In my previous post, Explaining Custom Steps using Studio Assets, we used a template to create a custom step and examined the components to get a high-level overview of what is needed to build a custom step. During this post, we will discuss how you can reduce setup and configuration time when creating custom steps by reusing the controls in the Sample Controls custom step. Watch out for my next post where we will discuss how to recycle custom steps using the SAS Studio Custom Step Repository.   Investigating Controls   The Sample Controls custom step is a fabulous asset for exploring and reusing controls for your own custom steps. Before we consider how to reduce the setup and configuration time, let’s use the Sample Controls custom step to investigate what some of the controls do.   Click   in the navigation pane to access the Steps section. On the Steps toolbar click   and select Sample Controls. Each custom step must have a minimum of one page. The Sample Controls custom step has 4 different pages. This can be seen in the topmost section of the Control Library. We will review some of the controls in the Data and Control pages. By default, the first page, Data, is selected. Looking at the properties of the page control, we can see there are two options available, ID and Label. Both have a red asterisk which indicates that they are required.   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: If you do not see this image, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the "Full" version of this post.   Let’s look at some of the other controls in the Data page control. The control labelled Input data control is a section control. Section controls can be expanded and collapsed to show and hide controls and are a great way of organizing your controls on a page. The Section control has similar properties available to the Page control. ID and Label are, again, required and we have a check box to indicate the default state of the section. The Dependencies section enables us to show or hide prompts based on the values of another prompt (investigate the Dependencies tab for more information).     Click the text under the Section control to view the properties of the Text control. The Text control is used to provide instructional text for the end user. Again, the ID property is required – which is a common property throughout the different controls.     Click the next control which has a label of Select the course table. This is an Input Table control and enables the end user to select the input table when executing the step. Again, the ID property is required but there are other optional properties so you can customize the control exactly how you would like it.     Before we move on to the Controls page, I want to point out the Data section in the Control Library and how many of the other controls there are highlighted on the Data page. Feel free to review the instructional text to investigate the other controls.     What about the controls on the Controls page? Select Controls to see the properties for the Control page. The controls listed here are from the common control section in the Control Library. Let’s highlight a few: Expand the Check box control section and select the Check box control. This is used to choose between two opposite states, actions or values.     Expand the Date and time control section and select the control with the label Date. This is the Date and Time Picker control and enables the end user to choose- in this case- a Date from a calendar.     Expand the Numeric field controls and select the Numeric stepper control. You can use the numeric stepper to move through numbers at a specified increment by using the up and down arrows. You can state the default as well as minimum and maximum values.     I also want to highlight that you can test the controls using the Sample controls custom step. Click Preview to view the controls in the user interface as a new tab. On the Data page click   and choose SASHELP as the library and CARS as the table and click OK.   For Select a single column, click   and choose Make. Notice, the columns have been listed from SASHELP.CARS. Click OK.     Click the Controls tab and expand the Date and time control section. Click   on the Date control and choose any date.   Expand the Numeric field controls section and use the numeric stepper to choose 15 as the number.       Reduce and Reuse   So how can I reduce the initial setup and configuration time when using the Designer by reusing the controls within the Sample Controls custom step?   Return to the Sample Controls.step tab and select Controls, if necessary. Expand the Drop-down list control and right-click the control labelled Static drop-down list. You have the ability to move this control up, down, to another section, or to another page. You can also duplicate, delete, cut, copy, or paste the control. Select Copy.     Click New tab then select Custom step. Right-click on the workspace area, or canvas and select Paste. Select the control labelled Static drop-down list to view the properties that have been copied and pasted. You can then modify these properties if necessary!     Reduce and reuse!   Summary   There are so many valuable assets available when learning, using and creating SAS Custom Steps for SAS Studio.   To summarize:   Use the Sample Controls custom step to learn about controls, as well as see them in action! This is particularly useful when understanding dependencies. Copy and paste controls from the Sample Controls custom step to reduce setup and configuration time when creating your custom steps. Learn more about SAS Custom Steps by attending the Developing Custom Steps using SAS Studio Analyst course.     Find more articles from SAS Global Enablement and Learning here.      ... View more

