SAS® Studio is a web-based application revolutionizing SAS interaction. Accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device, it offers easy data exploration, streamlined data transformation, analysis, and visualization through predefined steps, simplifying complex tasks for all.
We've prioritized user experience when designing the SAS Studio interface, ensuring it enhances productivity and satisfaction. This article highlights some productivity features (in no particular order), with many more integrated into the user interface.
If you are new to SAS Studio, watch this video that explores the SAS Viya platform and introduces the SAS Studio application and its features.
Below are some of the many features that enhance productivity!
6. Easily access Keyboard Shortcuts
7. Optimizing Screen Real Estate
The Start Page is available as soon as you sign in to SAS Studio, and enables quick initiation of SAS tasks including starting a new SAS program, building a flow, importing data, or creating a query. You can also access recently opened and saved items and items that you mark as favourites. These items can be:
Select any image to see a larger version.
Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.
Speaking of favorites...
When you add or remove files to My Favorites, as above, they are also added to the My Favorites folder in the Explorer section of the navigation pane. This folder accommodates a variety of file types, including SAS data sets, other data files, programs, flows, snippets, tasks, and queries, allowing for streamlined organization and accessibility.
By default, SAS Studio automatically saves open files, such as SAS programs, flows, queries and tasks in the event of a timeout or unexpected closure. The Document Recovery window enables you to administer these saved files. To view the Document Recover window, click View > Document recovery or click Recover in the lower right corner of your SAS Studio browser window.
For each file in the Document Recovery window, you can choose from the following actions:
You can also recover or delete all of the documents by clicking Recover All or Delete All.
When you have chosen your action you can select:
The default interval for saving open files is 30 seconds, this can be amended by selecting Options > Preferences. You can also clear the check mark so no document recovery occurs.
The background submit feature enables you to run saved flows, tasks, and SAS programs in the background while you continue to use SAS Studio. Simply, right-click a file in the Explorer section of the navigation pane and select Background Submit or click on the flow or SAS program toolbar.
Points to note:
The Submission Status window catalogues each submission of a program, task, query, or flow during this session of SAS Studio. To view the list, simply go to View > Submission Status or click Submission in the bottom right corner. Selecting an entry opens it in a new tab, along with the log- ideal for reviewing and editing earlier versions of programs, tasks, queries, or flows.
Note:
Items displayed in the Submission Status window can be customised in several ways:
Do you prefer to use your keyboard over your mouse? Press F3 to run you flow or program? Ever wondered what other keyboard shortcuts are available? SAS Studio offers a plethora of keyboard shortcuts. To find out what shortcuts are available, click (Keyboard shortcuts) in the lower right of the application. My favourite -for flows- is using Alt+P to create a new flow and my favourite for programming is using Ctrl+/ to comment out lines of code Ctrl +\ to comment out a block of code (as per gif below).
You can also change the keyboard shortcuts by selecting Manage keyboard shortcuts from the Keyboard Shortcuts pane or by selecting Options on the SAS Studio toolbar and selecting Manage keyboard shortcuts.
Screen real estate can sometimes be quite a luxury, depending on the size of your monitor. Utilizing full-screen mode in an application enhances concentration and efficiency by maximizing available screen space, thereby reducing distractions and facilitating clear visibility and seamless interaction with content.
In SAS Studio, there are numerous methods to optimize your screen real estate, including:
Using the horizontal scroll in SAS Studio enables efficient navigation through wide datasets or code lines while maintaining optimal screen space. You can simply scroll using the mouse or use shift + mouse scroll down button when the mouse cursor is on the horizontal bar to move the horizontal bar to the right (see both actions in the gif below).
Hate creating documentation for your code? Take a look at the Program Summary! After submitting code (written or code generated automatically during execution), select More Options> Open in a browser tab> Summary. The Program Summary page is an HTML file that opens in a separate browser tab, providing details on program execution, the full source code, the complete log, and the results.
You can use the SAS Studio scheduling feature to schedule saved items, including programs, tasks, queries, and flows, to run at a specified time and frequency. When scheduling or deploying a SAS Studio flow, a SAS Viya job request is created that includes a SAS Viya job definition. The SAS Viya job request specifies how the job should be run and the SAS Viya job definition provides what should be run (in other words, a snapshot of the generated code and any other information required for the code to execute successfully).
Here are some points to note:
These are just a few of the powerful productivity features available in SAS Studio on the SAS Viya platform. Is your go-to feature mentioned here? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and stay tuned – your favorite feature could be the star of our next post!
Thanks go to the SAS Studio Product Manager, @Alexey_Vodilin for editing, contributions and valuable suggestions for improvements of this article.
Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.
The option with shortcuts is great!
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