Book Image

PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards

By : Robert Bosco J
Book Image

PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards

By: Robert Bosco J

Overview of this book

<p>Business intelligence technology gives an organization the power to make decisions using large volumes of data. By obtaining an adequate amount of data and integrating data from a variety of sources, a user can get a comprehensive knowledge of their business and business strategies. PowerPivot is a free add-in to the 2010 version of the spreadsheet application MS Excel. It extends the capabilities of the PivotTable data summarization and cross-tabulation feature with new features such as expanded data capacity, advanced calculations, the ability to import data from multiple sources, and the ability to publish workbooks as interactive web applications.</p> <p>PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards will teach you the fundamentals of PowerPivot as well as how to use the different data types available. This book also discusses useful tips and tricks for handling and resolving errors that might pop up while creating your report. With this book, you will be able to create relevant BI reports quickly and efficiently.</p> <p>Moving on from the basics, this book will explain the types of data sources that can be imported into PowerPivot. You will then delve into relationships, hierarchies, and data model creation using imported data. You will also learn how to employ DAX functions to transform unstructured data into structured data. Finally, this book will teach you how to create reports such as Pivot Tables, Pivot Charts, Slicers, KPIs, and Perspective reports using PowerPivot and how to publish them using the SharePoint server.</p>
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

A general overview of BI reports creation


Traditionally, as discussed earlier, the three principles of the PowerPivot interface will be implemented using separate tools and different people can be involved in doing so. One person will not do everything, since they might have to deal with lots and lots of tables and a variety of data sources. For big data warehouses, it will be kind of a big process and it's possible to complete it with some manpower.

Once they have designed the data warehouse schema, they have to create a data mart (provide decisional information for a specific business area, for example, sales, marketing, and human resources) for the end user to be able do the analysis using different kinds of tools for different analyses, such as multidimensional analysis with the OLAP tool, complex reports using the reporting tool, and predictive analytics with the data mining tool, so they can then take a decision.

More precisely, the data mart will be done for big data warehouses, for...