Last year brought sig­ni­fic­ant advance­ments to Oracle Ana­lyt­ics Cloud (OAC), and today we’re excited to high­light the best fea­tures and updates intro­duced in 2024. At ClearPeaks, our con­sult­ants have metic­u­lously tracked each release, rig­or­ously tested the new cap­ab­il­it­ies, and shared their insights to keep you informed about OAC’s full potential.

These product updates have not only enriched the OAC exper­i­ence but have also earned Oracle Ana­lyt­ics not­able industry recog­ni­tion: in the 2024 Gart­ner Magic Quad­rant for Ana­lyt­ics and Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Plat­forms, Oracle Ana­lyt­ics was posi­tioned as a Leader, reflect­ing its strong exe­cu­tion and com­plete­ness of vis­ion. Addi­tion­ally, Oracle was recog­nised as Exem­plary in the 2024 Ventana Research Ana­lyt­ics Data Plat­forms report, achiev­ing an over­all score of 86.3%.

Let’s dive into the fea­tures that are shap­ing the future of analytics!

Mas­ter­ing Data with A Con­ver­sa­tion: The Oracle AI Assist­ant Experience

Intro­duced in 2024, the Oracle AI Assist­ant—powered by Gen­er­at­ive AI—revolutionises how users inter­act with data. This ground­break­ing fea­ture makes com­plex ana­lyt­ical pro­cesses access­ible through nat­ural lan­guage, elim­in­at­ing the need for tech­nical expert­ise or know­ledge of SQL and mak­ing inter­act­ing with data more intu­it­ive than ever. You can get star­ted with it here.

Users can ask ques­tions like “What are the sales by cus­tomer seg­ment and city?”, and instantly receive a range of visu­al­isa­tions which can be dragged dir­ectly into their work­book. This empowers non-tech­nical users to explore data effort­lessly and make smarter decisions more quickly.

Not only does the AI Assist­ant respond to quer­ies, but it also enhances data ana­lysis by auto­mat­ic­ally identi­fy­ing import­ant pat­terns, detect­ing trends, spot­ting poten­tial prob­lems, and high­light­ing action­able insights. This pro­act­ive approach helps organ­isa­tions to make smarter decisions whilst uncov­er­ing insights that might oth­er­wise be overlooked.

What’s more, the Oracle AI Assist­ant learns from user inter­ac­tions over time, improv­ing its abil­ity to deliver per­son­al­ised recom­mend­a­tions. This accel­er­ates work­book cre­ation by sug­gest­ing innov­at­ive ways to visu­al­ise data, mak­ing the pro­cess faster, more effi­cient, and more suited to your spe­cific needs. With fea­tures like these, the Oracle AI Assist­ant is set to trans­form the way organ­isa­tions approach data ana­lysis and decision-making.

From Static to Dynamic: OAC Para­meter Advance­ments in Data Analytics

Para­met­ers have long been a corner­stone of Oracle BI, but the 2024 OAC updates elev­ated them to new heights. Ini­tially, they enabled basic fil­ter­ing and drill-down cap­ab­il­it­ies within dash­boards through fea­tures like Para­meter Bind­ing, Enhanced Para­meter Val­id­a­tion, and Bind­ing Para­met­ers to Fil­ters. How­ever, last year brought a series of updates that enhanced per­form­ance, max­im­ised com­pat­ib­il­ity with external data sources, and optim­ised ease of use, mak­ing para­met­ers cent­ral to a cus­tom­ised and inter­act­ive OAC exper­i­ence. These enhance­ments allow organ­isa­tions to explore their data with greater depth and agil­ity, mak­ing OAC a highly respons­ive ana­lyt­ics plat­form tailored to dynamic busi­ness needs.

Key 2024 fea­tures include:

  • Dynamic Para­met­ers and Improved Fil­ter­ing – Para­met­ers can now be dynam­ic­ally assigned and mod­i­fied in real time within dash­boards, improv­ing interactivity.
  • Auto­mate Fil­ters to Exclude Spe­cific Val­ues – You can now flip default fil­ter sec­tions from “Include” to “Exclude,” provid­ing greater con­trol over data displays.
  • Bind Para­meter to Rel­at­ive Time Fil­ter – Para­met­ers can be applied to rel­at­ive time fil­ters, Top/Bottom N visu­al­isa­tions, and ref­er­ence lines, offer­ing advanced cus­tom­isa­tion options.

To dive deeper into OAC para­met­ers and their cap­ab­il­it­ies, visit our blog here.

New Rel­at­ive Time Fea­tures in OAC

The July 2024 OAC update intro­duced the Rel­at­ive Time Fil­ter for work­books, sim­pli­fy­ing the pro­cess of dynam­ic­ally fil­ter­ing data based on time peri­ods rel­at­ive to the cur­rent date or the end of the last period (e.g., last month, last year, etc.). Gone are the days when cre­at­ing dynamic reports for the last thirty days or the last three months required com­plex devel­op­ment efforts—now, it’s as simple as adding a fil­ter to the dashboard.

This fea­ture allows you to select data from the past, future, or present, define the time range in incre­ments like days, months, or years, and spe­cify how the period is meas­ured, whether by year, month, or day. Addi­tion­ally, you can choose whether to dis­play data up to the cur­rent date or the end of the last period. This enhanced func­tion­al­ity offers the flex­ib­il­ity to adapt ana­lyses to real-time changes or cus­tom peri­ods, mak­ing your data even more rel­ev­ant and insightful.

