Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Dive into the business intelligence features in SharePoint 2013—and use the right combination of tools to deliver compelling solutions.

Take control of business intelligence (BI) with the tools offered by SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft SQL Server® 2012. Led by a group of BI and SharePoint experts, you’ll get step-by-step instructions for understanding how to use these technologies best in specific BI scenarios—whether you’re a SharePoint administrator, SQL Server developer, or business analyst.

Discover how to:

• Manage the entire BI lifecycle, from determining key performance indicators to building dashboards
• Use web-based Microsoft Excel® services and publish workbooks on a SharePoint Server
• Mash up data from multiple sources and create Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) using PowerPivot
• Create data-driven diagrams that provide interactive processes and context with Microsoft Visio® Services
• Use dashboards, scorecards, reports, and key performance indicators to monitor and analyze your business
• Use SharePoint to view BI reports side by side, no matter which tools were used to produced them

Q&A with Norman Warren, author of “Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013”

Q. Why is your book timely– what makes it important right now?

A. Our book can be considered a quick guide to getting value from Big Data. Why? Because much of the focus is on Excel and the business intelligence tools that are now baked into it. Additionally, there is content on how to connect to Hadoop data with Excel. There is no better time to embrace the fact that Excel is the preferred tool of choice for analyzing and exploring data. This book provides the keys for getting value from data and sharing discovered insights in SharePoint 2013.

The tools that Microsoft provides are less expensive, integrate more easily in the corporate datacenter, and are accessible to mainstream information workers and developers, using the skills they already have.

Q. What information do you hope that readers of your book will walk away with?

A. 1. A quick tour with exercises for using new BI features in Excel 203 and Visio 2013 and then how to get the most from SQL Server 2012 tabular and SharePoint 2013 when implementing self-service and enterprise BI solutions.

2. A clear understanding of what business intelligence is. Also, an understanding of what Big Data is, its role in surfacing insights, and how to use Microsoft BI tools to get value from it.

3. Useful instruction on which tool to use. Customers often ask which tools they should use when trying to select among a variety of Microsoft offerings. They’re often confused and need information as to why they might want to prefer SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint over PerformancePoint Services, or why they might use the Excel 2013 PowerPivot add-in instead of Excel or Excel Services. After all, each product connects to a database and surfaces data from an OLAP cube.

4. A better understanding on how to get to trusted data and the shortened life cycle of BI implementation while using the latest Microsoft BI tools.

Q. What’s the most exciting and/or important thing happening in your space?

A. Managed and guided self-service BI works. People don’t have to wait on IT to get a report. This book gives tips for successfully implementing self-service BI with tools like Excel 2013 and Visio 2013.

Big Data is here to stay and you can learn what it is and how to get value from the huge data store immediately by using tools discussed in this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Business intelligence in SharePoint
Chapter 2. Planning for business intelligence adoption
Chapter 3. The lifecycle of a business intelligence implementation
Chapter 4. Using PowerPivot in Excel 2013
Chapter 5. Using Power View in Excel 2013
Chapter 6. Business intelligence with Excel Services 2013
Chapter 7. Using PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013
Chapter 8. Using PerformancePoint Services
Chapter 9. Using Visio and Visio Services
Chapter 10. Bringing it all together

Appendix A. Running scripts to set up a demonstration environment
Appendix B. Microsoft and “Big Data”
Appendix C. About the Authors