What's New in the SAS Add-In 4.3 for Microsoft Office

Overview

The SAS Add-In 4.3 for Microsoft Office is available in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Outlook. Although some functionality is unique to a specific Microsoft Office application, most functionality is similar in each Microsoft application.
The SAS Add-In 4.3 for Microsoft Office has the following changes and enhancements:
  • integration with Microsoft Outlook
  • an improved user interface
  • a more robust automation interface
  • the ability to edit a data source and new options for viewing data sources
  • longer names and custom filters for SAS Information Maps
  • a new OLAP Viewer for working with OLAP cubes
  • the ability to send and replicate results
  • the ability to specify input streams and output parameters for a SAS Stored Process
  • new and enhanced SAS tasks
Note: The SAS Add-In 4.3 for Microsoft Office runs on SAS 9.2 and SAS 9.3. For the latest information about the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, see http://support.sas.com/software/products/addin.

Integration with Microsoft Outlook

The SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office is now available in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Outlook 2007. Here are some key features of using the SAS add-in in Microsoft Outlook:
  • view SAS reports, SAS dashboards, and SAS dashboard indicators
  • share a SAS report, SAS dashboard, or SAS dashboard indicator with others at your site by sending the results in an e-mail, scheduling a meeting, or assigning a task

Improvements to the User Interface

In Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, the SAS tab in the Ribbon has been simplified. Additional groups become available depending on the type of SAS content that you select.
When you want to run a task, you are always prompted to select the data source. You are not required to use the selected data source as the input for the task.

Enhancements to the Automation Interface

You can write Visual Basic scripts to automate the functionality in the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. Using the automation interface, you can perform the following tasks:
  • insert a stored process, report, data view, or PivotTable into your Microsoft Office document.
  • refresh SAS content that is generated by a stored process, report, information map, or task. You can also refresh data views and PivotTables.

Enhancements to Editing and Viewing Data Sources

  • In Microsoft Excel, you can now edit any data source that is accessible from a SAS server.
  • By default, in Microsoft Excel, SAS data is opened into an Excel Table that uses Microsoft Excel formats. You can change the default by using the Open data into an Excel Table option on the Data tab in the SAS Options dialog box.
  • You can specify how many data sources to keep in recent history. You can specify this value by using the Number of items to display in recent data list option on the Data tab in the SAS Options dialog box.

Longer Names and Custom Filters for SAS Information Maps

  • The SAS add-in can open information maps with names longer than 32 bytes in length. (This functionality is available if you are running SAS 9.3 or you have applied the third maintenance release for SAS 9.2 at your site.)
  • You can create a custom filter for an information map. This custom filter is available only during your current session and is not saved to the information map.

New OLAP Viewer for Working with OLAP Cubes

The new OLAP Viewer enables you to view data that is stored in an OLAP (online analytical processing) cube. Using the OLAP Viewer, you can create table and graph views of your data. You can also drill down through the data, create bookmarks, add calculated measures and calculated members, filter the OLAP data, and view ESRI maps.

Sending and Replicating Results

  • You can now send results from Microsoft PowerPoint or Word to a workbook in Microsoft Excel.
  • After you run a report in Microsoft Outlook, you can send the results to Microsoft Excel, Word, or PowerPoint.
  • You can replicate SAS content. Replicated content and the original content are treated as different SAS jobs.

Specifying Input Streams and Output Parameters for a SAS Stored Process

SAS stored processes are created in SAS applications such as SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Management Console. If a stored process allows input streams, then you are prompted to select a range of Excel data that will be used as the input data for a stored process. If a stored process contains output parameters, then you are prompted to select which output parameters to include in the results.

New and Enhanced SAS Tasks

New Tasks

  • Map Chart creates a two-dimensional (choropleth) or three-dimensional (block and prism) color map that shows the variation in the value of a response variable for different geographical areas, such as counties, states, and countries.
  • Scatter Plot Matrix creates a paneled graph of scatter plots for multiple combinations of variables. You can use options to overlay fit plots and ellipses on your scatter plots.
  • Tile Chart enables you to create a tile chart. A tile chart is a rectangular tree map that enables you to view a large quantity of hierarchical data in a limited space. Each unique category combination is represented by a rectangular tile whose size and color are determined by response variables. These tiles are placed in a hierarchical arrangement.

Task Enhancements

  • If the input data source for a SAS task is from a DBMS engine, then SAS uses the sort functionality on the database to sort the data before running the task. Using the database functionality rather than the SORT procedure, which is used for files that are not saved to a database, optimizes the performance of the SAS task.
  • To enable the SAS add-in to run tasks in a SAS grid computing environment, select the new Generate ODS macros option instead of the ODS statement option on the Results tab in the SAS Options dialog box. By generating ODS macro variables, the SAS add-in can set the value of these macro variables each time a SAS job is submitted. No ODS statements are generated because the ODS results are generated on the grid node and do not need to be generated again when the SAS add-in returns the results to the Microsoft application.
  • The following tasks now support the DTQTR, DTMONTH, and DTDAY datetime intervals:
    • ARIMA Modeling and Forecasting
    • Basic Forecasting
    • Prepare Time Series Data
    • Regression Analysis with Autoregressive Errors
  • In the Principal Component task, you can create these new plots:
    • a pattern profile plot. The value on the Y-axis is the correlation between the variable and the principal component.
    • pattern component plots. Each observation on the plot is the correlation between the variable and the two corresponding components on the plot. You can choose whether to plot the patterns in a vector.
  • The interface for the Random Sample task has been redesigned.
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