Intention to End-of-life Ad Hoc Analysis (Discover) announced

[jen_lasser]

On August 6, 2018, Adobe announced plans to end-of-life Ad Hoc Analysis, as well as the Discover point-product. Ad Hoc Analysis functionality and capabilities are being moved to Analysis Workspace. It is common practice for Adobe to announce plans to deprecate a technology at least one year in advance, to give our customers plenty of time to migrate projects, learn new workflows and ease into the transition. To ensure all users make a smooth transition, Adobe is targeting Q3 2019 to deprecate Ad Hoc Analysis. For more information, visit https://adobe.ly/discoverworkspace.

In support of this announcement, we are working toward improving 3 primary workflows in Analysis Workspace, giving you the ability to:

1) Build advanced queries, without having to wait for individual components to build

2) Download 50K rows from freeform tables

3) Remove repeat instances from Flow

A date for end-of-life/access will not be set until these workflows are improved.

This thread has been created to provide a channel for feedback about the announcement.

[ericc72426778]

Boo!!! I love ad-hoc analysis. Analysis work-space is nice, but still isn't as user friendly as ad-hoc.  Loading everything in a browser seems to be much slower. 

Could we do a poll of people that do not like this? 

[jen_lasser]

Thanks for the feedback! We are working on a solution that will allow you to build freeform tables more quickly. Would love to get your feedback if you are willing to participate in some research. Please DM me your email address if so.

[annej81175329]

I agree here, the ability to easily change rows and columns data (in particular columns with multiple dimensions), is a major benefit of ad hoc.  The tabbed interface is also a lot easier to easily see different reports of different granularity.

Its a real shame to discontinue a product that allows such rich analysis - which isn't available in workspace.  Its very difficult to get valuable business insights from workspace and perform deepdive 'analysis'.    Workspace has along way to come to get to that level.   I see this as a move which forces businesses to create their own data warehouse solutions which need data scientist to use the tools.  It takes away a valuable tool that is used by AA experts who don't necessarily have data scientist skills to use the alternative tools.

[jen_lasser]

annej81175329 aeckmanbc​ ashert33772002 I'd love to involve you in our research around more advanced query building solutions. Please DM me your email address if interested.

[Phillipuk]

"We have heard your voice loud and clear that you don't want Ad Hoc to go away....Strategically, it will allow Adobe to develop more features for in-depth analysis, instead of maintaining multiple tools."

It's nice that Adobe heard us.  Unfortunately, Adobe chose the wrong tool to focus on.  That's the bottom line from many a point of view.

[aeckmanbc]

Agree, AdHoc allows me to combine multiple dimensions to deep dive into reports much more easily and quickly. I'm happy to provide feedback to make sure this ability is in the new tool.

[jharrington7897]

Hello Adobe and thanks for posting to get feedback - I outlined some concerns here In a post about 6 months back:

Ad Hoc will no longer be supported - concerns?

Here's something that needs fixing in Workspaces:

Fix Granularity Representation on Export

One other thing I would like to see is a compact view. There's way too much effort to make it look like an i-phone I'm a data guy, we don't work on tablets that require big buttons, we work on desktops and multiple screens

I don't like a bubbly pretty interface, as it's harder to use if I have to scroll all the time - a more practical option would be great.

Example below:

My Data in Ad Hoc:

Same Data in Workspaces, same screen (I can only see 7 hours worth, where in ad-hoc you can see the whole data set and then some):

Sad it's going away, but the data supports your decision, so I respect that.

[jen_lasser]

jharrington7897: Thanks for the feedback on the condensed style sheet. Please log that idea in the forums separate from this string so we can keep the conversation going and better understand the demand.

[jharrington7897]

Sure thing Jen - This was the original request:

Analysis Workspace: Compact Report Stylesheet

[jen_lasser]

Thank you! I knew I had seen that come through before, but my searches turned up empty. Thanks for sharing again.

[Phillipuk]

Great summary.  I agree.

Ad Hoc will no longer be supported - concerns?

[katiem5932052]

You need to be able to schedule reports to deliver to FTP. My company transitioned to a new product that doesn't include Ad Hoc. I can do almost everything else I need in Workspace, but miss the ability to schedule a file to deliver to an FTP daily, weekly, monthly. Thanks!

[jen_lasser]

katiem5932052 Thanks! Can you please log this as an idea in the Forums, separate from this thread? That will help us assess demand & prioritize.

[katiem5932052]

I can post wherever you like, but need more direction. You asked for feedback on "The Forums", and I posted. Where specifically would you like me to post?

[Hyder_Ziaee]

Hi Katie,

You can create a new idea here for workspace by clicking "Submit an Idea":

Analysis Workspace - Ideas

You can also browse for ideas submitted by other users and vote for the ones you believe can help you as well.

[ashert33772002]

This is definitely going to be a blow for myself and those I work with. We live in Ad Hoc on a daily basis.

Workspace is nice for building out reports for non-Analysts but trying to drill down into data to get insights is slower. Just getting started takes more time due to the lack of a Table builder. Much nicer to assemble all the components and then run versus having to add every piece one by one.

Workspace feels to me like the much needed upgrade to the Reports and Analytics interface.

Please leave Ad Hoc for those of us who perform deeper analysis

[Christian_Peer_]

The workspace is great but without xlsx format AdHoc is not replaceable for European customers.

[Brandon_George_]

Thanks for the feedback - we would love to understand more why CSV is not sufficient (as opposed to full-blown XLSX), especially since CSV opens just fine in Excel.

[Christian_Peer_]

Hi George,

there is an existing idea xlsx-Export for Workspace

The problem is the German numeral system.

[darkstar1313]

What I write here may have come up in other places in this forum. Here in Europe, csv does not open well at all. I at least have to do a manual data import in Excel using the import wizard. Also there does not seem to be a possibility to export just one pane or freeform - only exporting the whole report is possible. What I would like to mention here are the Excel export functionality of Adobe Insight. Adobe Insight has/had the possibility to export the whole Workspace to Excel in such a way that every visualization/table in the Workspace was/is placed in a separate Excel tab. As far as I remember it was also possible to export individual visualizations by right-clicking on them.

To have this kind of Excel exporting capacity in AW would be a very good thing in my opinion, especially as AW will continue to develop. Actually the Excel exporting in Reports and Analytics is pretty good. The output Excels are clear and easy to customize. The only limitation there was/is that dashboards cannot be exported to Excel.