PASS Business Analytics Conference Keynote Day #1

Standard

In this post, I’ll summarize the PASS Business Analytics Conference’s Keynote Day #1:

The structure of the Keynote:

PASSt Business Analytics Conference

One of the NEW challenges that Data Pros face today is complexity involved in building a BI solution. Following slides nicely represent the challenge from the Tools standpoint:

pass business analytics conference keynote hadoop

Image Courtesy: https://twitter.com/SQLGal/status/322342662013321216

Microsoft’s Goal is to SIMPLIFY the above situation

NEW Tools:

> Data Explorer (Excel add-in)

> Power View in Excel 2013

> Geo Flow

Key Take away from the demo’s was:

Power View is a great tool that you could use to extract insights from data.

E.g. Insights about Music Charts from Germany:

Now combine the power of Power View w/ the new capabilities like Data Explorer that let’s you find, combine & refine data via Data Explorer.

In the Demo, they combined data in hadoop w/ data in relational sources. This is Powerful!

And Also

The Preview for GeoFLow in Excel was announced!

They had a great demo on a pretty big touch device:

GEO FLOW For EXcel

Sorry for the poor image – but imagine a touch device of that size w/ an interactive data visualization that has 3D geo maps!

Conclusion:

They had a nice message at the end of the keynote:

 

Microsoft Business Intelligence: Power View can be Exported to PowerPoint (PPT)!

Standard

A short post to point out that Power View reports can be exported to PowerPoint (PPT) – and PPT slides would also have a “click to interact” button and if the security plus network access is configured correctly then the Interactive data exploration without leaving the Slides! very cool. I had pointed this fact out earlier here. And the official resource can be found here: Export a Power View Report to PowerPoint

I am referring to SQL Server 2012 BI and SharePoint 2010 here. And here is a  step by step guide:

1) Create report > Save it > And then Go to File > Export to Power Point

Export Power View reports to PowerPoint 2010 SQL Server 2012

A note about security: “Export to PowerPoint” requires windows authentication method.

2) Select the location of the PPT file that will have the “Power View” reports.

Export to PowerPoint requires windows authentication method File Location

Now you can store the PowerPoint file at any place but it would be important to consider whether the machine from which it would be accessed has the network access to the SharePoint Power View reports. If not, the Power View reports would just show up as “static images” and the click to interact would not work.  Important security point to consider for your scenario.

3) Open the File > start slideshow > Navigate to the slide (if applicable) > can you see the “click to Interact” button? Yes? Great! you can do interactive data exploration from the PowerPoint environment itself! I find this very Impressive because Power View is meant for Business Users to do Data Exploration and create rich visualizations and once they are done with it – they can export it to PowerPoint and show their Power View chops to their boss and peers and more importantly, make better business decisions. Any-how, here’s the image:

CLICK to Interact button Export to PowerPoint Powe View SQL Server 2012 SharePoint 2010

That’s about it!