This blog enables you to demonstrate the fundamentals of custom steps using templates that are supplied with SAS Studio!   We’ll start by using a template to create a custom step and examine the components to get a high-level overview of what is needed. Then, we will explain how to use a custom step in a flow in SAS Studio or as stand-alone in SAS Studio.   This blog assumes you have a basic knowledge of building flows with SAS Studio flows. Knowledge of SAS Programming and the SAS Macro language is also necessary to create custom steps in SAS Studio, although not needed to use the templates.   What is a custom Step?   A custom step provides a user interface to enable customization of SAS code that is routinely performed by you or other SAS Studio users. It could be as simple as creating a user interface to select a date within a specified date range. Or you might not want to expose inexperienced coders to a complex program, but the program requires specific input parameters each time the code is submitted.   Explore a Custom Step Template   Let’s begin by creating a custom step using the templates available and explore some of the capabilities you’ll see when creating your own custom step.   I've already logged into SAS Studio. The starter template we will use, will create a simple custom step to rank one column from a SAS data table. The easiest method to create a custom step is to use the Designer tab, which is available in SAS Studio Analyst and SAS Studio Engineer.   Using the navigation pane, click the Steps icon. Using the Steps toolbar, click New and sample custom steps, select Starter templates, and select Basic – Rank. We are now editing a custom step.   3. The Designer tab is a visual interface to help you quickly build the JSON code for the prompt user interface. The Designer tab has three main components:   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   Controls can be added by dragging them from the extensive list in the Control Library to the workspace area, also referred to as the canvas.     The Properties pane is then used to modify the controls settings. For example, every custom step requires at least one Page control. Here the Page control ID is inPage and the label that the user will see is Rank Options. Both properties have an asterisk, which indicates they are required. You will soon see the ID  is especially important and is a common control property!     On the canvas, select the control labelled Select an input table to view the properties of the Input Table control, which has additional options compared to the Page control.   On the canvas, right-click the control labelled Select an input table. You can copy and paste any controls that already exist, which means you can bypass the initial setup and configuration when implementing your custom step. You can also move the controls up and down the canvas, move them to a different section or page, and delete them.     4. Whilst you are constructing your user interface using the Designer, the appropriate JSON code is added to the Prompt UI tab. Select the Prompt UI tab to view, and edit, the JSON code.     5. Select Program to view the SAS code that is executed when a custom step is run. Each control in the Designer tab generates one or more macro variables. The ID of each control is used to generate SAS macro variables that can be used in SAS code on the Program tab of the step. The values of these macro variables are generally derived from the user input at run time.   6. Click Preview to view the controls in the user interface as a new tab. You can add the options required in the preview to test your controls, however you cannot submit the code here. Please note the information alert that states “Input and output tables do not display in flows; they will display as ports”. We will see this in action when we use the custom step in a flow.     7. Click the Rank-Basic.step tab to return to edit the custom step tab. The vertical menu on the right side of the Designer, the custom step's Properties menu, provides access to attributes assigned to the custom step. These attributes include a summary of properties, port details, and prompt hierarchies.   8. Let’s save the custom step by clicking Save As and navigating to the Shortcut to My Folder. Confirm the custom step is named Rank-Basic and click Save. There you go! Now we have our custom step, saved from a template, let’s move on to look at the various methods of using the custom step in SAS Studio.   Using a Custom Step in SAS Studio. The first method is using the custom step in a flow. The second method is using a custom step in a tab in the SAS Studio workspace, also referred to as stand-alone. Both methods will create an output data table that includes ranked values of MSRP from the SASHELP.CARS table. Use a Custom Step in a Flow  1. On the SAS Studio toolbar, in the top left of the application, click New and select Flow.  2. If necessary, click Steps in the navigation pane and select Shared.  3. Right-click Rank-Basic and select Add to flow. 4. Now that the step has been added to the flow we refer to it as a node in the flow. When the node is selected, the node details appear under the flow canvas so that we can specify the attributes and content.   Notice there are no options to add the input and output tables and the Select a column to rank control is not yet available. We need to add the input table first. There are multiple methods of achieving this, I will go with simply add the SAS table from the libraries section of the navigation pane. Select Libraries in the navigation pane and expand SASHELP. Drag and drop the CARS table to the input port of the Rank-Basic custom step. Once the mouse tool tip says Connect to input port, you can drop the table. In the Table node details, notice the Library text field states SASHELP and the Table name text field states CARS.   5. Select the Rank – Basic node to return to the node and click Add columns on the Select a column to rank prompt. Click MSRP and select OK.   6. Check the Create a new column for the ranked column checkbox. 7. Click Run entire flow to submit the flow.   8. Select Submitted Code and Results and click Output Data (1) to view the output data.   Scroll to the right of the table and view the column named rank_MSRP that contains the ranking number. Notice the name of the output table includes a long string of random numbers and is not very memorable. 9. Let's direct the output data to a specific table and location.   Select the Flow.flw tab. Right-click the output port on the Rank - Basic node and select Add a table. In the node details on the Table Properties tab, type work in the Library field and RankData in the Table name field. Click Run entire flow to execute the flow. Select Submitted Code and Results, Output Data (1) and confirm the table name is RANKDATA.   Open a Custom Step in a Tab Let’s move on to the second method of using a custom step, which is opening directly in a tab.  1. If necessary, select Steps in the navigation pane and click Shared.  2. Right-click on Rank-Basic and select Open in a tab. This opens a stand-alone custom step as a tab in the SAS Studio workspace.   Stand-alone custom steps are session-based, so when you close the custom steps, any specified values are not saved. You can open the same custom step multiple times in the SAS Studio workspace and can provide different values for the controls to quickly compare the results. You may also have already noticed that the input and output table controls are visible when using the step as stand-alone but not when using the step in a flow.   3. Click Input data, select SASHELP, select CARS and click OK. 4. In the Select a column to rank prompt, click Add columns, select MSRP and click OK. 5. Click Output data, select WORK and type Rank in the Table field. Click OK. 6. Check the Create a new column for the ranked column checkbox. 7. Click Submit custom step.     8. Once the code is submitted, the results appear. Scroll to the right of the data table and review the rank_MSRP column.   9. Click Code panel and Log to review the log of the code that was submitted using the custom step. RANK has 428 observations and 16 variables.   SAS Studio custom steps are a great way to promote code reusability and include many more features. Look out for my next blog that shows how to access and explore other custom steps available!     ... View more

