Part 1: SAS Viya for Learners upgraded to SAS Viya 2025.03LTS
SAS Viya for Learners hath ascended unto the noble realm of 2025.03LTS, whereupon great features doth abound and bugs be smitten.
Thus spake the town crier. But enough of the parchment and quills—let’s step into the present.
For those not in the know, SAS Viya is our cutting-edge analytics platform – supporting the entire data analytics lifecycle and meeting users exactly where they are today, from analytics novices to experienced hackers alike. And SAS Viya for Learners (VFL) is how we take this powerful commercial platform and scale it to support the teaching and learning of analytics across the globe.
Keeping Pace with the Best
But wait. There’s more.
To ensure academics are learning on the same world-class software our commercial clients use, we follow the same release cycle in this continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) world.
That means we take the latest upgrades to SAS Viya—which we did during the third weekend maintenance window in August 2025—so that academic users always have access to the latest-and-greatest analytical tools – while also providing our system administrators the best tools to help scale the software.
We typically align with the most recent Long-Term Support (LTS) version, which gives you a stable environment for learning while still benefiting from new capabilities.
It’s a win-win: you get upgraded features, and our administrators get the tools they need to support thousands of VFL users each month.
How Does This Affect You?
With VFL now on the 2025.03LTS version (up from 2024.09LTS), most of the changes are under the hood – administrative upgrades that simply help your analytics run faster and more smoothly.
That said, there’s one big visible change… and one change we’ve delayed for now.
Bye, Bye SAS Drive
This will be the focus of Part 2 in the series, because it’s the first thing that everyone will notice after the upgrade. Why? Because when you log into SAS Viya for Learners, the landing page is different.
Jump ahead to this link if you need to know how different it is, like right now.
SAS Studio Tasks Around, for Now
Did you know SAS Studio Tasks are being retired in SAS Viya?
If you’ve never used them, you won’t miss what you didn’t know existed.
But if you do use SAS Studio Tasks – especially as a way to learn SAS code – this might be a bummer. SAS Studio Tasks officially reached end-of-life in the 2024.09LTS release. Why? SAS developers believe SAS Studio Steps + Flows are a better way to manage your data in SAS Studio. And you can check out this video to learn more about why we think they’re great.
Here’s the good news: in VFL4, we’ve kept SAS Studio Tasks alive via an administrative override.
I’m sharing this for two reasons:
1. The retirement notice is real – but we’ll fight to keep SAS Studio Tasks around as a tool for teaching and learning SAS code for as long as possible.
2. If you lose the Tasks icon after an upgrade, don’t panic. Here’s how to bring it back:
- Step 1: Click through to View → Navigation Panes → Tasks
- Step 2: Exhale. SAS Studio Tasks are back once you see the check.
The Recap
- VFL4 was upgraded in August 2025 to SAS Viya 2025.03LTS.
- SAS Drive is gone (details in Part 2).
- SAS Studio Tasks remain for now—but will eventually be retired. We’ll keep them alive as long as possible.
See you in Part 2!
