Ask the Expert: Creating custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide

If you have not yet discovered the new Ask the Expert series on the SAS Training site, you are missing out on a treasure. Visit the site right now and review all of the available topics, from "Newbie" to Analytics to Visualization to good ol' SAS programming. Go on; I'll wait.

Welcome back! Amazing, right? You can get lost for hours learning new stuff or just reviewing what you thought you already knew. Some topics are available as live sessions that you can "attend" as they happen, but many of them are available on-demand, for free, no strings attached.

You might have noticed that I have a humble contribution in the "expert" collection: Developing Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide. During the 37-minute video, I lead you through the uses of SAS custom tasks and the basic steps for creating your own task. You'll learn what custom tasks can do and what they cannot do. You'll learn about the tools and APIs that support the creation of tasks. And you'll see the "inside" of a completed custom task project. (An aside: I owe a big "thank you" to the team that post-processed the recording of my expert talk -- I know that I wasn't that smooth and concise when I recorded it!)

It's a short introduction and watching it won't make you an expert in the topic, but it will help you to decide whether to learn more. You can learn more from my book on this topic, or you can arrange to attend an offering of the two-day course that we offer occasionally. Or you can learn it all on your own, as many have. There are plenty of examples and references to work from. If you're wondering what skills you should have before taking the class, watch my "about this course" video here.

In the "ask the expert" video, I referenced a collection of API libraries that make it easier to set up your custom task projects. These API libraries are available for each version of SAS Enterprise Guide, and they allow you to create tasks that are compatible with multiple versions of the SAS applications, even if you do not have those particular versions installed. (You still need at least one version of SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office in order to test and run your custom task.)

With the permission of the SAS R&D developers, I have made those libraries available here:

>> Download custom task API libraries (ZIP file 333KB)

The README.txt file in the ZIP file explains how to use the libraries.

If you have questions as you start your custom task adventures or if you just want to brag about your successes, post back here or on the SAS Enterprise Guide community. I'd love to hear from you!