Ashish Jaiman's Blog : Office12

Microsoft Business Intelligence Offerings

jaiman — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:53:00 GMT

Microsoft Business Intelligence is a complete and integrated offering that supports the entire organization. It is a full-featured suite of server, client, and developer products that thoroughly integrates with Microsoft Office. This thereby provides easy to use information directly where individuals work, collaborate, and make decisions.

With SQL Server 2005 and the release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, along with the capabilities found in PerformancePoint Server 2007, we cover the spectrum of performance management applications, end user tools, and the BI platform. This provides a complete BI stack. Thus we are not dependent upon BI partners.

However, we provide open standards so that through partnering, we are also able to offer a wider selection of premiere solutions, thus making us a leader in the BI space. Other vendors such as IBM must partner with ISVs such as Hyperion to deliver a solution that is not equivalent to Microsoft’s offering. Overall, our offering is designed to support a leading solution and the lowest total cost of ownership.

Analytics:

Microsoft has a great story on Analytics with SQL Server Analysis services. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality for business intelligence applications. Analysis Services supports OLAP by letting you design, create, and manage multidimensional structures that contain data aggregated from other data sources, such as relational databases. For data mining applications, Analysis Services lets you design, create, and visualize data mining models that are constructed from other data sources by using a wide variety of industry-standard data mining algorithms.

Analysis Services provides a user-friendly model where you can provide understandable business names, specify relationships between fields (Product Category – Product Subcategory – Product) so that it is possible for business users to design their own reports without help from IT.

Analysis Services offers tools for personalizing individual users’ reporting experience by only showing them the data that they care about and have permissions to see; in addition, Analysis Services can translate data into users’ preferred languages.

Analysis Services allows you to consolidate data from different business systems into a single analytical model. In this scenario the data in SAP and other repository but for analysis that you would like to see in the same report. With an Analysis Services model, you can do just that without needing to change the source system at all.

Leveraging Office Client (Excel 2007)

Excel 2007 provides great Analysis features and integrates with SSAS. With Pivot tables and visualization feature set, Excel 2007 is a great tool for Analysis.

Key Performance Indicators, calculations, conditional formatting, and actions are just a few examples of business logic that you can define once in Analysis Services and then expose automatically in Excel PivotTables. Part of the beauty of this is that all users see the same thing in their PivotTables because the formatting, for example, is calculated in one place – on the server.

When analyzing data in Analysis Services, all the business logic is centrally managed in one analytical model so that every user will see the same numbers, calculated using the same business logic. Any changes made to the model will immediately be available to all Excel PivotTable users when they update their report.

Performance / Dashboard:

Business score card manager or BSM along with Office 2007, MOSS 2007, SSAS, SSIS and SSRS provides a complete, robust end to end BI development environment on Microsoft stack.

Deep Insight and Good Context

ü Scorecards, reports and charts can be rapidly assembled and connected on web pages

ü Provides immediate access to analysis functionality for drilldown, filtering, sorting, and ranking

ü Insight in transactional data by drilling down through KPIs

ü Web Parts connections drive all-on-one-page interaction; Report View filters work together with Scorecard filters

Collaborative Business Management and Action

ü BSM works with MOSS 2007 for enhanced team collaboration

ü Annotations for contextual communication

ü Integration with MS Collaboration platform.

ü Personalized scorecards and views of relevant reports, tasks, project plans and notifications

ü Data-driven alerts available on Scorecard and KPIs

ü Distribution is made easy with export capabilities to Excel, PDF, HTML and TIFF formats

End User Empowerment

ü Provides business analysts the ability to build, manage and consume KPI’s and scorecards

ü Enables building comprehensive views that include charting, reports and pivot for detailed analysis

ü Provides end users the ability to add / change personal scorecard views.

Extensible Solution

ü Ability to extend BSM with advanced analysis solutions

ü Easy integration with LOB Applications

ü Partners can extend BSM using its Web Services APIs and SharePoint platform

ü BPM ISVs can extend Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 using it’s SharePoint platform and web services APIs to provide an end to end BPM offering

Reporting

SQL Server Reporting Services is natively integrated with .NET report services and is part of whole Microsoft BI solutions. It is designed to provide one of the most comprehensive BI and reporting solutions on the market today.

Reporting Services in SQL Server 2005 provides enterprise reporting capabilities and addresses a new audience—business users who want to interact with data in an ad hoc fashion as well as create their own reports from scratch and to share them with others.

SQL Server 20005 Reporting Services has many improvements in the areas of report design, processing, and interactivity. There are also improvements to performance and scalability.

SSRS provides enhanced integration with other components within SQL Server 2005 including SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and SQL Server Management Studio. Reporting Services also has tighter integration with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, enabling reports to easily participate in corporate portal scenarios.

