In this release, a sig­ni­fic­ant enhance­ment for developers is the intro­duc­tion of the abil­ity to union merge tables based on column names. Within the Union object set­tings, simply select Match By column name, and the sys­tem will auto­mat­ic­ally identify and merge columns that share the same name and type. Pre­vi­ously, an addi­tional step was required to ensure the spe­cific column order, but this pro­cess has now been stream­lined for greater efficiency:

This is an import­ant fea­ture for any­one plan­ning to use Data Flows in this release.

3. Export­ing Table Data to Excel format

Another not­able fea­ture we’d like to high­light is the abil­ity to export table data to Excel format, since Excel is still a widely used data ana­lysis tool across numer­ous organ­isa­tions. Integ­rat­ing this fea­ture into OAC offers sev­eral bene­fits, such as enabling data shar­ing with users who lack access to the tool itself as well as facil­it­at­ing data manip­u­la­tion bey­ond its nat­ive capabilities.

This fea­ture was ini­tially intro­duced last year in a pre­view phase and is now avail­able glob­ally and will surely see a lot of use. To export data, select a table or pivot table visu­al­isa­tion and spe­cify the format­ting style; remem­ber to save these set­tings. Then access the three-dot menu at the top right of the visu­al­isa­tion, choose Export, and then File One:

Now a new panel will appear, where you spe­cify the desired name and format for the export, in this case Excel (.xlsx). After sav­ing, a prompt will appear to rename the file and select the down­load format:

4. User Cal­cu­la­tions for Para­meter Generation

In this latest release, Oracle has enabled the use of cus­tom cal­cu­la­tions for gen­er­at­ing para­met­ers. This devel­op­ment unlocks a wealth of pos­sib­il­it­ies and syn­er­gies, offer­ing enhanced per­son­al­isa­tion for your dash­boards. Oracle has recently been focus­ing on refin­ing para­met­ers, with each update bring­ing improve­ments. You can take a look at our pre­vi­ous blog post OAC Update Nov-23 for more tips about parameters!

First, let’s make sure the cal­cu­lated column is cor­rectly con­figured and access­ible, as shown below:

Then move to the Para­meter Man­ager tab and open the Cre­ate Para­meter option. If you’re start­ing afresh, this sec­tion will be empty, although in the screen­shot you can see there are already some cre­ated para­met­ers. Notice how you can cre­ate vari­ous types of parameters:

On open­ing the Cre­ate Para­meter option, a menu appears where you must spe­cify that the para­meter val­ues are sourced from an exist­ing column. A not­able addi­tion in this update is the inclu­sion of the My Cal­cu­la­tions folder in the sub­sequent drop-down menu. Another sig­ni­fic­ant enhance­ment within the same menu is the Enforce Val­id­a­tions option, which dis­plays the value as a list con­trol, thus offer­ing a more user-friendly experience.

These enhance­ments mark a sig­ni­fic­ant upgrade for para­met­ers, and it will be inter­est­ing to see how developers lever­age them to their fullest potential.

5. Maps: Cus­tom­ising Col­ours in Regions and Point Lay­ers, Adjust­ing Line Thick­ness, and Sim­pli­fy­ing Map Styling

Oracle Ana­lyt­ics has intro­duced a novel fea­ture that allows users to adjust the col­our of the regions and modify the thick­ness of the lines on the maps, provid­ing greater con­trol and cus­tom­isa­tion options. A new default set­ting has also been imple­men­ted for the style of regions and bor­der lines, applic­able when not spe­cific­ally cus­tom­ised by the user. This update sig­ni­fic­antly elev­ates the level of per­son­al­isa­tion avail­able for map styling.

