Bosco - PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards

Robert Bosco J is a BI Reports Developer and holds an international Master's degree in Business Intelligence from Universit Tours Franois Rabelais, Blois, France, along with an internship as a BI Analyst at Yomii (a French e-commerce company for design products) in Paris, France. He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from the Oxford Engineering college, Tiruchirappalli, India. Robert also worked as a Data Processing Executive at Meritgroup Ltd., India, before pursuing his Master's.

I would like to especially thank Packt Publishing for giving me this great opportunity to write the book, and the reviewers, Mr. Ceriel van Halle and Mr. Luis Guilamo, for being a great help in making this book accurate. I dedicate this book to my parents, John Peter and Sepasthi, for educating me and supporting me in pursuing my Master's. I would like to thank my elder and younger sisters, Anitha and Femina, who have always encouraged me in order to grow in my career. I pass on my gratitude to all my professors from Universit Tours Franois Rabelais for introducing me to the world of Business Intelligence technologies. Thanks to them, I was able to write this book, and my heartfelt gratitude to my colleagues Chandramouly P, Nooman Hussain, and Parag Mohite for their help and suggestions in the editing process of this book.

Ceriel van Halle is a freelance Microsoft Business Intelligence Consultant and owner of footprintBI. For the past nine years, he has been working on several small and large data warehouse and reporting projects. In several roles, from a developer and trainer to the BI team lead, he has worked for companies in the healthcare, telecommunications, banking and insurance, utilities, and transportation sectors. He is a TDWI Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP).

Luis Guilamo is a global business professional, a proven leader, and a Business Intelligence expert. He is an educated engineer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, turned Business Intelligence Consultant. He focuses on end-to-end data warehouse implementations and has an extensive experience in telecommunications. He is an articulate communicator with experience in bridging business and IT across international markets in Asia, Europe, and America.

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Preface

Welcome to Powerpivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards . This book aims to teach readers on how to use PowerPivot to create advanced reports and prepare dashboards, all from the familiar Excel interface, and how to publish reports using the SharePoint Server. This book will cover all the fundamentals of Business Intelligence and reporting concepts with PowerPivot in the real world. We have prepared five chapters in order to be precise with the PowerPivot technologies; each and every chapter will give you a prominent idea about the PowerPivot tool. At the end of this book, users will be well-versed with PowerPivot tools in order to create advanced reports.

What this book covers

, Principles and Installing PowerPivot , illustrates quick installation of PowerPivot, some of its features, the differences in Excel's 32-bit and 64-bit version of PowerPivot, and vital information about the principles of PowerPivot, which will leverage the user's ability to work on self-service Business Intelligence.

, Preparation Analysis of Data Source , helps users explore ways to prepare data for analysis. Different types of data sources that can be imported into the PowerPivot interface have been described. A general overview of the ETL process has also been given. Users will get to now know how the ETL process works in the PowerPivot interface. An introduction to DAX and its advantages are also explained.

, Data Model , provides the user with clear information about data models' features and fundamental concepts of relationship and hierarchy. The user by now will know how the ETL process is performed in PowerPivot. One of the most important things is the DAX expression and how to use it to make structured data from unstructured data. Finally, the user will learn how to turn data from the heterogeneous type to homogeneous.