Every quarter, Vena releases a seasonal update with new features, improvements to existing functionality, and bug fixes. However, it’s easy for these updates to slip under the radar and for some very useful items to go unnoticed. In this article, we are summarizing what we found to be the most exciting updates so far in 2025.
Drill Saves/Drill Transactions within Vena Ad Hoc Reports
In Winter 2025, Vena added the Drill Transaction and Drill Saves features to their ad hoc reports. Ad hoc reports let you quickly explore your data using drag-and-drop functionality to arrange your mappings and dimensions. This is especially useful for one-off checks or quick analyses when you want to validate data or spot trends without building a full report. These functions are already available in regular Vena reports and are very helpful for finding the “why” behind your data, as well as troubleshooting when you see something unexpected. Drill Saves allows you to check how your data has changed over time and who changed it. Meanwhile, Drill Transactions allows you to attach a transactional data table to your model to see all the transactions that make up your data point saved within Vena. The combination of Drill Saves and Drill Transactions within ad hoc reports makes it a powerful tool for examining your data at a moment’s notice without needing a technical background in Vena building. This makes it ideal for users who do not have manager access in Vena but still need to dive deep into their data. If you are new to ad hoc reports and want to get started but don’t know how, just check with one of our consultants when they’re around or send them a quick message.
New Pre-Built Data Pipelines, including SAP S/4HANA
This summer, Vena added new pre-built data pipelines powered by Microsoft Fabric. The one we recognize as the most useful for our customers is the direct connection with SAP S/4HANA. This connection means that you can easily incorporate your SAP S/4HANA data into your Vena model, allowing for live data access and frequent updates without the need to set up external connectors. Vena is also adding connectors for Deltek Vantagepoint, Acumatica, and Xero. This feature is currently in closed beta, so if you’re interested in getting an early look, please reach out to us to be included in the testing process.
Vena CoPilot Report Building
A third feature we found quite useful is Vena’s new CoPilot reporting agent. This feature, from the Spring ’25 release, allows users to ask natural language questions to their Vena CoPilot agent to create mapped ad hoc reports within Vena. For example, you could ask, “What’s my monthly revenue for 2024 comparing budget to actuals?” and Vena CoPilot will generate that exact report in ad hoc form, allowing you to download it and view the live data. This can be very helpful for users with no technical Vena experience to make the most of their data and gain insights, even if the exact setup isn’t available yet. This feature does require a CoPilot model set up according to your specific data model, as well as CoPilot licenses. If you are interested in this feature or want to try out Vena CoPilot in general, please reach out to us or your Vena CSM to learn more about getting started with a CoPilot license and setup.
Sneak Peek: Vena AI Planning Agent
In the Summer ’25 release, Vena also introduced a closed beta for an AI Planning Agent, which can help you create budgets and forecasts by applying drivers and using historical data. Keep an eye out for future posts where we’ll dive deeper into what this functionality can bring and whether we think it will be a beneficial addition to your business.
If you are interested in learning more about these features and how they can help your business, please reach out to the email below and we can schedule a conversation.
