Live tweeted #sqlpass’s Business Analytics VC webinar: 13 Excel Tips!

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I was live tweeting during our monthly PASS Business Analytics VC meeting, Here are the tweets to learn about 13 Excel Tips!

Thanks everyone who attended, I hope it was helpful!

Here are some ways to follow the Virtual Chapter:
Website: http://bavc.sqlpass.org/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOiRAA4gBxEeVxwmEZ1qy1w
Twitter: https://twitter.com/passbavc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/PASS-Business-Analytics-Virtual-Chapter-6701113

Mapping “Facebook Page Likes vs Country” using PowerView in Office 2013

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Just a quick note that you can quickly create maps in PowerView in office 2013. I just created one in 2 minutes:

Facebook Page likes VS Country

This seems like a great way to visualize where your fans are from. In my case, most of them are from India and so one actionable insight would be to schedule posts based on Time Zone in India. And I can imagine that such reports could be very helpful to brands who have sizable fan following on Facebook.

Here’s the screenshot:

Maps Power View Excel 2013 social media analytics
Thanks to the following blog-posts for inspiration:

1. Google Fusion Table & Data Visualization (He used Google Fusion Tables, I used PowerView!)

2. Creating Maps in Excel 2013 using Power View

End to End Demo: Hadoop (HDInsight) + Hive + Excel + Power View + Azure Data Market

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A great end to end demo shown by Microsoft at Strata conference 2012:

Description about Demo:

Scenario: Analyze web logs of an online bike store.

Tools demonstrated:

Hadoop (Get started with HDInsight)

Hive.

Excel 2013

Power View

Azure Data Market.

A Dashboard in Power View showing co-relation between discount campaigns and the traffic:

This is mash-up of data from Hadoop (traffic) and data from SQL Server (discount campaigns)

end to end demo microsoft hadoop hdinsight

Conclusion

In this blog-post, I shared an awesome demo about HDInsight. check it out!

New Journal Article Published – Title: “Building an Ideal Tabular Model for Power View reports”

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Part 2/2 of the series on building Ideal Models for Power View reports is live!

Summary: “In this article, we will first compare the PowerPivot and Tabular models, which will help you choose between these two models for your scenarios, and then we will study the reporting properties in a Tabular Model that you can configure to build an Ideal model for Power View reports.”

Read here: SolidQ Journal: Building an Ideal Tabular Model for Power View reports by Paras Doshi

Blog-Post about Part 1 is here: SolidQ Journal: Building Ideal PowerPivot Model for Power View reports

 

If you have any feedback or comments, please drop a comment or contact me.

Bird’s Eye view of SharePoint BI Dev Environment Setup process (SQL Server 2012, Sharepoint 2010)

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Step 1
Get the Binaries: SQL Server 2012 RTM, Windows Server 2008 R2, Sharepoint 2010 SP1 x64
Setup a VM: Check the System Requirements and configure the VM. And then Install Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 SP1 (and updates)
Step 2
Add Server Roles: Application Server, File Services, Web Server
Change Server Name to a friendly Name
Step 3
At this stage, I cloned the Virtual Machine. And the following steps will be performed on the cloned (copied) virtual Machine. Thanks for the tip that I found here.
The benefit of cloning is that you have a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM Template that you can use in Future.
Step 4
On the cloned VM, run dcpromo.exe. This will make your server the Domain Controller and it will install ADDS binaries if they are not installed prior to running dcpromo.exe
Step 5
Install Sharepoint per-requisites
Install Sharepoint 2010 SP1
Note: Do NOT run the SharePoint configuration wizard
Step 6
Run SQL server setup to Install “SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint”:
SQL Server PowerPivot For Sharepoint
Post-Installation: Launch the PowerPivot configuration tool to configure the server
SQL Server PowerPivot For Sharepoint post installation
Step 7
perform a NEW installation of SQL Server
Analysis Services Mode: Tabular
Step 8
perform a NEW installation of SQL Server
Analysis Services Mode: Multi-Dimensional
Step 9
Verifying Reporting Services Installed in Sharepoint Mode. Tutorial here.
Also Extend the Document Libraries to include BISM connections.[Read Follow up Blog Post: How to extend document library to connect to Tabular Model to create Power View reports ]
Step 10
At this point, I installed and ran the SQL Server Training Kit 2012. It will list various “Missing” softwares like office, silverlight and also it will help you install sample databases. It’s a nice “shortcut” to make sure that you a “complete” sharepoint BI dev Environment
sql server training kit 2012 check dependencies

Resources that I refer to for configuration Details:
1) SQL Shorts Video to configure SharePoint BI environment
2) Getting up and running with SQL Server Denali for Business Intelligence (Crescent and PowerPivot in CTP3)
3) Deployment Checklist: Reporting Services, Power View, and PowerPivot for SharePoint

That’s about it for this post. I’ll refer to this post whenever I have to setup my SharePoint BI Dev Environment. And if you are in the same position, then i hope the Bird’s eye view and the resources listed are helpful to you as well.

Ability to create Hans-Rosling styled BI dashboard with PowerView is great!

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I got a chance to play with power-view which seems like great feature of SQL Server 2012! And I liked it that we can create Hans Rosling styled BI dashboard’s with Powerview. For those who do not know about Hans Rosling presentations, check these collection: All Hans Roslings Ted Videos. 

motion charts hans rosling bubble chart with play axis

And by studying modules in SQL server Training kit 2012, I was able to create a similar Dashboard, It was fun!

Now, Listing resources for you, If you are Interested to learn about Powerview:

Check out this SolidQ Journal article: http://www.solidq.com/sqj/Pages/Business_Intelligence/An-introduction-to-PowerView-in-SQL-Server-2012.aspx

Also, SQL server Training kit 2012 is a great resource.

And if you do not like setup’s and want to quickly get hands-on – Check this out: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/learning-center/virtual-labs.aspx

And also Microsoft Virtual Academy for video tutorials about SQL Server 2012 BI:
1. breakthrough-insights-using-microsoft-sql-server-2012-analysis-services
2. breakthrough-insights-using-microsoft-sql-server-2012-reporting-services

That’s about it for this post. Your feedback is welcome!

And Let’s connect! I Look forward to Interacting with you on any of these people networks:

paras doshi blog on facebookparas doshi twitterparas doshi google plus