Prologika Newsletter Winter 2012

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What’s New in Excel 2013 and SharePoint 2013 BI

s13Microsoft released Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 in October 2012. The logical question you might have is how the latest versions apply to your business intelligence needs. Here are some of the most important features that I believe might warrant your interest.

 

Excel 2013

The latest release reinforces the Excel status is the Microsoft premium BI tool on the desktop. The most exciting news is that Microsoft decoupled Power View from SharePoint and made it available in Excel 2013. Consequently, with a few clicks, a business user can create interactive ad-hoc reports in Excel 2013 from PowerPivot models, Tabular models, and soon from Multidimensional cubes.

When connecting to organizational models (Tabular and Multidimensional), users now can create their own calculations and use a new Timeline slicer that is specifically designed to work with dates. And, users can use Quick Explore in pivot reports to drill down a given cell and see its value is contributed by other subject areas.

On the self-service BI area, the most exciting news is that the xVelocity engine and PowerPivot now ships with Excel so users don’t have to download the PowerPivot add-in. Basic self-service BI tasks, such as importing data, joining tables and authoring pivot reports, can now be performed straight in Excel, although the PowerPivot features are still required to unleash the full PowerPivot capabilities, such as implementing calculations, visualizing relationships, and gaining more control over data import. Finally, users will undoubtedly enjoy the new Excel 2013 productivity features, such as Flash Fill to shape the data before analyzing it and Quick Analysis to jumpstart data analsys with recommended visualizations.

SharePoint 2013

On the SharePoint 2013 side of things, Excel web reports are now updatable. As a result, not only users can render pivot reports in HTML, but they can also change the report layout. Quick Explore is available in Excel web reports as well. PerformancePoint Services adds welcome enhancements, including theme support and better filtering.

As you know, the BI landscape is fast-moving and it might be overwhelming. If you have Software Assurance benefits, don’t forget that as a Microsoft Gold Partner and premier BI firm, Prologika can use your SA vouchers and work with you to help you plan and implement your BI initiatives, including:

  • Analyze your current environment and determine a vision for a BI solution
  • Define a plan to launch a BI reporting and analysis solution
  • Upgrading or migrating to SQL Server 2012

Regards,

Teo Lachev

Teo Lachev, MVP (SQL Server), MCSD, MCT, MCITP (BI)
Prologika, LLC | Making Sense of Data
Microsoft Partner | Gold Business Intelligence

News

Prologika obtained a Microsoft Silver Competency in Data Platform.
Prologika consultants have attended the SQL PASS SUMMIT conference in November.

Upcoming Events

Atlanta BI Group: Applied Enterprise Data Mining with Mark Tabladillo on Jan 28th
Atlanta BI Group: MDX vs DAX Showdown by Damu Venkatesan and Neal Waterstreet on Feb 25th
Atlanta BI Group: Data Warehouse Design Good Practices by Carlos Rodrigues on March 25th