SAS Visual Analytics: Path Analysis

[bobbyfajardo]

Hi SAS Community,  

Inspired by the SAS student tracking lesson in SAS VA Part 2 training, I'm designing a path analysis object that allows me to track unique IDs.  Each unique ID has a unique interaction with the event variable using a time variable. 

I'd like to be able to extrapolate the path analysis node and links. gather data on the Unique IDs in the links who are continuing and dropping-off. 

When I maximize the object, I can only see a table of the Type, Event, From Node, To Node, Path Freq by Link.  This object would be more help if I could at least add more column details about the unique ID and the corresponding variables. Ideally, I need this to perform as a website customer behavior dashboard similar to the Google Analytics dashboards. 

Do you have any advice or work arounds? 

Best, Rob

P.s. I'm using SAS Viya VA 9.4 Version 3.4.

[Sam_SAS]

Hi Rob,

If I understand correctly, you want to see the detail data (specific instances of your unique IDs).

The Path Analysis object is really intended to show aggregated data. However, you can explore the data in a path selection by creating a new object from it.

See "Explore Path Data as a New Object" here:

https://documentation.sas.com/?cdcId=vacdc&cdcVersion=7.5&docsetId=vaobj&docsetTarget=p0iff44qtc0ncl...

I'm not sure if this feature (exploring as new object) can be used as a self-service tool in a production report. It is primarily intended as a data exploration tool for report authors.

Let us know if that helps.

Sam

[bobbyfajardo]

Hi Sam,

Thank you for sharing the documentation. We still have a problem with the limited functionality of the Path Analysis object in Report Viewer mode. 

In report viewer mode, the "Add path filter", "New Path Filter from Selection", and "New Object from Selection" options are not available. I'm wondering if you can point me to any documentation for adding this feature for end consumers.  

Background:

Our organizational roles are currently divided between developers and viewers.  Staff with developer access can view in edit mode and report mode, however, non-developer access only have the option to view reports.  

Is there anything that can help guide our IT team and db admins to "turn-on" these filtering and new-object features?  

Best, Rob

[bobbyfajardo]

If not possible: how can we get this added on the next SAS Viya update. 

[Sam_SAS]

In recent versions of Visual Analytics, you can enable the report consumer to customize their view by changing data assignments, filters, and so on.

But Path Analysis still does not support path filters for report consumers, to the best of my knowledge.

You can request this as a feature here:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/SASware-Ballot-Ideas/idb-p/sas_ideas/label-name/sas%20visual%20analyt...

Another possibility is to use a third-party (for example, D3) visualization in a Data Driven Content object. But I am not sure if a suitable Sankey/Pathing visualization exists.

Sam

[bobbyfajardo]

Thank you Sam. I appreciate your quick replies. We are looking into ways to allow permitted users to edit the report and save to their folder. 

Hopefully SAS will have sometime to build additional features on this object. It certainly has potential

Best, Rob

[Sam_SAS]

I think that ideally, you would be able to configure a pathing object as the source of a filter action. But this is not supported. My understanding is that there are implementation challenges in the way that Pathing is implemented.

For what it's worth, the project management for VA is aware of your request. Hopefully we can cover this functionality in one way or another in a future release.

Sam