To change the col­our of a region on a map, go to the Con­fig­ur­a­tion menu, then the Lay­ers sec­tion, select the Color option, and click on Cus­tom:

Select­ing this option will allow you to choose the col­our you want:

As men­tioned above, you can also change the thick­ness of the lines of the map. In the same win­dow, select the Out­line option, and then Cus­tom:

Now you can cus­tom­ise the col­our and line thick­ness as you wish:

If you don’t want to modify these para­met­ers, Oracle Ana­lyt­ics con­fig­ures them by default:

6. Annot­ate Work­book Data with Icons and Emojis

Con­di­tional Format­ting is a long-stand­ing staple, extens­ively covered by the syn­vertteam through its vari­ous enhance­ments over the years. We have delved into aspects such as Con­di­tional Format­ting and Rule Blend­ing, Con­di­tional Format­ting on Maps, and Con­di­tional Format­ting updates. Oracle Ana­lyt­ics has recently revised this fea­ture, enabling the applic­a­tion of con­di­tional dec­or­a­tion icons or emo­jis to spe­cific columns in table visu­al­isa­tions, which cre­ates a more visu­ally enga­ging column and offers a clearer under­stand­ing of the data:

Once you’ve got the table that you want to modify, go to the Man­age Con­di­tional Format­ting Rules option at the top left, near the Menu:

First select the meas­ure you want to work with, then estab­lish the desired con­di­tion. By click­ing just to the left of the con­di­tion, you’ll access a panel where vari­ous set­tings can be adjus­ted: col­our, font, icons, and more. In this sec­tion, not only can you find emoticons, but you also have the option to cus­tom­ise them, like by assign­ing a spe­cific colour:

After imple­ment­ing your cus­tom­isa­tions, the res­ult should look like the image below. The chosen emoticon for our scen­ario is the increase and decrease icon, which we have col­oured green and red to make it more representative:

After select­ing the format, click on Save and the icons will appear. If they don´t, go to the menu but­ton and select Con­di­tional Format­ting, then select the Con­di­tional column and mark the column you modified:

In addi­tion, this latest update intro­duces the abil­ity to cus­tom­ise the pre­cise place­ment of the icon – whether to pos­i­tion it to the right or left of the value, or to dis­play only the icon. To achieve this, nav­ig­ate to the Prop­er­ties but­ton at the top right and select Val­ues (#). Then loc­ate the Con­di­tional column and pro­ceed to the Icon Pos­i­tion section:

7. Ref­er­ence Lines for Time-Based Cat­egory Columns

To enhance the read­ab­il­ity of cat­egory columns with a time axis, Oracle has intro­duced the option to add ref­er­ence lines. Like the fea­ture pre­vi­ously avail­able for meas­ures, ref­er­ence lines are par­tic­u­larly use­ful for mark­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dates or peri­ods, such as pro­ject dead­lines or holidays.

To use this fea­ture, first ensure you have a visu­al­isa­tion with a date column to which the ref­er­ence line can be applied, then add the fea­ture by nav­ig­at­ing to Prop­er­ties -> Ana­lyt­ics -> Add Stat­ist­ics -> Ref­er­ence Line:

Choose your date column as a reference:

The name of the ref­er­ence line dis­played on the graph can be changed. By select­ing the Type option, you can show­case a period by chan­ging the Type to Band, then spe­cify­ing two dates. The Z Order option allows you to pos­i­tion the line either in front of or behind the data bars. What’s more, you can also modify the col­our, trans­par­ency, pat­tern and width of the ref­er­ence line:

With the right set­tings, you can make your graph look some­thing like this:

8. Format Neg­at­ive Y‑Axis Values

Another inter­est­ing new fea­ture is the abil­ity to dis­play neg­at­ive val­ues on the y‑axis in graphs, sig­ni­fic­antly improv­ing the visual inter­pret­a­tion of the data.

Pre­vi­ously, rep­res­ent­ing neg­at­ive val­ues in graphs could be com­plex, as these val­ues were loc­ated below the x‑axis, mak­ing them dif­fi­cult to inter­pret visu­ally. Now, with the abil­ity to present them dir­ectly on the y‑axis, the inter­pret­a­tion and under­stand­ing of these val­ues become much sim­pler, lead­ing to a clearer and more accur­ate rep­res­ent­a­tion of the data.

This upgrade, par­tic­u­larly the dir­ect dis­play of neg­at­ive val­ues on the y‑axis, is a sub­stan­tial enhance­ment in visual data analysis.

