Tag: SAS Enterprise Guide

Adding Metacoda Custom Tasks Capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide

When you install Metacoda Custom Tasks for use in SAS® Enterprise Guide® and the SAS® Add-In for Microsoft Office you may find you don’t see the new menu items you expected in the Tools menu:

There are 2 main reasons why they may be missing: 1) the custom tasks could not be loaded, perhaps due to an issue during installation; and 2) you are not being granted access to the custom tasks due to your metadata roles and capabilities. The first issue is usually quite easy to resolve. This post is about the second scenario because it can be somewhat harder to troubleshoot.

Roles and capabilities are used in the SAS platform to control access to SAS application features such as menu items in SAS Enterprise Guide. In a new SAS platform installation the PUBLIC group (which includes everyone) is a member of the Enterprise Guide: Advanced role, and that role grants all capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide. That means, by default, all users have access to all of the controllable features in SAS Enterprise Guide. Some SAS customers change this, as may be required for their security plan, by removing the PUBLIC group and replacing it with more appropriate groups for their environment, and perhaps create additional roles with the required capabilities. It is in this scenario where you may find your capability set is preventing access to the Metacoda Custom Tasks. Continue reading “Adding Metacoda Custom Tasks Capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide”

Next Up: SAS Enterprise Guide Custom Tasks Course in Sydney

I’m on my way back from SAS® Global Forum 2016 (#SASGF), where I heard all about the all new SAS Viya™ platform, and the next exciting thing on my agenda is attending Chris Hemedinger’s course Developing Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide in Sydney on 3-4 May (it’s also on in Melbourne on 5-6 May).

If you’re interested in extending SAS Enterprise Guide to create useful tools for SAS EG users in your organization then you won’t want to miss the opportunity to attend this course. It is written and delivered by the guy that literally wrote the book on SAS EG custom tasks after all!

Custom Tasks BookI first read Chris’ book Custom Tasks for SAS® Enterprise Guide® Using Microsoft .NET back in 2013 and wrote a blog post about it and how I found it useful in building a couple of custom tasks to query metadata: a Metadata Table Finder and Metadata Column Finder. Incidentally Metacoda provides these customs tasks for free if you want to use them with your SAS platform installation.

I’m looking forward to this course to find about more about creating custom tasks, fill in a few blanks, and generally pick Chris’ brains for a couple of days! :)

If you want to find out more about the course, or reserve a place, then I’d suggest you contact SAS Education soon via the contacts details on the course page.

Hope you see you there!

Reading ‘Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide Using Microsoft .NET’

Chris Hemedinger’s new book Custom Tasks for SAS® Enterprise Guide® Using Microsoft .NET was recently released. If you have an idea for a really useful additional task you’d like to build for SAS Enterprise Guide, I strongly encourage you to read this book and find out how. I certainly got alot out of reading it and learning from Chris’ knowledge and experience.

I think I first spotted this book title about a year ago on SAS Publishing’s Upcoming Titles page. Since then I had been eagerly anticipating its release, so when it became available I was very keen to read it. I even got to provide a review for it too. You can read my review, along with several others, on the book’s reviews page.

One of the things I mentioned in my review was my desire to write a custom task to query SAS metadata from within SAS Enterprise Guide. After finishing the book, going through it a second time to pick up the bits I missed first time around :) , I then busily set about my .. hmm .. well .. ‘task’ …

…. and then sometime later I had a working ‘Metadata Column Finder‘ task. Here’s a screenshot of it in action: Continue reading “Reading ‘Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide Using Microsoft .NET’”

Password Encoding with SAS

Quick note from Paul: I’m really excited that platformadmin.com’s very first guest post is from the well known blogger and author Tricia Aanderud. I suspect you already know Tricia, but just in case you don’t …

Tricia Aanderud, president of And Data, Inc., provides SAS® consulting services to corporations who need assistance understanding how to transform their data into meaningful charts, reports, and dashboards. Tricia has been an enthusiastic SAS user since 2002 and has presented papers at the SAS Global Forum and other industry conferences. She is the co-author of two SAS BI books, “Building Business Intelligence with SAS: Content Development Examples” and “The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes”.

Now over to Tricia …

I frequently find myself querying the metadata to assist with understanding a new customer system or trying to navigate one of my demo systems. As a result, I find I have many utilities that I want to share with customers. However, since these connect to the metadata with an active password, I don’t want to share my password. Using the SAS PWENCODE procedure, I can encode my password in a SAS program and voilà! a way to share the code and shield the password.

Encoding the Password

The PWENCODE procedure allows you to encode passwords that are used in place of plaintext passwords in SAS programs.

The following figure shows the PWENCODE procedure in a simple way. My example password, Pa55w0rd!, is placed in quotes. You can use different encoding methods, which you can read more about in the SAS PWENCODE procedure documentation.

The encoded password appears in the Continue reading “Password Encoding with SAS”

New Book: The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes

At the SAS® Global Forum 2012 last month I picked up a copy of “The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes“, the latest book from the dynamic writing duo, Tricia Aanderud & Angela Hall.

As it happens, my partner Michelle also won a copy in a draw so we actually got 2 copies! We met Tricia and Angela in person too, and they kindly signed both books for us. Michelle is giving her signed copy away as a random door prize at our local SAS user group meeting (QUEST) later this month, so if you are in the vicinity of Brisbane at the end of May Continue reading “New Book: The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes”