Data Visualization Made Easier in SharePoint 2010

May 18, 2012

Data Visualization in SharePoint 2010
with Visio Services and Excel
PowerPivot
PRESENTED BY:

JASON TRENT
TECHNICAL SPECIALIST
E: JASONT@K2.COM
: SOONERTRENT

K2 Confidential WWW.K2.COM

AGENDA
• Data Visualization options in SharePoint 2010?

• Visio Services
• What is Visio Services after all?
• What data sources can be used?
• Example of building and use cases of a Visio Services diagram

• SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel/SharePoint
• What is PowerPivot?
• What data sources can be used?
• Example of building, deploying and managing a PowerPivot workbook


TRADITIONAL DATA VISUALIZATION OPTIONS IN SHAREPOINT 2010

Audience Tooling

Excel Services
Visio Services Business User (with
Business User Excel 2007/2010
Visio 2010
assistance from IT)

Complexity
SQL Server PowerPivot
SQL Server Reporting SQLBusiness User
Developer (with SQL Server2010
Excel Reporting
Services assistance from Services/Report Builder
Business)
PerformancePoint BI Developer SQL Server Analysis
Services Services/
PerformancePoint


Visio Services for SharePoint


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – WHAT IS VISIO SERVICES ANYWAY?

Basically, Visio Services is a way to:

• View Visio diagrams in the browser without having
Visio installed locally

• Refresh data-driven diagrams in the browser

• Integrate Visio diagrams into SharePoint


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – WHAT IS VISIO SERVICES ANYWAY?


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – VIEWING VISIO DIAGRAMS IN THE BROWSER

View Visio diagrams in the browser without having Visio
installed locally – meaning:
• on any browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.)
• on any platform
• all within SharePoint
• and without leaving the browser
• from diagrams stored in SharePoint


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – UTILIZING DATA WITHIN DIAGRAMS

Refresh data-driven diagrams in the browser – meaning
that data from external sources can be automagically
refreshed within a browser based Visio diagram

Supported Visio data sources:
• SQL Server (7.0 to 2008 R2)
• Excel Services Workbooks
• SharePoint Lists
• OLE DB or ODBC connections
• Custom Data Providers


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – UTILIZING DATA WITHIN DIAGRAMS

• Within each Visio Diagram, 2 properties are managed:
• How to access the data
• Data Provider to facilitate the data access

• Data Refresh Frequency is managed either within the Visio Web
Drawing web part and/or at the Farm Level within Central Admin

• Data displayed within Visio Web drawings are CACHED – the lower
the cache level the more automatic data refreshes are applied (and
more real time) but also the higher the resource load

• While the Visio Diagram will be backed up within a normal SharePoint
backup strategy, any data external to SharePoint may not


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – INTEGRATING INTO SHAREPOINT 2010

Integrate Visio diagrams into SharePoint – meaning that
once a Visio diagram is built it can be deployed into
SharePoint and configured for display

VDW PNG
XAML


QUICK DEMONSTRATION

BUILDING VISIO SERVICES DIAGRAM


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – INTEGRATING INTO SHAREPOINT 2010

Integration Point Description “Built” By
Visio Web Access Web Part Point Web Access web Average SharePoint User
part to a Visio diagram
in a SharePoint
Document Library,

Complexity
configure and go
Web Part Connections Configure other web Average SharePoint User
parts in a SharePoint
page to manipulate
Visio Web Access web
part
Visio Services Mash-up API Enable rich interactivity SharePoint Developer
on by manipulating the
different Visio web
diagram objects
programmatically via
JavaScript


VISIO SERVICES – MANAGEMENT WITHIN SHAREPOINT

Visio Services is a SharePoint Service Application and, as such, can be managed,
configured and secured:
• Some limits:
• 50mb file size for Visio Web drawings
• 120 seconds for Visio Web drawing re-calculation
• 34560 minutes (24 days) for a Visio Web drawing to be held in cache (default is 5
minutes)

• A few things to keep in mind for securing to Visio Web drawings that are connected
to data sources:
• If connecting to a SharePoint list, the consumer must have access to both the
document library storing the VWD file as well as the SharePoint List
• If connecting to a SQL data source, the diagram can utilize the following
connection options:
• Integrated Windows authentication
• Secure Store Service
• Service Account


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – SOLUTION COMPLEXITY

Hi

Connecting to external
data sources using
Custom Data Providers
within Visio Services
Solution Maturity

Creating Visio Services
“mashups” with other
data sources to create
BI dashboards

Publishing Visio
Services diagrams to
be consumed in
SharePoint
Lo

Lo Solution Complexity Hi


VISIO SERVICES – WORKING WITH CUSTOM DATA PROVIDERS

• Custom Data Provider is a way to access data that is not provided by default
• Requires development of custom .NET Assembly that implements the Visio Services Data Provider
Interface (Microsoft.Office.Visio.Server.AddonDataHandler)
• Once created/implemented – this assembly needs to be deployed into the GAC on the SharePoint
box(es)
• The Custom Data Provider is added/configured within Central Admin (Central Admin > Manage
Visio Graphics Service > Trusted Data Providers)


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – REQUIREMENTS

Requirements
Building Visio Services diagrams Microsoft Visio Professional/Premium
2010

Hosting Visio Services diagrams Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise
Viewing Visio Services diagrams Microsoft Silverlight (and Silverlight
capable browser)

(* Static PNG is available when
Silverlight is not)


QUESTIONS?


SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel/SharePoint


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – WHAT IS IT ANYWAY?

• Basically, PowerPivot is an add-in for
Excel 2010 that allows Information
Workers the ability to perform data
analysis with large datasets within
Excel
• Has advanced in-memory data
analytics capability to compress
massive data sets for use (100M
rows)
• Enables users to deploy analysis
assets straight into SharePoint
• PowerPivot Management Dashboard
provides SharePoint Admins a way to
manage PowerPivot charts within
Central Admin

SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – WHAT DOES THAT REALLY MEAN THOUGH?

• Non-traditional BI Users can now:
• Work with large and varied data sets in tooling they
understand
• Create self-service ad-hoc BI “solutions” and share
across the enterprise
• Solve problems not currently/traditionally
supported by IT
• Start RAD lifecycle around BI that can ultimately be
transitioned to IT


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

Source: UnderstandingTheUSDebt.com

SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – DATA SOURCES

Supported PowerPivot data sources:
• Microsoft SQL Server (2005 to 2008 R2)
• Microsoft SQL Azure
• Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services Cubes
• Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Reports
• Microsoft Office Access
• Microsoft Excel workbooks
• Other PowerPivot workbooks
• Data Feeds (ATOM)
• Non MS relational data sources (Oracle, Teradata, Sybase, Informaix, IBM
DB2)
• Text


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – HOW DOES IT WORK?

SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel
VertiPaq Data Compression and Processing/SSAS Formula Engine
SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

PowerPivot Engine

SSAS


QUICK DEMONSTRATION

BUILDING POWERPIVOT WORKBOOK


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – MANAGING IN SHAREPOINT

• Once a PowerPivot workbook has been built it can be published into SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint Integration Features:
• Content Storage & Document Management – native SharePoint document
management policies/features
• Excel Services Integration – Excel Services powers the rendering of Excel workbook
that contain PowerPivot data
• PowerPivot Gallery - Rich preview and document access is provided through a
PowerPivot Gallery library that includes accurate thumbnail images of the
worksheets or named ranges in a published PowerPivot workbook
• PowerPivot Management Dashboard – Consolidate management and reporting
capabilities hosted within Central Admin
• PowerPivot Data Refresh – While data is initially stored within the workbook, users
can schedule data refreshes from underlying data sources


QUICK DEMONSTRATION

MANAGING IN SHAREPOINT


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – MANAGING DATA REFRESH

• From within Excel, a workbook with PowerPivot data can be manually
refreshed
• From within SharePoint, the data refresh is managed a bit differently:
• The entire process is managed by the following SharePoint
components:
• SharePoint PowerPivot Data Refresh Timer Job
Timer Job
• PowerPivot Service Application
• SQL Server Analysis Services service PowerPivot
Service App

Analysis
Services
Service

SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT FOR EXCEL/SHAREPOINT – MANAGING DATA REFRESH

• Configuration for the data refresh of a given PowerPivot workbook is managed
within a PowerPivot Gallery
• Workbook owners have the ability to configure:
• Schedule Details – Configures the period (Daily, Weekly, etc.)
• Earliest Start Time – Configures specific start time
• Failure Notifications – Who to notify if/when a refresh error occurs
• Credentials – Which credentials to use when executing the refresh
• Data Sources – Which Data Sources within the Workbook to refresh


SQL SERVER POWERPIVOT IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – REQUIREMENTS

Requirements
Building PowerPivot books Microsoft Excel 2010 + PowerPivot
Add In

Hosting PowerPivot Graphs Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise
Viewing PowerPivot Graphs Utilizing Excel Services (IE 7+, Firefox
3.5 +, other browsers with limited
functionality)


VISIO SERVICES IN SHAREPOINT 2010 – COMPONENTS

PowerPivot component Purpose Placement
PowerPivot System Service Queries and manages Runs on an application server,
and Analysis Services PowerPivot data in Excel as a shared service application
service workbooks. and Windows service,
respectively.
PowerPivot Web service Intercepts and directs HTTP Runs on a web front end
requests to PowerPivot server in a SharePoint farm.
servers in the farm.
PowerPivot service A configured instance of a Runs on application servers
application PowerPivot System Service. when a request for
PowerPivot data is received.
PowerPivot application Stores internal data used only Hosted on a database server
database by the application in a SQL used by the farm.
Server database.
PowerPivot content and PowerPivot content includes Stored in content databases in
libraries Excel workbooks that contain a database server.
embedded PowerPivot data.

Source: MSDN

Data Visualization Made Easier in SharePoint 2010

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