Professional Microsoft® PowerPivot for Excel® and SharePoint®

Preparing for SharePoint 2010

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

Taking a look at SharePoint 2010



Taking a look at Excel Services



Taking a look at SharePoint Server components for PowerPivot for



SharePoint

Taking a look at key services for PowerPivot for SharePoint



Understanding the PowerPivot for SharePoint services architecture



workflow scenarios

This chapter provides information on SharePoint services and servers so that you can do the

setup and configuration described in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 will provide you with the opera-

tional “how-to” for monitoring, securing, and troubleshooting. Chapter 10 dives even deeper

than this chapter into the PowerPivot for SharePoint services and component architecture.

Understanding this will provide you with the background and context for the Enterprise

Considerations described in Chapter 11.

SHAREPOINT 2010

One of the key concerns for IT administrators regarding Excel in general is the continuing

dissemination of “spreadmarts” throughout the organization. What’s great about these Excel

spreadmarts is that they help solve business problems, and can be created and calculated

rather quickly by business analysts.

With the addition of PowerPivot for Excel, these same analysts or Information Workers (IWs)

can now harness even larger volumes of data, and are provided an even more powerful toolset

7

587379c07.indd 179 5/11/10 1:19:56 PM

180



CHAPTER 7 PreParing for SharePoint 2010

to augment the already powerful set of Excel functions. This, in turn, could lead to even more

spreadmarts being emailed or shared throughout the organization with no control, security, or even

recording of the necessary domain knowledge or business logic.

So, how do IT administrators control the flow of this data while ensuring everyone who needs to have

easy access to the data can still do so? The answer to this question is Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint is an Office Server product that allows you to organize and secure all of your content. It

also helps you develop process management and collaboration (within the context of this content)

from your Web browser. Organizations benefit from SharePoint because of their capability to find all

of their important information all in one location (documents, lists, and so on) and share this informa-

tion securely.

Yet, content management is just the beginning, since SharePoint includes many services. It also

allows users to quickly create wikis, blogs, and lists that contain their own custom content from

their browsers. With Word Services, Visio Services, and Excel Services, you can view Office docu-

ments in the browser directly — that is, without needing to install the application software. With

a large library of Web parts ranging from custom templates to PerformancePoint services, you can

integrate and create mashups of Web content (for example, from RSS feeds or atom feed sources) or

data (for example, SQL or Analysis Services data) into your SharePoint dashboard.

With all of this information, you can develop workflow processes (for example, users read a docu-

ment, fill out a list, review PowerPoint for instructions, all before proceeding to a dashboard to

view data) to help your organization be more productive. For those on the go, you can make use of

the improved mobile services (for example, improved rendering to multiple mobile browsers, or the

capability to take SharePoint content to your Windows Mobile device) included within SharePoint

2010 as well.

Because SharePoint 2010 is a powerful business collaboration platform, this

chapter does little justice to describing it all. For more information, review the

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Web site at

http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.

com/Pages/default.aspx

. Also, there is an excellent blog by Jeff Teper

(Corporate Vice President of SharePoint Server at Microsoft) about what’s new in

SharePoint at

http://bit.ly/4GcGRm.

WHY NOT SHAREPOINT “LITE” BI EDITION?

This was a common question asked by many database administrators (DBAs) and IT administra-

tors — especially ones with background or familiarity with the existing Corporate BI Analysis

Services. The question has been asked because, as you will see in this chapter and Chapter 8, there

is a degree of complexity in the architecture, configuration, and maintenance of PowerPivot for

SharePoint. Instead of having to learn SharePoint, why not just provide an edition of SharePoint spe-

cifically for BI users only?

587379c07.indd 180 5/11/10 1:19:56 PM