Reporting Services provides unparalleled reporting integration into the Visual Studio development environment. In addition, freely redistributable Microsoft Windows and ASP.NET controls make it easy to embed reporting in both server-based and client-based applications.

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services includes Report Builder, a new ad hoc reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports and explore corporate data. Report Builder incorporates a user-friendly business query model that enables users to build reports without deep technical understanding of the underlying data sources.

Integration

SQL 2005 is an integrated platform to create Data Warehousing applications, data mining tools are consolidated into two working environments in SQL 2005, Business Intelligence Development Studio and SQL Server Management Studio.

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) goes beyond being an ETL tool not only in terms of enabling nontraditional scenarios, but also in being a true platform for data integration. SSIS is part of the SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI) platform which enables the development of end-to-end BI applications.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint server deliver centralized access to information. SharePoint portal server makes it easy to create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business-critical information from disparate sources, using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, scorecards, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place for locating the latest reports, spreadsheets, or KPIs.

ü Excel Services and Reporting Services in the portal

ü Report Center: out-of-the-box BI portal experience

ü Dashboards, KPIs, and Report Libraries

ü Integrated with Portal, Collaboration, Enterprise Content Management and Workflow functionality

Excel Services runs spreadsheets and performs calculations on a Web server, delivering results to users through a browser and to other applications through a Web services API.

Performance Point Server:

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a complete Performance Management (PM) application providing Score carding, Analytics and Planning for enterprise and mid-market customers. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 enables businesses to improve their performance by providing all employees with the ability to measure manage and align their activities to company strategy using the familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft Office environment they already know and use every day.

BSM Server DB Roles

jaiman — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:49:00 GMT

There are three different roles that are defined in BSM which have access to the database.

Data Source Manager

This role enables users to create data sources. Users who have permissions for the Data Source Manager role can also publish data sources to the database.

Scorecard Server Manager

This role enables users to create KPIs, scorecards and indicators - any scorecard element other than data sources. Users who have permissions for the Scorecard Server Manager role can also publish scorecard elements to the database. Users who have permissions for the Scorecard Server Manager role can delete elements where they also have permissions for the Editor role.

Global Reader

This role grants read-only access to all scorecard elements in the Business Scorecard Manager system. It enables users to download scorecard objects from a server on which the database is installed and view those objects in Business Scorecard Builder.

It is necessary for SQL administrators to grant the account read and write permissions to the Scorecard Server database. And in addition, an OLAP administrator must add the IIS application pool account to the OLAP Users group on the computer that is running Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services.

BSM establishes a connection with the data sources by using the IIS application pool account used by Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server. This configuration ensures that no unauthorized user can access the computer running SQL Server, and that only the account designated for database access will be able to access scorecard metadata in the scorecard database.

Business Scorecard Manager

jaiman — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:47:00 GMT

Business score card manager or BSM along with Office 2007, MOSS 2007, SSAS, SSIS and SSRS provides a complete, robust end to end BI development environment on Microsoft stack.

· Deep Insight and Good Context

Ø Scorecards, reports and charts can be rapidly assembled and connected on web pages

Ø Provides immediate access to analysis functionality for drilldown, filtering, sorting, and ranking

Ø Insight in transactional data by drilling down through KPIs

Ø Web Parts connections drive all-on-one-page interaction; Report View filters work together with Scorecard filters

· Collaborative Business Management and Action

Ø BSM works with MOSS 2007 for enhanced team collaboration

Ø Annotations for contextual communication

Ø Integration with MS Collaboration platform.

Ø Personalized scorecards and views of relevant reports, tasks, project plans and notifications

Ø Data-driven alerts available on Scorecard and KPIs

Ø Distribution is made easy with export capabilities to Excel, PDF, HTML and TIFF formats

· End User Empowerment

Ø Provides business analysts the ability to build, manage and consume KPI’s and scorecards

Ø Enables building comprehensive views that include charting, reports and pivot for detailed analysis

Ø Provides end users the ability to add / change personal scorecard views.

· Extensible Solution

Ø Ability to extend BSM with advanced analysis solutions

Ø Easy integration with LOB Applications

Ø Partners can extend BSM using its Web Services APIs and SharePoint platform

Ø BPM ISVs can extend Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 using it’s SharePoint platform and web services APIs to provide an end to end BPM offering

MCMS 2 to MOSS 2007

jaiman — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:24:00 GMT

When MCMS 2002 is migrated to MOSS 2007 the images are moved to image libraries and other resources are moved to document libraries. These SharePoint libraries provide versioning, workflow, alerts, and check-in/check-out functionality previously unavailable for resources. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, resources are now easily managed in the content management domain, an easy-to-use interface with thumbnails and search functionality simplifies the task of locating your resources.