As of SAS Studio version 2022.12, there is a new generated macro variable in town!   Code development and maintenance is much simpler when using the Column Selector control as it now generates a macro variable that lists the columns selected, separated by a space.   When code is generated for a custom step, whether it’s used as stand-alone or in a flow, macro variable(s) are generated for each control in a step. The ID of each control is used to name the SAS macro variables that can be used in the SAS code for your custom step.   Prior to SAS Studio 2022.12 This custom step has been opened in a tab in the SAS Studio workspace, also referred to as stand-alone.   The Column selector control, the prompt labelled “Select columns to print”, enables users to select single or multiple columns when executing the custom step. In this case, the user has selected 4 columns to be printed. The generated macro variables for these values are named varList_1_name, varList_2_name, varList_3_name, varList_4_name.   Select any image to see a larger version. Mobile users: To view the images, select the "Full" version at the bottom of the page.   One strategy when selecting multiple columns involves iterative processing using the macro language %DO statement to list all of the columns selected, separated by a space, for example,      From SAS Studio 2022.12 and onwards From SAS Studio version 2022.12, you can use the new macro variable generated that simply lists all of the columns selected, separated by a space.   The macro variables generated previously (varList_n_name) are still generated so existing custom steps are not impacted but having one macro variable that lists the values makes coding much simpler to develop and maintain!   Summary If you have SAS Studio 2022.12 and onwards, use the generated macro variable that lists the columns selected in the Column Selector control for easier code development and maintenance!   From this: To this:     Happy Coding!   Check these articles for more information on custom steps: Viya 2020.1.5 (April 2021) – Introducing Custom Steps in SAS Studio Flow SAS Viya: Stand-Alone Custom Steps   ... View more

Hi There, The lovely Chris Hemedinger and Rick Wicklin created a graph to show the timelines of Base SAS and Enterprise Guide, I was wondering if there was anything similar for Enterprise Miner? Or at least if anyone had a list of dates and version releases that a graph could be made from? Many thanks in advance, apologies if it's a silly question! Gemma ... View more

Hi Guys, I just wanted to ask a little bit of advice on the goodness of fit normality tests that are generated using proc univariate. This may be a really silly question, but why do the p-values for the goodness of fit test change when I use estimated Mu and sigma to when I type them in? Am I misunderstanding the estimate? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. For ease, I have attached a small piece of code as an example. many thanks. ... View more

Hi Guys, I’m trying to use the PROC MEANS to calculate the mode and output it to an output dataset but it seems that if the classficiation variable is unique then it returns a missing value. Two questions, is that correct? And is there anyway around this? Little bit of code attached to demonstrate. Many thanks in advance for your help! ... View more

Hi Guys, Just a quick question about the differences in importing excel files from EG 4.1 to EG 4.2. I am currently using EG4.2 and when I "Open" an excel file it automatically launches the import data wiard- which is perfect for me as I like to be in control of my data but I am sure that when I used to open excel in EG 4.1 it simply put a short cut in there. So two questions.      Am I remembering that correctly?      If so, why has it changed? Many thanks in advance for all your help and continuing support. Gemma  ... View more