Server-Based Spreadsheets | MSBI Tutorial pdf

Server-Based Spreadsheets

Excel Services enables you to support, load, calculate, and render Excel workbooks on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Using Excel Services helps you maintain a single updated version of a spreadsheet so everyone is accessing the same information for their business purposes. Server-based storage, management, calculation, and interaction over the Web provides you with enhanced security and broad access to spreadsheets. You can also share results with customers and partners while helping to protect any proprietary information, such as financial models or confidential business logic that is embedded in documents with object-based, enhanced security.

                         Fig : Accessing a published spreadsheet through a Web browser.
Enhanced control and management features mean you determine which portions of your spreadsheets should be viewable through a browser entire spreadsheets, specific sheets within a spreadsheet, charts, tables, PivotTable views, or Named Ranges within a spreadsheet. You can also decide whether or not to enable data-only snapshots of the spreadsheets, monitor audit logs of spreadsheet usage, and build rule-based workflows, archive processes, and retention policies around business-critical spreadsheets.

Excel Web Access
Excel Web Access running on Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy to create rich, customized BI dashboards that incorporate dynamic KPIs, scorecards, Office Excel 2007 workbooks, and SSRS reports without writing or developing code. This greatly reduces the cost of dashboard creation and maintenance. You can specify particular sections that should be rendered, like a chart or table, while concealing other sections that contain confidential data.

                                    Fig : PivotTable view interactivity in a Web browser.

Excel Web Services Application Programming Interface (API)
Excel Services includes a Web Services API that enables developers to connect calculations and business models defined in Excel models with their custom applications. In addition, users can use the API to change the values of a spreadsheet parameter and recalculate the spreadsheet based on these new values. Users can also retrieve all or part of a spreadsheet for viewing or for use within a larger business process. This helps
workers across any organization take advantage of the same calculation model by simply entering their own values for the parameters.

Streamlined Business Processes
Bring enhanced security to your Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets by managing document approval, storage, use, and destruction on the server. When creating spreadsheets, you can send them in an e-mail message to colleagues to gather feedback or for a faster response, take advantage of the built-in review or approval workflows available from Office Excel 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.
To initiate a review or approval process, simply select the appropriate Office SharePoint Server 2007 workflow from within Office Excel 2007. The workflow creates a task for each participant and notifies them with an e-mail message of a new document for review.

When participants receive the notification and open the spreadsheet, they can complete their review and indicate their status on a workflow completion form.