SAS Visual Analytics Report Examples using Container Objects

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In this article, I will describe the available Container Objects in SAS Visual Analytics and show example reports for each type.  

In a previous article: Use a stack container to pick your category in SAS Visual Analytics Reports I describe about how to use the Stack Container Object as a technique to let your report viewers pick the category for the visualization.  

Container Objects are used to group other objects together. Containers can also make report design and maintenance easier, faster, and more robust.  

Types of Container Objects

Let’s take a look at each Container type in an example VA Report that uses the same three objects: Crosstab, Bar Chart, and Treemap to illustrate the differences. See the SAS Documentation for additional details.  

Select any image to see a larger version.
Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.

I will start with the top left and then work my way around the objects clockwise.  

Prompt Container

At the top is the Prompt Container. The Prompt Container is the only Container that can be in any location in the VA Report, namely either the: Report Prompt Area, Page Prompt Area, or Report Canvas. The Prompt Container is limited in the fact you can only add Control Objects to it. The main advantage of Prompt Containers is that it helps reduce the amount of real estate that Control Objects occupy on the report and it is the only way to use a List Control Object in either the Report or Page Prompt Areas.  

See my short article about how to Use a List Control as a Visual Analytics Report or Page/Section Prompt.  

Precision Container

The Precision Container behaves similarly to a PowerPoint slide. As you can see in my example report, you can layer the objects, specify size and alignment from the Left/Top position. The inherently nice thing about most Objects is that they are transparent, so as you can see from this example, the background of the Precision Container is gray, and the other Objects float on top of the background. This is my favorite Container for adding an image to the background of a report. Pro Tip, while you can use your mouse to resize your objects, I would recommend using whole number percentages in both the Layout and Size. You can also use the Object’s overflow menu to Send to back or Send to front.  

Standard Container

The Standard Container behaves as the default VA Report layout. This is similar to a grid but when you resize objects, it is possible to inadvertently create empty space between objects if you don’t enable the expand height/width options. You can specify the direction of the flow of objects to be either vertical (default) or horizontal and select whether to avoid scrollbars and resize the container or content to fit. When designing reports with columns this is my preferred container as it's quick to use each container as the column boundary then it's easy to add several objects and color backgrounds quickly.  

Scrolling Container

The Scrolling Container is meant for exactly that: scrolling consumption. This would be the perfect layout if you were designing a report to be consumed on mobile or tablet devices. You can specify the direction of the scroll, either vertical (default) or horizontal. Since you will expect your users to scroll, let’s assume vertical, then you can keep the report layout simple with one object wide and fit the height of your objects as the data dictates.  

Stacking Container

The Stacking Container is a great way to add a lot of objects to the report without compromising real estate. This is sometimes referred to as a deck of cards, where you only see one object at a time. There are several navigation options: buttons (as seen in my screenshot), dots, links, tabs, or numbers. The one drawback is that the navigation font color, style, and size are not customizable so you will need to take care when selecting background colors.    

Container Examples

Now that you’ve seen all of the Container types side-by-side to easily visualize their behaviors, I will show you an example of how you can use each Container to design appealing reports.  

Prompt Container

Here’s a look at how each of the Control Objects can be customized in the Prompt Container. From the Options pane you can also customize the button text.  

Remember, one of the great things about the Prompt Container is that you can place it anywhere in the VA report. Starting with the VA 8.4 release, you can now select the location of the Report Prompts or Page Prompts. Check out this article for additional information: New control prompt placement option in SAS Visual Analytics.  

    

Precision Container

Here is an example of using the Precision Container to resemble a slide.  

Using the Outline pane is the easiest way to organize the objects in containers and it also gives a nice overview of the Page contents. As you can see, I used an Image Object as the bottom most layer in this Precision Container. Then I layered a Text Object and a Key Value object. Remember to use whole numbers for the Layout and Size Options.  

Standard Container

In this example, I built a column style VA report using Standard Containers.  

Use the Outline pane to move objects into the desired containers. Also notice, that for the outer most Standard Container I used the horizontal direction flow from the Options pane. This lets me arrange the nested Standard Containers side by side, like columns. I then assigned each container a different background color, remember that most objects are transparent but for some like the Crosstab you may need to select additional background colors for the row, column and cell backgrounds. I used empty Text Objects with navy backgrounds to get the dark navy border around the sides. For each “column” I used whole number percentages when defining their sizes so their relative positions remain the same as the browser window is resized.  

Scrolling Container

In this animated GIF, I wanted to show you how this VA Report would look on a smaller mobile or tablet device.  

  In looking at the design of this page, you can see that I have selected the vertical direction in the Options pane for the Scrolling Container.  

Stacking Container

The Stacking Container is one of the easiest containers to incorporate into any VA Report design as it takes the same space as your “original” object and then has the capability to flip through different objects like a slide show. This design allows for additional objects either above or below the Stacking Container as seen here.  

There are several Button types for the Stacking Container in the Options pane: links, buttons, dots, links, tabs, or numbers. The text for these navigation buttons is taken from the Object Name property. As I mentioned earlier, unfortunately we do not yet have the ability to customize the font style, size or color so be sure to pick a Background color for the stacking container that works with black text. As you can see here, I used a yellow background color for the stacking container. To have this contrast with the Bar Chart, Key Value, and Gauge Objects I set each object background to navy.  

Conclusion

I hope you now have a good idea of how to use each type of Container Object. As a summary, here are some key take aways for each Container Object:

• Common Advantages
  • Makes report design easy.
  • Easily group objects together and select a background color.
  • Use the Outline Pane to move objects into/out of a Container.
    
    
• Prompt Container
  • Only Container that can be placed in any report location: Report Prompt, Page Prompt, Report Canvas.
  • Can only add Control Objects to a Prompt Container.
  • Used to conserve report real estate from having many Control Objects on the report individually.
  • A Prompt Container is the only way to add a List Control to either the Report or Page Prompt areas.
    
    

• Precision Container
  • Behaves similarly to a PowerPoint slide with precision layout and depth layering.
  • Useful to add a background image to a report.
  • Use whole number percentages for layout and size.
    
    

• Standard Container
  • Similar to a grid but can create empty space if expand height/width is not selected.
  • Good for report column designs.
  • Flow of objects can be either vertical or horizontal.
    
    

• Scrolling Container
  • Select scroll direction to be either vertical or horizontal.
  • Ideal for reports to be consumed on mobile or tablet devices.
  • When you keep the layout either to one column or one row, easy to design and expand the height/width as the data dictates.
    
    

• Stacking Container
  • One of the easiest to incorporate into any VA Report design, takes the same space as a typical object.
  • Objects are stacked like a deck of cards, several navigation button options.
  • Cannot customize navigation font size or color, select container background color carefully
    
    

Watch The Demo on YouTube:

    Additional articles:

• Use a List Control as a Visual Analytics Report or Page/Section Prompt
• New control prompt placement option in SAS Visual Analytics
• SAS VA: Use Custom Categories to create user-defined categories for dates, measures, or categories
• SAS VA: Automatic Actions Part 1 – Easy exploration for multiple data sources: Article | YouTube
• SAS Visual Analytics 8.1: Configuring prompts with different source data: Article | YouTube
• Tips for working with multiple data sources in SAS Visual Analytics: Article | YouTube

Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.