Part 2: Bye, Bye SAS Drive

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“Hello darkness, my old friend”

Thus begins our ballad to SAS Drive, a faithful companion through many a Viya session. But cue the record scratch—this isn’t a farewell tour for an aging rock band.

It’s simply the next step in SAS Viya’s evolution. In the interest of streamlining the analytics experience, SAS Viya now greets you with a landing page focused squarely on the Analytics Lifecycle.

What has changed?

For many SAS Viya users, SAS Drive has been our North Star for years.

But alas – some things must come to an end, especially when there’s something better waiting in the wings.

In an effort to streamline the analytics experience, SAS Viya developers think a better default landing spot is an explicit focus on the Analytics Lifecycle and have come up with this new page:

And honestly? I agree with them.

Instead of a running list of everything I’ve done in SAS Drive, this updated landing page is a gentle reminder to pause and ask:

“What am I really trying to accomplish in this SAS Viya session?”

The Data & AI Lifecycle Quick Start helps put me in that mindset. From there, I can decide where to head next:

Want to explore shared data? → Start with SAS Information Catalog.
Ready to code or wrangle data? → Open SAS Studio.
Need to build dashboards or do a preliminary analysis in a no-code environment? → Go to SAS Visual Analytics.
Modeling time? → Fire up SAS Model Studio to build models with just a few clicks.
Ready to deploy models? → Head to SAS Model Manager.

What about the Application menu?

Don’t worry—the Application menu is still here in the VFL4 upgrade, right where you expect it:

One click, and the full suite of SAS Viya tools is at your fingertips:

I bookmarked SAS Drive. What the heck?

If you try to open a SAS Drive bookmark after the upgrade, you’ll see a rather ominous message:

Yikes. That looks like a scary message. But fear not—it’s simply because SAS Drive no longer exists, and the old URL is broken.

Here’s what to do instead:

Bookmark the new landing page.
Even better – launch from the VFL Product Page: www.sas.com/viyaforlearners. This will take you directly to the VFL landing page:

Why better? You’ll need to launch from the product page every 30 days to accept the end-user-license agreement (EULA), which keeps your account active. So, you might as well make it your go-to launch point.

Not a fan of the new landing page?

If you’re thinking “This new page isn’t for me”, here’s some good news – you can choose your own home screen in SAS Viya for Learners.

Check out Rachel’s post on exactly how to do that: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Setting-a-Home-Screen-in-SAS-Viya-for-Learner....