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

This is devastating, I just developed a whole lot of web metrics reports using data downloaded from Adhoc Analysis. The workspace won't allow me to download 50K+ row of urls, will it? Could you tell me what other tools I could use to download large number of data?

Adobe needs to reconsider this decision.  There is NO POSSIBILITY that Workspace will be an adequate replacement for Ad Hoc Analysis. 

As others have noted, manipulating the data using Java is much quicker than a web-based product ever will be.

What is the cost-savings for Adobe for eliminating their power-analysis product?

Is this a cruel joke??!

I see Workspace more as another reporting application, it's not a replacement for Ad-Hoc. It's sort of a half way point between Ad-Hoc and Reports and Analytics. Where, if I were to desire to, I could make my discovery in Ad-Hoc and export the reports to Workspace as a distribution tool. 

We don't need another report builder – we can do that outside of Adobe with a variety of applications, but we do need a discovery tool. Ad-Hoc allows you to quickly duplicate a report to drill down different dimensions, add different segments, compare different metrics to make discoveries and insights and stress test the results. In discovery I will frequently max out every report tab of every workspace tab, labeling them all along the way to refer back to. Also it allows you to easily create Segments and Calculated Metrics which I can then bring into report builder for customized dashboards that can involve things like retention rates at different steps, fall out rates, user pathing, etc. Using the Web tool I simply wouldn't have the amount of time necessary to create the amount of calculated metrics to use the report builder tool effectively.

I fear this move could reduce Adobe Analytics’ capabilities to vanity metrics. Visits year over year, visits by channel, visits by device, a basic fallout report, etc. Sure, I can use the Workspace platform as a report distribution tool. But my actionable insights would likely have to come from another analytics application. And since that’s the case I might as well just load the data I need into Tableau for my data visualization, further alienating the actual analysis from Adobe. I can see why from a “Looking Down” perspective that Adobe would think they are duplicating their efforts supporting both Ad-Hoc and Workspace, but I think the majority of users would prefer to see better integrations between the two platforms.

A huge thank you to everyone for their feedback thus far. Keep in mind that we are talking about events that are almost a year out from now - we wanted to give plenty of warning so we wouldn't pull the rug out from anyone. And based on this thread, it's a good thing the conversation started this early - workspace still definitely has some improvements to make!

We have heard your voice loud and clear that you don't want Ad Hoc to go away. Our intention is to not remove tools from your use, but rather focus our development efforts on a more refined set to better enable you in your role. Analysis Workspace is where most development and refining efforts are going to take place. Strategically, it will allow Adobe to develop more features for in-depth analysis, instead of maintaining multiple tools.

Based on responses so far, Workspace has its use for quick numbers and good visuals, but Ad Hoc is more used for deep dives and in-depth analysis. If row limit and performance weren't an issue in Analysis Workspace, what are the biggest obstacles that prevent you from from doing deep dives and thorough investigations in the tool? We have plenty of time before the tool is sunset, so the more we discuss missing critical features, the more refined and developed Workspace will be this time next year. Linking idea threads here would be ideal, and ensuring the idea thread contains use cases/struggles your organization has will allow us to ensure those features meet your needs.

Lastly, thank you for keeping things civil and professional here. I know that this is absolutely a charged topic, and I appreciate that no one's responses have come down to flaming or insults.

One of the powerful things about Ad Hoc Analysis is the ability to use the site analysis report to understand the typical pathways between 2 points on the website i.e. a flow visualization where you can define a start point and end point of the flow

(The existing workspace "flow" visualization allows you to define a start point or an end point so does not help do this).

It's going to be hugely frustrating not being able to do this kind of analysis :-(

Workspace:New flow visualization - how users navigate between 2 points 

For everyone following this thread, we are holding a webinar this Thursday that might help shed some light around this topic:

Adobe Analytics Insider Webinar: Ad Hoc Analysis migrates to Analysis Workspace

Like lots of others in here, I think it is a real shame that Ad-hoc is being killed as it is by far the best analysis tool in the AA suite. Workspace is nice for dashboards and quick analysis but doesn't hold a candle to Ad-Hoc for deeper analysis.

The one thing that would severely lessen the pain of being forced to use Workspace is if you brought in the table builder from Ad-hoc. Another user posted this idea earlier this year. https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10223#comment-224880. This would make it much quicker to create and alter reports.

Hey jen.lasser,

I wanted to take the opportunity to chime in with some thoughts.  I appreciate the transparency and the requests for feedback, and while I share the displeasure of many others in this thread, I understand Adobe's point of view - it's simply not cost effective to maintain multiple tool-sets that could potentially be rolled into one tool, ideally covering all user needs.

As someone who has (on multiple occasions) been a part of talks debating migrating an organization from Adobe Analytics to a competing tool, I can tell you that it's the 8-10% of power users in the organization that make that final call.  The remaining 90% of occasional users in the org rely on the tools that the core analytics team ultimately selects to implement.  These users tend to use the simplest, most user-friendly toolsets available.  For the 8-10%, Ad-hoc analysis, and more generally the ability to perform advanced deep dive analysis, has always been the main sticking point in these conversations - Adobe, in the past, has been ahead of the competition in this area.

However, this is less and less the case.  Knowing the advanced toolsets are being stripped out, and with little confidence in the proposed replacements, Adobe continues to lose ground in this area.  Your main competitor has recently introduced their 'advanced analysis' toolset to compete with workspace analysis.  But what's far more important and relevant than this, is they now allow for a one-click integration into an Enterprise level, cloud-based data warehouse.  This solution allows customers to use toolsets of their selection for advanced analysis (See Looker, Tableau, R, etc.) in a way that doesn't require constant limited exports and extracts of Data, and jumping through Hoops to get out of Adobe's walled garden.

What the retirement of Ad-Hoc analysis truly does, is highlight true shortcomings of the product for advanced users.  I'm obviously only one person, with knowledge of experiences and opinions from only a few colleagues at a few organizations.  While I respect the use of data to drive your product roadmap forwards, I hope you have taken customer segmentation into account, and are listening to the needs of your clients that drive analytics roadmaps within their organizations.

Real question, Jen/Adobe: what will it take to get you to reverse this decision? I honestly can't envision my day-to-day without ad hoc. If it's true that only 8% of the users utilize the tool can you also look at how much time is spent logged in to the adobe platform by those 8% verses the 92%? I bet it's close to half if not more. You're hurting your power users (likely your loudest advocates as well) and that seems like a mistake from a business perspective. Maybe it's a money saver but at what "true cost"??