July 2025

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Through the years: SAS Enterprise Guide versions
Chris Hemedinger charts the evolution of SAS Enterprise Guide from version 1.0 in 1999 to 8.6 in 2025, highlighting key milestones, platform updates, and how EG has adapted to support SAS Viya and Workbench.

Dear Reader,

If Generative AI is on your radar (and let’s be honest—how could it not be?), you’re exactly where you need to be.

Gartner agrees: SAS has been named an Emerging Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Emerging Market Quadrant for Generative AI Engineering! This recognition highlights SAS’s strengths in full-model lifecycle management, multi-agent orchestration, and synthetic data generation. These capabilities are key to building GenAI solutions that go beyond simple prompting and actually deliver trustworthy, production-ready results.

What’s exciting is how this aligns with what we’re seeing across industries: organizations are looking for GenAI tools that are secure, scalable, and smart. SAS Viya’s embedded GenAI features are helping customers do just that… boosting productivity, improving ROI, and supporting responsible innovation.

Stick around for the usual tips, tricks, guides, events, and all the good stuff to help you get the most out of SAS!

Cheers,

Thiago De Souza

Editor, SAS Tech Report

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Tech tips with Chris

This month, I was inspired by this community question (and the responses!): When is your SAS program good enough? We’ve all been there—staring at a SAS program wondering, “What was I thinking when I wrote this?”

A good SAS program isn’t just one that runs without errors (though that’s a great start). It’s one that’s clear, reliable, and easy to maintain—even if someone else has to pick it up months later. Or worse… you have to pick it up months later.

Here are a few qualities that make a SAS program shine:

Readable: Use meaningful names, clean formatting, and comments that explain why you did something—not just what you did.
Modular: Break things into chunks. Macros, reusable steps, and logical flow make your code easier to tweak and reuse.
Resilient: Build in checks for missing data, weird values, and unexpected hiccups.
Documented: Leave breadcrumbs! Version notes, assumptions, and usage tips go a long way.
Efficient: Don’t waste cycles. Optimize where it counts, especially with big data.

And some best practices to keep your code in tip-top shape:

Use version control (Git is your friend).
Test your logic with sample data or known outputs.
Automate repetitive stuff with macros or templates.
Review and refactor—your future self will thank you.

Tell me: what are your best tips for writing good programs?

Tips & tricks

SAS Tutorial | Creating a Custom Step, Part 4: Running Your Step
You’ve planned, built, and coded a custom step. There’s only one thing left to do: run it! In this final installment of the Creating a Custom Step series, follow along with SAS Senior Analytical Training consultant Danny Modlin as he shows you two ways to run a custom step.

Unlocking the power of SAS Procedures
Learn how SAS Procedures power a wide range of analytics and discover a new cheat sheet designed to help users work more efficiently.

Resetting Report States using the Reports API and SAS® Viya Jobs
Discover how to use the Reports API and SAS Viya Jobs to create a "Reset Filters" button that returns Visual Analytics reports to their default state, helping users clear filters quickly and easily.

Strengthen your SAS skills with the WEEK function
Rick Wicklin shows you how to use the WEEK function in SAS to accurately assign week numbers to dates using ISO standards, including handling leap weeks and year transitions.

5 Steps for Starting your AI Journey
Explore the strategy and execution to help you and your organization begin your trustworthy AI journey in this new blog series. Part 1 explores the foundational steps to take while embarking on your AI journey with clarity and purpose, while Part 2 addresses moving from strategy to execution, scaling AI responsibly and unlocking its full potential.

Fighting fraud, waste, and abuse in health care: How SAS is democratizing AI for payment integrity
SAS is redefining health care fraud prevention with a new Payment Integrity solution that uses low-code AI to help analysts and business users detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse faster and more effectively.

The ultimate guide to maximizing your amusement park experience
Discover how SAS Optimization and Visual Analytics can help amusement park visitors plan smarter, skip long lines, and enjoy more attractions through personalized, data-driven itineraries.

Creating an Onboarding Scheduled Journey in Customer Intelligence 360
Learn how to configure an onboarding journey in SAS Customer Intelligence 360 using scheduled tasks and journey conditions to guide new users through personalized experiences.

