SAS Visual Analytics for Enterprise Reporting Training Course

Course overview

Enterprise reporting teams often have data available in SAS Viya but struggle to turn it into governed, reusable reports that answer operational questions quickly. Analysts may rely on static exports, create inconsistent calculations across departments, or publish dashboards that look polished but do not support filtering, drill-down, exception management, or confident decision-making. This course addresses the practical work of designing SAS Visual Analytics reports that business users can explore without compromising data definitions, security expectations, or reporting standards.

Participants learn to build interactive reports in SAS Visual Analytics using prepared data, report pages, objects, roles, filters, parameters, calculated items, aggregated measures, display rules, and linked interactions. They work with tables, crosstabs, bar charts, time series, geo maps, KPI objects, and decision-support visualisations, selecting each object for a defined reporting question. The course also covers prompt-driven reporting, drilling from summary metrics to supporting detail, report navigation, export and distribution options, and techniques for validating calculations before publication.

Instruction combines instructor demonstrations with guided build exercises using an enterprise reporting case study. Participants develop a multi-page SAS Visual Analytics management report from a supplied business data set, including audience-specific pages, interactive controls, calculated metrics, exception highlighting, and documented report logic. They leave with a completed report design, a reusable reporting checklist, and practical methods for translating stakeholder questions into governed visual analytics content.

The course is best suited to analysts and reporting professionals who already work with organisational data and need to create production-quality reports in SAS Visual Analytics rather than perform statistical modelling or SAS platform administration.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Build multi-page SAS Visual Analytics reports using pages, containers, report objects, and navigation controls
• Prepare report-ready data by assigning categories, measures, formats, geographic roles, and data item properties
• Create calculated items and aggregated measures for business metrics such as variance, ratios, and period comparisons
• Configure prompts, parameters, filters, and control objects to create audience-driven interactive reports
• Design linked visualisations using interactions, brushing, drilling, and detail-on-demand behaviour
• Apply display rules, reference lines, thresholds, and conditional formatting to highlight reporting exceptions
• Validate report calculations, totals, filters, and aggregation behaviour before publishing content
• Produce a documented enterprise report prototype with stakeholder requirements, page layouts, and metric definitions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Business Intelligence Analysts — who must convert governed SAS data into interactive management reports
• Data Analysts — who need to replace spreadsheet-based reporting with reusable visual analytics content
• SAS Programmers — who prepare SAS data and want to present it through self-service report interfaces
• Reporting Analysts — who create recurring operational, financial, customer, or performance reports
• Business Analysts — who need to translate stakeholder questions into filters, metrics, and dashboard views
• Analytics Managers — who set reporting standards and review the quality of published SAS Visual Analytics reports

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable working with tabular business data and interpreting common measures such as counts, sums, averages, percentages, dates, and categories. Prior experience navigating a browser-based analytics or reporting tool is useful, as is familiarity with the organisation’s reporting terminology and key performance indicators. Basic SQL or SAS programming knowledge can help when discussing data sources, but neither is required because the course focuses on report design in SAS Visual Analytics. Participants do not need prior experience with statistical modelling, machine learning, SAS administration, or building CAS tables.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led demonstrations followed by structured builds in SAS Visual Analytics. Participants work from a realistic enterprise reporting brief, progressing from data inspection and object selection to calculations, controls, interactions, and publication-ready layouts. Exercises require participants to diagnose misleading aggregates, select suitable visualisations, and defend design choices against stakeholder requirements. Small-group report critiques focus on usability, metric clarity, and governance. On the final day, each participant refines an end-to-end report prototype and creates an application plan for a live reporting requirement.

Course outline

Day 1: SAS Visual Analytics foundations and report planning

• SAS Viya and SAS Visual Analytics reporting workflow
• Navigating the report designer and data pane
• Understanding categories, measures, dates, and geographic data items
• Assigning formats, classifications, and data item properties
• Selecting report objects for operational and management questions
• Creating report pages, layouts, containers, and object placement
• Defining stakeholder questions, KPIs, and report acceptance criteria

Workshop: Participants convert a management reporting brief into a report storyboard, page structure, KPI list, and object-selection plan.

Day 2: Visualisation design and business metric construction

• Building list tables, crosstabs, and detail tables
• Designing bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, and treemaps
• Using time series and date hierarchies for trend reporting
• Configuring geo maps and geographic data roles
• Creating calculated items with arithmetic and conditional expressions
• Creating aggregated measures and managing aggregation levels
• Using reference lines, targets, and comparison measures

Workshop: Participants build a performance analysis page containing trend, regional, product, and detailed variance views with calculated business measures.

Day 3: Interactivity, prompts, and guided analysis

• Applying report-level, page-level, and object-level filters
• Creating button bars, drop-down lists, sliders, and text input controls
• Building parameters for user-selected measures and thresholds
• Configuring linked selections and object interactions
• Using drill-down hierarchies and drill-through navigation
• Adding detail-on-demand and data tips for supporting evidence
• Designing audience-specific report pages and navigation paths

Workshop: Participants create a prompt-driven dashboard in which users select period, region, metric, and threshold before drilling to exception detail.

Day 4: Enterprise report usability, exceptions, and validation

• Applying display rules and conditional formatting
• Building KPI objects, gauges, and key value displays
• Designing exception-based reporting with thresholds and alerts
• Managing sorting, ranking, Top N filters, and missing values
• Testing totals, filters, joins, and aggregation behaviour
• Applying accessibility, colour, labelling, and layout principles
• Reviewing report performance and simplifying high-cost designs

Workshop: Participants audit a flawed operational dashboard, correct calculation and interaction issues, and produce an exception-reporting page.

Day 5: Publication-ready reporting and workplace application

• Preparing reports for desktop, mobile, and presentation consumption
• Exporting report content, data, and visualisations appropriately
• Using report prompts and links in recurring reporting processes
• Understanding sharing, permissions, and governed report access
• Documenting metric definitions, assumptions, and filter logic
• Conducting stakeholder review and report usability testing
• Creating a SAS Visual Analytics implementation roadmap

Workshop: Participants complete and present a multi-page enterprise report prototype, accompanied by a metric dictionary, test checklist, and workplace application plan.

Tools & standards covered

SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Viya, SAS Studio, SAS Environment Manager

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions