Note for users transferring their reports from Viya 3.5 to 4: Welcome! You're going to receive an error when you follow these instructions! But worry not; the "Troubleshooting" section at the end outlines the extra steps you'll need to follow to ensure everything works correctly.
SAS Viya for Learners is a full suite of cloud-based analytics software. It’s free for anyone with an academic email, accessible quickly and easily in-browser, and is, in my opinion, the quickest way to get from concepts to hands-on in teaching and learning analytics.
So, what’s the catch?
Without boring you with the software architectural details (which is code for “I don’t actually know the software architectural details”), the way we’re able to have concurrent users from across the globe all connect at the same time is by splitting users across multiple environments.
This is fantastic for stability and accessibility… Not so great when it comes to sharing content.
In a commercial environment, sharing a report in Explore and Visualize (aka SAS Visual Analytics) is as easy as clicking the three-dot menu button next to the save icon and selecting "Share report":
Yup. That easy.
But in Viya for Learners, with users spread out on different environments, sharing just isn’t possible.
So that's it, we're out of luck? We are not. Sharing reports is still doable, just with a little bit of behind-the-scenes ingenuity.
The trick is that every report can be exported as code, and then imported by another user.
Important! Before following these steps, keep in mind that any data being referenced in the report (i.e., the data loaded into memory) must be exactly the same for both the sharer and the recipient, including the name of the data file. This isn’t typically an issue if you're using a pre-loaded dataset like those that are part of our many digital learning courses (shout out to SAS Skill Builder), but if you’re using custom data, just ensure that the recipient has uploaded exactly the same dataset being referenced. If the datasets differ in any way, certain parts of the report may display incorrectly or not at all.
With that out of the way, here are the steps to export your report:
With your report open, press Ctrl+Alt+B to open the diagnostics tool. It will look something like this:
Click the "Save" icon ( )and follow the prompt to save the report code as a .txt file to your computer (note that if you haven't changed your browser download settings, it may just default to save in your local "Downloads" folder):
Send that file to the intended recipient.
On the other end, to view the report:
Open Viya for Learners and navigate to "Explore and Visualize"
Create a "New Report"
In the new, blank report, press Ctrl+Alt+B to open the diagnostics tool (it will look the same as above).
Click the "Clear all" button to clear the existing code.
Open the .txt file you received and select all/copy the code. In Notepad (the default for Windows users), you can select all with Ctrl+A and copy with Ctrl+C, or simply select these commands from the "Edit" menu.
Back in SAS Viya for Learners, either click the "Paste" button or click anywhere in the blank code window and hit Ctrl+V to paste the code.
Click the "Load" button in the top left, and...
That's it! As long as the datasets are consistent, you'll see the exact same beautiful report.
Troubleshooting:
Issue: When you click "Load" in step 7, you receive an error: "An error was encountered loading the data [Dataset Name]."
Solution: The likeliest explanation is a minor difference in the code that references the location of the dataset, meaning your report is simply trying to pull the data from an invalid location. And for those of you here about transferring reports from Viya 3.5 to 4, this is the error we mentioned at the top. Fortunately, it's an easy fix!
Click "Close" to get rid of the error.
Open the "Data source menu" in the Data panel:
Select "Replace [Dataset Name]" and either select the correct dataset from the list, or upload it using the "Import Data" button.
If you run into any other issues, leave a note in the comments below! And if you're an educator and want to learn more about how you can use tools like SAS Viya for Learners in the classroom, drop us a line at academic@sas.com.
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