SSAS

jaiman — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:24:00 GMT

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) provides three tools for deploying an Analysis Services database onto an Analysis Services server in the production environment:

· Using an XML Script Use
SQL Server Management Studio to generate an XML script of the metadata of an existing Analysis Services database, and then run that script on another server to recreate the initial database.

· Using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard
Use the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard to use the XMLA output files generated by an Analysis Services project to deploy the project's metadata to a destination server.

· Synchronizing Analysis Services Databases
Use the Synchronize Database Wizard to synchronize the metadata and data between any two Analysis Services databases.

The main enhancement to highlight is that SSAS 2005 includes an engine for use in deploying Analysis Services projects and solutions. During the development process, you can use the deployment engine to deploy new projects to a test instance of Analysis Services; when your development is complete, you can then use the engine to deploy the projects to a production instance of Analysis Services. You can use the deployment engine to synchronize metadata between a new or updated Analysis Services project in Business Intelligence Development Studio and an existing instance of Analysis Services or to overwrite metadata from one instance to another. You can also use the deployment engine at the command prompt to provide additional flexibility when you deploy Analysis Services projects and solutions

SSRS Improvements

jaiman — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:28:00 GMT

SSRS 2005 has many improvements over SSRS 2000. Specifically in the following four areas

1. Core Product Improvements

a. Direct Client Printing

b. End user Sort

c. Multi valued parameters

d. Custom Report Items

2. Integration

a. Analysis services Query Designer

b. SQL server management studio integration

c. SharePoint reporting web part

3. Developer experience

a. Visual Studio integration

b. Report viewer controls

4. Report builder and Model designer

SSIS

jaiman — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:30:00 GMT

The ability of SSIS to integrate different technologies manipulates data, like “fuzzy logic” based data cleansing components. Support for complex data routing in SSIS allows anomalous data to not only be identified, but also be automatically corrected and replaced with better values. This enables “closed loop” cleansing scenarios. In addition to its built-in data quality features, SSIS can be extended to work closely with third-party data-cleansing solutions

Centralized access to information - MOSS 2007

jaiman — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 05:12:00 GMT

MOSS2007 and Office 2007 Client Applications

jaiman — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:10:00 GMT

Close integration of Windows SharePoint Services with Microsoft Office Client(s) for authoring, publishing, organizing, and finding information helps users get up to speed quickly.
Integration with Office Client applications make it easy for users to get up to speed quickly by providing integration with familiar productivity tools found in the Microsoft Office system—users can create workspaces, post and edit documents, and view and update calendars on SharePoint sites, all while working within Microsoft Office system files and programs. Users can track work and tasks more easily with enhanced integration with Office Outlook 2007 that helps users organize calendars, tasks, contact lists, discussion boards, and meetings.

Office 2007 SharePoint Servers has significantly enhanced document management and related workflow feature including Document Information Panel and Document Action Bar.

The Document Information Panel makes editing document properties an integral part of the Office document authoring experience. InfoPanel encourages users to enter and update the properties associated with each type of business document.

The Document Action Bar in Office 2007 client applications tells users that the current document is governed by a business policy or workflow and what action they are expected to take.

Pivot Table productivity

jaiman — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:42:00 GMT

PivotTables are designed to help users make sense of large amounts of data by providing an easy way to quickly reorient the data and build a summarized report.
Main improvements in the Pivot table interface which makes the user productive are

A new dialog for creating PivotTables which streamlines the overall experience.
A new field list with checkboxes making it very easy to add and remove fields from a PivotTable.
Drop zones in the new field list to make it easier to rearrange fields within the PivotTable.
New expand/collapse indicators in the PivotTable to make it visually clear to users when there are more details to show.
New filtering capabilities, Label Filters, Date Filters and Value Filters.
Improved sorting capabilities. It is now possible to sort by the values in a specific row or column in addition to the grand total values.
New layout options to make the PivotTable more readable and presentable.
PivotTable-specific styles for making PivotTables look great.
Better layout tools, the ability to expand/collapse to any level of detail on rows or columns in the PivotTable without having to expand/collapse each level one-by-one.
A fast, easy way to clear a PivotTable.
New and improved contextual menus, Options dialog, and Field Settings dialog.
Support for SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services “metadata” in the PivotTable Field List so users can find relevant data quickly and easily.
Support for more Analysis Services features including key performance indicators (KPIs), named sets, drill-through, actions and server side formatting.
The ability to hide any level of a hierarchy in an Analysis Services cube.
Retaining user-applied formatting across operations performed on the PivotTable.