Export to Excel: Mak­ing Data More Accessible

The OAC 2024 update to the Excel export fea­ture (allow­ing you to export the format­ted data from work­book tables, pivot tables, or embed­ded work­books to Excel) is another valu­able addi­tion that enhances flex­ib­il­ity in data ana­lysis. Des­pite the power­ful cap­ab­il­it­ies within OAC, Excel con­tin­ues to be the pre­ferred tool for many users due to its famili­ar­ity and advanced manip­u­la­tion fea­tures. This func­tion­al­ity makes it easier to share OAC data with those who may not have access to the plat­form, whilst allow­ing for fur­ther ana­lysis or report­ing in Excel. It sig­ni­fic­antly improves the work­flow, provid­ing more options for work­ing with data and ensur­ing that insights are more access­ible and action­able across dif­fer­ent teams and stakeholders.

Cal­cu­la­tion enhance­ments: Cre­ate Cal­cu­la­tions more easily

Oracle, as an ana­lyt­ical tool, sim­pli­fies and enhances user-cre­ated cal­cu­la­tions, enabling data explor­a­tion from mul­tiple per­spect­ives and per­mit­ting an effort­less drill-down into spe­cific details. One key fea­ture sup­port­ing this is the abil­ity to cre­ate group cal­cu­la­tions without writ­ing any code: users can simply right-click on a column and con­fig­ure the group cal­cu­la­tion accord­ing to their needs.

This enhance­ment reduces the time spent devel­op­ing logical SQL state­ments, allow­ing more time to be alloc­ated to other tasks. Addi­tion­ally, Oracle provides an option for tech users to copy an expan­ded ver­sion of the cal­cu­la­tion, enabling its seam­less reuse across dif­fer­ent canvases, dash­boards, or loc­a­tions. By past­ing the cal­cu­la­tion, users retain all ref­er­ences to the asso­ci­ated items, ensur­ing con­sist­ency and sav­ing valu­able time dur­ing development.

Ulti­mately, this fea­ture pro­motes faster devel­op­ment and a more organ­ised user struc­ture. You can learn more about this fea­ture at this link.

Advanced Con­di­tional Format­ting: Cus­tom­ising Visu­al­isa­tions for bet­ter insights

The March 2024 update intro­duced sev­eral new con­di­tional format­ting fea­tures that greatly enhance how data is rep­res­en­ted and visu­al­ised. You can now access options for icons and emo­jis, mak­ing it easier to visu­ally rep­res­ent data trends. Ref­er­ence lines for time-based cat­egor­ies were also added, allow­ing you to over­lay bench­marks on time-series data, and a new format­ting option for the neg­at­ive Y‑axis was intro­duced as well, help­ing to dis­tin­guish between pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive val­ues in charts.

To improve data vis­ib­il­ity, the update also included the abil­ity to dis­play neg­at­ive num­bers in red, mak­ing it sim­pler to spot neg­at­ive trends or out­liers at a glance. Cus­tom­isa­tion options were expan­ded, with con­di­tional format­ting now extend­ing to totals and sub­totals, let­ting you apply cus­tom styles to sum­mary data for bet­ter clar­ity. Finally, to enhance the UI con­sist­ency, fil­ter styles were incor­por­ated too, enabling the format­ting of fil­ters and also guar­an­tee­ing uni­form­ity across dash­boards and reports.

Con­clu­sion

In 2024, OAC took sig­ni­fic­ant steps for­ward with sev­eral key updates, mak­ing the plat­form more user-friendly, smarter, and bet­ter equipped to sup­port busi­ness decisions.

OAC empowers busi­nesses with intu­it­ive decision-mak­ing through AI-driven insights, easy-to-use work­flows for cre­at­ing com­pel­ling data stor­ies, and strong data gov­ernance to ensure con­sist­ency. Enhanced data visu­al­isa­tion and pre­par­a­tion tools now stream­line the ana­lysis pro­cess, and the intro­duc­tion of the AI Assist­ant can trans­form how you inter­act with your data.

Here at ClearPeaks, our con­sult­ants have been act­ively test­ing, ana­lys­ing, and shar­ing the latest OAC updates, help­ing us – and you! – stay ahead in exploit­ing its full poten­tial. With each new release, we’ve been able to provide help­ful blog posts and insights to assist our cus­tom­ers and the wider com­munity in mak­ing the most of new features.

As well as stay­ing abreast of the latest OAC fea­tures, we’re proud to say that our con­sult­ants have also been enhan­cing their skills, dili­gently fol­low­ing offi­cial Oracle train­ing plans and get­ting cer­ti­fic­a­tions in Oracle Data Man­age­ment, Oracle Gen­er­at­ive AI, and Oracle Machine Learn­ing. This ongo­ing pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment ensures that we are well-equipped to help you tackle a wide range of pro­jects with cut­ting-edge solutions.

Look­ing to the future, we’ll keep explor­ing new OAC updates and expand our expert­ise in AI, data visu­al­isa­tion, and gov­ernance. ClearPeaks remains com­mit­ted to lead­ing the way and deliv­er­ing solu­tions that help busi­nesses unlock the full value of their data, so con­tact us and see what we can do for you!