Personalized Data in Excel Services

Windows Vista News — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 07:00:18 GMT

Did you see the post at blogs.msdn.com

re: Personalized Data in Excel Services

Harlan Grove — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:16:47 GMT

A pingback and this response. Does that count as feedback?

How about this: add features to Excel (note the lack of the word Services following Excel).

re: Personalized Data in Excel Services

Andy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:49:58 GMT

Thanks for the post. I've found that the CurrentUser filter is a great way to control who has access to what parts of a shared workbook that I've published.

One question, how might one avoid having to add to the list every single user who has access to the page? With the solution proposed, if someone is not specifically added to the list of current users, then an error will appear when they load the page. Is there any entry to the list that would appear for all authenticated users that could be used as a default view?

I am setting up a site for a public page, where everyone should see a summary of the data, but only certain people should see more detailed views of it. How can I make the summary named range be available to all users who visit the page?

thanks,

Andy

re: Personalized Data in Excel Services

Steve Tullis — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:14:24 GMT

Andy -

First, I'd like to better understand your scenario - it sounds like you are looking for a 2-level solution: (1) hide / display content based on audience; (2) change displayed content based on individual user.

If this is correct, you could use a combination of the examples above. Create three web parts:

Web part #1 = summary data

Web part #2 & 3 = list view & user specific content

Use audience targeting to have web part #1 appear for people who should only see summary data. Have web parts 2 & 3 appear for people who are in the list (you will have to create an audience containing these people).

If I understand your scenario, this should provide the flexibility you are looking for.

re: Personalized Data in Excel Services

Hank — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:32:02 GMT

The "refresh data when opening the file" connection property does not work in Excel Service as I understand it. First time i open the workbook, it warns me about potential security issue. i click on Yes button. It gives me the Data Refresh Failed error since i don't have access to the AS2005 cube. then i click on the OK button, it proceeds to show the default view of worksheet.

I would like to prevent showing the default view of the pivotal table report if the users do not have access to the data. Do you have suggestion how to implement this?

thanks

Hank

re: Personalized Data in Excel Services

Steve Tullis — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:15:29 GMT

Hank - Great question!

Yes, it is possible, depending on what you want. There are three ways to do it:

1. (most secure, recommended approach) – give the user view only permissions. Make sure the trusted location (TL) setting is set to "Abort Workbook Open on Refresh Failure". If the refresh on open fails, the workbook open fails then. But again, this is only respected and secure if the user has view only rights.

2. (not secure, but maybe enough for people who are just trying to ‘guide’ users to the right part of the workbook). Only applies in named item view mode. Create another named object, just a blank named range. Specify, in your web part that this is what is shown as the named item by default (i.e. default value for filter or web part, or both). Note a clever implementation here will be a named range with some big letter, bold, text saying something like, “select an item to see from the drop down.” So it almost seems like it is part of the experience. Now, when a user visits the page, they aren’t seeing data (cached or otherwise) first.

3. Collapse pivottable down, filter results down, so almost nothing is shown. Then, if the refresh fails, when the user tries to expand the filter, they won’t be able to.

Steve Tullis

Passing multiple filter values to EWA pivot table filter cell

Code, Articles, Discussion on Microsoft Technologies — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:39:45 GMT

Filter webparts in WSS are a great way to provide filtering in many different webparts like List View,