Benefits of deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

jaiman — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 07:11:00 GMT

§ Provide a single workspace to coordinate schedules, organize documents, discussions within the organization and over the extranet.

§ Easily author and manage documents, with check out, versioning capabilities and recycle bin facility.

§ Blogs and Wiki support.

§ Support for offline synchronization through Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 for managing document libraries, lists, calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussion boards even offline, and to synchronize changes when reconnected to the network.

Improved user interface and site creation tools, easy to use templates, sites themes and navigation.
Customize workspaces with new application templates that provide custom scenarios for building workflows for specific business processes or sets of tasks.
Implement a collaboration environment with minimal administrative time and effort, and with the flexibility to change deployment settings.

Enhanced administrative controls which decrease cost and complexity associated with site provisioning, management, support, operations, and backup and restore. Increase security of business information setting policies for site creation that enable security to be set as deep down as the item level.

§ Provide a robust document and record management; recycle bin item retrieval, and version-control features built in to team workspaces.

§ Easily manage and configure Windows SharePoint Services by using a Web browser or command-line utilities, and enable a variety of custom and third-party administration solutions using the Microsoft .NET Framework.

§ Users can extend WSS V3 to create new, efficient, Web-based tools and services specific for their Line of Business Applications.

Excel services

jaiman — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:02:00 GMT

Excel Services gives users a way to deal with challenges related to sharing and versioning of spreadsheets. Using Excel services, a spreadsheet author is able to save their spreadsheet to a SharePoint document library and give other users browser-based access to the server-calculated version of that spreadsheet. When a user accesses the spreadsheet, Excel Services will load the spreadsheet, refresh external data if needed, calculate it if necessary, and send the resulting output view back through the browser. Those users will always be viewing the latest version of the spreadsheet, and they will be able to interact with it in the browser. Moreover, the spreadsheet author can limit access to specific sheets or ranges in the spreadsheet, enabling the author to hide intellectual property from the folks looking at the results. In addition, the user accessing the file in the browser only sees cell values and not the underlying formulas. If multiple users are accessing the same spreadsheet, it will be loaded and calculated only once by the server, saving the network bandwidth and the wait time for long-running calculations. In addition, spreadsheet access can be logged and audited. Overall, this provides quite a powerful story for sharing spreadsheets (via the browser) in a controlled and secure way.
Main business value derived from Excel Services is

Sharing spreadsheets through the browser
Building business intelligence (BI) dashboards
Reusing the logic encapsulated in Excel spreadsheets in custom applications

Excel 2007 visualization features

jaiman — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:01:00 GMT

The new visualization feature of Excel 2007 provides users several methods of graphically representing numerical data, making it easier for them to understand relationships and trends. User can add data bars to the columns of data, allowing them to visually observe how large amounts are relative to each other without actually having to look at all the cell values. User can even configure it so that each level of the pivot table has its own set of data bars, showing just the relationship to other entities at the same level.
User can also add color scale visualization to the Data column. This allows them to quickly determine which data pieces have the high/low value, simply by looking at the colors of different cells. Icon set is another way for the user to visually represent the data in a column, making it very easily for the user to relationship between cell data.

Windows Share Point services 3.0

jaiman — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:08:00 GMT

Microsoft has built Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows SharePoint Services provides evidence of the flexibility and power of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as an application platform.

Microsoft Office Share Point Server 2007 is build on the foundation of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a good example of what can be achieved by using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as an application platform. Features like list management, storage capabilities and web part framework is build directly using Windows share point services 3.0

Share point 2007 extends Windows Share Point service 3.0 for providing features like Search, Document management, Enterprise content management, business process automation and workflows

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 also adds following new features to provide specific functionality.

Business Data Catalog

Web Content Management

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Excel Services

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Forms Server

By leveraging the power and flexibility of Windows SharePoint Services, developers can develop customized solutions with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and also develop and extend solutions based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 more easily.

Outlook 2007

jaiman — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 23:15:00 GMT

Email is the most used means of communication today and some of the new features in outlook 2007 help you become more productive and effectively manage your time and information. Outlook 2007 allows you to focus on tasks and things that matter most by providing ability to prioritize, control and search information.

Some of the most value added features in Outlook 2007 are

· Instant search across all outlook information.

· To-Do Bar – gives you a single view of tasks, appointments and flagged emails.

· Integrated support for RSS feeds.

· Task integration across SharePoint, Project and OneNote.

· Improved Junk email and anti-phishing technology.

· Email postmarks.

Other …

I am dog fooding Outlook 2007 and I see the value first hand.

Keep an eye on CTP date and to get more information visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/programs/outlook/highlights.mspx