14 Jan 2025 A Year in Review: Top Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) Enhancements of 2024
Last year brought significant advancements to Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC), and today we’re excited to highlight the best features and updates introduced in 2024. At ClearPeaks, our consultants have meticulously tracked each release, rigorously tested the new capabilities, and shared their insights to keep you informed about OAC’s full potential.
These product updates have not only enriched the OAC experience but have also earned Oracle Analytics notable industry recognition: in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms, Oracle Analytics was positioned as a Leader, reflecting its strong execution and completeness of vision. Additionally, Oracle was recognised as Exemplary in the 2024 Ventana Research Analytics Data Platforms report, achieving an overall score of 86.3%.
Let’s dive into the features that are shaping the future of analytics!
Mastering Data with A Conversation: The Oracle AI Assistant Experience
Introduced in 2024, the Oracle AI Assistant—powered by Generative AI—revolutionises how users interact with data. This groundbreaking feature makes complex analytical processes accessible through natural language, eliminating the need for technical expertise or knowledge of SQL and making interacting with data more intuitive than ever. You can get started with it here.
Users can ask questions like “What are the sales by customer segment and city?”, and instantly receive a range of visualisations which can be dragged directly into their workbook. This empowers non-technical users to explore data effortlessly and make smarter decisions more quickly.
Not only does the AI Assistant respond to queries, but it also enhances data analysis by automatically identifying important patterns, detecting trends, spotting potential problems, and highlighting actionable insights. This proactive approach helps organisations to make smarter decisions whilst uncovering insights that might otherwise be overlooked.
What’s more, the Oracle AI Assistant learns from user interactions over time, improving its ability to deliver personalised recommendations. This accelerates workbook creation by suggesting innovative ways to visualise data, making the process faster, more efficient, and more suited to your specific needs. With features like these, the Oracle AI Assistant is set to transform the way organisations approach data analysis and decision-making.
From Static to Dynamic: OAC Parameter Advancements in Data Analytics
Parameters have long been a cornerstone of Oracle BI, but the 2024 OAC updates elevated them to new heights. Initially, they enabled basic filtering and drill-down capabilities within dashboards through features like Parameter Binding, Enhanced Parameter Validation, and Binding Parameters to Filters. However, last year brought a series of updates that enhanced performance, maximised compatibility with external data sources, and optimised ease of use, making parameters central to a customised and interactive OAC experience. These enhancements allow organisations to explore their data with greater depth and agility, making OAC a highly responsive analytics platform tailored to dynamic business needs.
Key 2024 features include:
- Dynamic Parameters and Improved Filtering – Parameters can now be dynamically assigned and modified in real time within dashboards, improving interactivity.
- Automate Filters to Exclude Specific Values – You can now flip default filter sections from “Include” to “Exclude,” providing greater control over data displays.
- Bind Parameter to Relative Time Filter – Parameters can be applied to relative time filters, Top/Bottom N visualisations, and reference lines, offering advanced customisation options.
To dive deeper into OAC parameters and their capabilities, visit our blog here.
New Relative Time Features in OAC
The July 2024 OAC update introduced the Relative Time Filter for workbooks, simplifying the process of dynamically filtering data based on time periods relative to the current date or the end of the last period (e.g., last month, last year, etc.). Gone are the days when creating dynamic reports for the last thirty days or the last three months required complex development efforts—now, it’s as simple as adding a filter to the dashboard.
This feature allows you to select data from the past, future, or present, define the time range in increments like days, months, or years, and specify how the period is measured, whether by year, month, or day. Additionally, you can choose whether to display data up to the current date or the end of the last period. This enhanced functionality offers the flexibility to adapt analyses to real-time changes or custom periods, making your data even more relevant and insightful.
Export to Excel: Making Data More Accessible
The OAC 2024 update to the Excel export feature (allowing you to export the formatted data from workbook tables, pivot tables, or embedded workbooks to Excel) is another valuable addition that enhances flexibility in data analysis. Despite the powerful capabilities within OAC, Excel continues to be the preferred tool for many users due to its familiarity and advanced manipulation features. This functionality makes it easier to share OAC data with those who may not have access to the platform, whilst allowing for further analysis or reporting in Excel. It significantly improves the workflow, providing more options for working with data and ensuring that insights are more accessible and actionable across different teams and stakeholders.
Calculation enhancements: Create Calculations more easily
Oracle, as an analytical tool, simplifies and enhances user-created calculations, enabling data exploration from multiple perspectives and permitting an effortless drill-down into specific details. One key feature supporting this is the ability to create group calculations without writing any code: users can simply right-click on a column and configure the group calculation according to their needs.
This enhancement reduces the time spent developing logical SQL statements, allowing more time to be allocated to other tasks. Additionally, Oracle provides an option for tech users to copy an expanded version of the calculation, enabling its seamless reuse across different canvases, dashboards, or locations. By pasting the calculation, users retain all references to the associated items, ensuring consistency and saving valuable time during development.
Ultimately, this feature promotes faster development and a more organised user structure. You can learn more about this feature at this link.
Advanced Conditional Formatting: Customising Visualisations for better insights
The March 2024 update introduced several new conditional formatting features that greatly enhance how data is represented and visualised. You can now access options for icons and emojis, making it easier to visually represent data trends. Reference lines for time-based categories were also added, allowing you to overlay benchmarks on time-series data, and a new formatting option for the negative Y-axis was introduced as well, helping to distinguish between positive and negative values in charts.
To improve data visibility, the update also included the ability to display negative numbers in red, making it simpler to spot negative trends or outliers at a glance. Customisation options were expanded, with conditional formatting now extending to totals and subtotals, letting you apply custom styles to summary data for better clarity. Finally, to enhance the UI consistency, filter styles were incorporated too, enabling the formatting of filters and also guaranteeing uniformity across dashboards and reports.
Conclusion
In 2024, OAC took significant steps forward with several key updates, making the platform more user-friendly, smarter, and better equipped to support business decisions.
OAC empowers businesses with intuitive decision-making through AI-driven insights, easy-to-use workflows for creating compelling data stories, and strong data governance to ensure consistency. Enhanced data visualisation and preparation tools now streamline the analysis process, and the introduction of the AI Assistant can transform how you interact with your data.
Here at ClearPeaks, our consultants have been actively testing, analysing, and sharing the latest OAC updates, helping us – and you! – stay ahead in exploiting its full potential. With each new release, we’ve been able to provide helpful blog posts and insights to assist our customers and the wider community in making the most of new features.
As well as staying abreast of the latest OAC features, we’re proud to say that our consultants have also been enhancing their skills, diligently following official Oracle training plans and getting certifications in Oracle Data Management, Oracle Generative AI, and Oracle Machine Learning. This ongoing professional development ensures that we are well-equipped to help you tackle a wide range of projects with cutting-edge solutions.
Looking to the future, we’ll keep exploring new OAC updates and expand our expertise in AI, data visualisation, and governance. ClearPeaks remains committed to leading the way and delivering solutions that help businesses unlock the full value of their data, so contact us and see what we can do for you!