As illus­trated in the graph below, neg­at­ive data within the work­book is now prom­in­ently dis­played on the y‑axis, facil­it­at­ing a more effi­cient analysis:

9. Cus­tom­ising Work­book and Can­vas Header/Visualisation Tool­bar and Menu Options

Pre­vi­ously, when design­ing a flow for a slideshow, the header bar of the work­book was dis­played by default. The recent update now allows you to show or hide this header bar. Addi­tion­ally, users can select a spe­cific name to be dis­played as the header and also choose the format­ting of the text:

You can also con­fig­ure the Present­a­tion Fil­ters and cus­tom­ise them, as well as choose dif­fer­ent actions when dis­play­ing the workbook:

10. Per­son­al­ising Work­book Fil­ter Values

Oracle has intro­duced an innov­at­ive approach to sav­ing work­books. In the past, when view­ing visu­al­isa­tions from the user inter­face without enter­ing the Work­book Edit­ing mode, actions like using fil­ters were not saved when you closed the work­book. This is no longer the case, and now all modi­fic­a­tions made in the UI are auto­mat­ic­ally saved on closing:

Pre­vi­ously, the res­ult of this action was like this:

Now it’s like this:

How­ever, if you don’t want to save these changes, there are vari­ous ways to revert them to their ori­ginal state.

1. The first method involves manu­ally revers­ing the changes by click­ing on the but­ton loc­ated in the top left corner.

2. The second method involves deac­tiv­at­ing the pre­vi­ously men­tioned func­tion. To do this, go to the Present but­ton situ­ated at the top centre of the Work­book. On activ­at­ing this, a new panel will emerge where you adjust the Per­son­al­iz­a­tion Set both the fil­ter and para­meter set­tings to Off:

Deprec­ated and Desup­por­ted Features

Oracle has announced a list of fea­tures that will be desup­por­ted in this release: Albany fonts, pre­vi­ously used in ana­lyses, dash­boards, and pixel-per­fect reports, have been replaced by Go Noto and are no longer avail­able. The BI Com­poser Wiz­ard has been fully replaced by Work­books, offer­ing more options and a greater ease of use for both users and developers. While some read­ers may not remem­ber this OBIEE ana­lysis-gen­er­at­ing tool, those who do use it will need to trans­ition to the new path­way Oracle has cre­ated for this pur­pose. In the Clas­sic view of Oracle Cloud Ana­lyt­ics, cer­tain dash­board themes, includ­ing Fuse, Skyros, Skyro­sCloud, blafp, and FusionFX, will be dis­con­tin­ued and new dash­boards will default to using Red­wood. The Man­age Favor­ites fea­ture has been deprec­ated and will now appear in an unstruc­tured list under the Favor­ites menu.

Con­clu­sion

OAC’s first update of 2024 has intro­duced a sub­stan­tial amount of new con­tent, focus­ing on enhan­cing the exper­i­ence for both users and developers. The update has effect­ively enhanced the use of exist­ing tools and intro­duced options that are sure to be well-received. While the inclu­sion of emo­jis stands out as the most visu­ally strik­ing improve­ment, the addi­tion of map per­son­al­isa­tion options is equally sig­ni­fic­ant and should not be overlooked.

This could be the moment to re-eval­u­ate our cur­rent approach to map setups, since the intro­duc­tion of new ref­er­ence lines and bands will encour­age more users to explore stat­ist­ical options in cre­at­ing visu­al­isa­tions. Moreover, the revamped approach to Work­book set­tings marks a sig­ni­fic­ant step for­ward in improv­ing the over­all user experience.

Our team here at synvert is ready to assist you in explor­ing the full poten­tial of the latest OAC fea­tures. Whether you need a detailed walk­through of what’s new, tips on how to best apply them to your data, or you just have some ques­tions, our experts are only a mes­sage away. Reach out to us today to unlock the full power of OAC and trans­form your ana­lyt­ics into a visual nar­rat­ive that brings your data to life!