SAS/CONNECT on SAS Viya with Kerberos
Get step-by-step guidance on configuring SAS/CONNECT in SAS Viya to use Kerberos authentication, enabling secure, seamless connections between SAS clients and services.

Use case

AI transforms online insurance services
HUK24 uses SAS Viya to power its AI-driven digital platform, transforming its website into a reliable virtual insurance assistant that improves customer trust, speeds up service, and delivers context-aware responses from the first interaction 1.

For developers

The Best of Both Worlds: Using SAS and R Together in SAS Viya Workbench
In this SAS Communities article, Shelby Taylor explains that with a shared file system and support for notebooks across multiple languages, SAS Viya Workbench lets you mix and match SAS and R in the same project. It's a flexible, modern setup that keeps everything connected and in sync — so you can stay focused on the data, not the logistics.

SAS Bowl LIII, SAS Hackathon 2025
It's that time of year. The brightest minds from around the world come together to use SAS Analytics, AI and open source on Microsoft Azure to collaborate in the #SAShackathon. Registration is now open (through August 31) and the Hack runs from September 15 through October 11. The SAS Hackathon is such a great event, we're featuring it in the August edition of the SAS Bowl.

User group news

Early registration for Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) ends Aug. 4
Everyone wants to save money, so don't forget to get your early registration in for WUSS. Prices are the lowest they'll be. And there are special deals for Academic attendees and military service members. Register today!

Lots of deals on early registration for Southeast SAS Users Group (SESUG)
Sign up for SESUG before Aug. 11 and save money. Will this be your first SESUG? You can save even more. Students, government and military also save money, so don't delay. Register today!

MidWest SAS Users Group (MWSUG) Call for Presentations
SAS is so rich in function and application that everyone is an expert on something. This year, share your expertise with fellow users at MWSUG 2025. Proposals are due Aug. 15. Early registration is also open. We hope to see you there!

Upcoming learning events

(Each is one hour and complimentary unless stated otherwise.)

Ask the Expert: Credit Risk Decisioning Using Intelligent Decisioning on SAS® Viya®
Join SAS' Carla Boustany and Carl Eastwood at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., August 5 to discover how Intelligent Decisioning on SAS Viya can help streamline credit originations, improve risk management and boost productivity. This webinar will explore new features designed to enhance decision-making efficiency while minimizing risk and customer friction. You will learn about:

How some of the new features can be applied to credit risk decisioning.
Best practices from SAS credit risk decisioning experts.

Ask the Expert: ESP Project Containers – How to Enhance ESP Models Deployment and Operationalization
Join SAS' Sindu Kumar, Aaron White and Frédéric Combaneyre at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., August 12 to learn the benefits of project containers and how to create and run them using SAS Event Stream Processing clients. You’ll see how containerized models simplify the promotion and lifecycle management of event stream processing models. You will:

Understand the benefits of project containers.
See a demonstration of how to create and run project containers using ESP clients.
Understand how containerized models can simplify deployment, integration and the promotion and lifecycle management of ESP models.

Ask the Expert: Seamlessly Integrate With External Channels Using Customer Intelligence 360 Custom T...
Join SAS' Bojan Belovic at 9:00 a.m. ET on Tues., August 19 to discover how to turn complex MarTech ecosystems into coordinated, customer-focused journeys with Customer Intelligence 360. You will learn more about:

Custom task types and connectors.
How to use custom task types to create seamless connections to external delivery platforms and the benefits of such integration.
The differences between triggers and bulk custom tasks.
Best practices when configuring custom tasks.
Technical aspects of custom tasks, connector configuration and deployment.

Ask the Expert: From Dashboard to Autopilot: How SAS Visual Analytics on SAS® Viya® Transforms the A...
Join SAS' Ted Stolarczyk at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tues., August 26 to learn whether you’re a report builder (driver) or a report viewer (passenger), this webinar will reveal how the new Viya platform puts you in the fast lane of analytics innovation, speed and self-service. You will:

Understand the practical benefits of migrating to or starting fresh with SAS Viya.
See live demos of new features such as natural language generation, modern visualization and tighter AI/machine learning (ML) integration.
Learn how SAS is investing in the future of visual analytics with cloud-first thinking, open integration and automation.