Searching for SAS Viya Administration Documentation

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Have you ever gone searching for a topic related to SAS Viya Administration in one of the major search engines, only to find a result for SAS Viya documentation on the wrong version of the SAS Viya platform? I sure have. I’m not talking about a different cadence version of the platform, but sometimes when I want to pull up results on the latest version of SAS Viya, a search engine will present me with results on the previous version of the SAS Viya platform entirely: the SAS Viya 3.5 technical documentation.

Links

Welcome to SAS Documentation: SAS Help Center

Pro-tip: How to view the latest SAS documentation: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Pro-tip-How-to-view-the-latest-SAS-documentat...

Apparently, I should use more Bookmarks 

Searching for SAS Viya topics also yields results for SAS Viya 3.5 topics. Search engine optimization works in mysterious ways.  

What’s that, dear reader? You say I should be using bookmarked documentation links instead of searching for them? You are probably right, and the author will endeavor to improve his habits. In my defense, searching for topics will often yield interesting SAS Communities posts or posts like this one on the topic too. For those times when I’ve landed on the wrong version of the technical documentation, previously this involved going back to the search engine and trying different results.  

Introducing the “All versions” link 

Now even when you land on SAS Viya 3.5 Administration documentation, there’s a new “All versions” link.  

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This link will take you to a page (SAS Viya Install Center | SAS Support) where you can easily navigate to find SAS Administrator resources on the three major releases of SAS platforms: SAS Viya 4, SAS Viya 3.5, and SAS 9.4. You can also visit the SAS Administrator hub (SAS Administrators | SAS Support) from this link too. 

Finally, a way forward rather than clicking “Back”. 

Navigation Between Versions and Administration Domains 

As a reminder, once on SAS Viya 4 documentation, you can navigate to a different cadence version using the content version picker drop-down menu. 

SAS Viya documentation is divided into two different domains: SAS Viya Platform Administration, and SAS Viya Platform Operations. Expanding “Other Resources” in the Table of Contents container will allow you to switch between the content domains, no matter which one you are on.  

The trouble for me has been getting to the right SAS Viya Platform version documentation from search engine searches. The moral of this story is that I will strive to use more bookmarks. However, when I revert to my old habits, the “All versions” button will be there to help you (and me) find the documentation we need more quickly.  

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