Professional Microsoft® PowerPivot for Excel® and SharePoint®

INTRODUCTION

SELF-SERVICE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) is hot! Companies are scrambling to provide easier-to-use tools to bring the benefits of BI to analysts and business decision makers at all levels of organizations. PowerPivot is Microsoft's entry into this fast-growing market.

Built on top of Microsoft's popular Office suite, PowerPivot extends Excel and SharePoint to create a self-service BI system that allows creation of applications inside Excel 2010, a server-side component that enhances SharePoint 2010 with the capability to share those applications across the organization, update them with the latest data, and monitor how people are using them.

This book describes all aspects of PowerPivot and shows you how to use each of its major features. It also provides insight into the design and development of this innovative product. By the time you are finished with this book, you will be well on your way to becoming a PowerPivot expert.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is for people who want to learn about PowerPivot end to end. You should have some rudimentary knowledge of databases and data analysis. Familiarity with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft SharePoint is helpful, since PowerPivot builds on those two products.

Part I of the book is for those who want an introduction to PowerPivot. It provides background on self-service BI and how PowerPivot fits into the picture. It also includes a quick end-to-end walkthrough of the major features in PowerPivot for those who want to get their ...