Sherman On Excel and BI Technology : Excel

Excel Services: Charting and Visual Analysis

Sherman Der — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:23:00 GMT

I have been extremely busy lately and haven't been able to update this blog as much as I would like. However, I have been speaking with many of you frequently over the email. I'm glad I was able to help most of you out. Please keep the questions coming, I love hearing from customers.

Excel Services Charting vs Excel Charting: What's the Diff?

Excel Services Charting work very differently from Excel Charts. Excel Services Charts:

Load as PNGs (Pictures) rather than objects
Cannot be selected, moved, or created
Do not support pictures, or Objects on top of them
Do not support gradients
Most importantly, all 3D charts are down-converted to 2D charts

However, they do update based on the cell reference that was updated (via Parameters)

Example of a 3D to 2D chart conversion

What type of charts are Unsupported?

Surface Charts and Grouped Charts

Excel Services: Saving Workbooks back to the Server

Sherman Der — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:57:00 GMT

Clients have recently asked questions about Saving workbooks back to the server. In Excel Services, there are several ways to save back to the server. However, the two simplest ways to do it are:

Open in Excel (or Snapshot) using the Client, modify the file, and save it back to the server
Write it back programmatically

Business Scenario:

Nancy is a Chief Information Officer for an Aerospace Engine manufacturer that travels frequently across the world in order to coordinate IT activities and delegate responsibilities. She uses an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of what each department is responsible for. Since she changes between multiple laptops, she does not keep a local copy of a workbook on any specific computer. This is to prevent her from mistakenly overwriting existing changes she may have made on multiple computers (One-Version-Of-The-Truth). As a result, she has always reliably depended on Excel Services to display and store her workbooks. However, from time to time, she decides to delegate different activities across regional teams and needs to edit a workbook. In these cases, she opens the workbook in Excel and Saves the workbook back to the server in order to maintain a single copy of the truth. How can this be achieved?

How can we Save?

Method 1: User Interface (Excel)

This is probably the simplest and most popular way users will be saving back to the server.

Open the workbook in Excel (or in Snapshot)
Edit the workbook
Save the workbook in the client back to the server

Method 2: Programmatically Save As via Excel Client

In some cases, some users might be interested in opening, editing, and saving the workbook back to the server programmatically via Excel Client. Here is some example code that I wrote really quickly to give you an idea (Please tailor this code to your need and do not use it as reliable production code).

Method 3: Programmatically via Excel Services using Binary Writer

This method was documented in MSDN and works pretty well.

Once again, if you have any suggestions or comments on how we could make Excel Services exceed your expections, let me know. I love hearing from you.

Excel Services: Snapshot vs Open in Excel - What's the diff?

Sherman Der — Wed, 02 May 2007 04:52:00 GMT

Let me begin by explaining the two concepts first. When you load a workbook on Excel Services, you are given two options to open the workbook on Excel.

Snapshot: This provides users a copy of the workbook with all the formulas behind the numbers stripped out.
Open in Excel: This provides users with a copy of the original workbook. Changes to the read-only version of this workbook will not appear in the original workbook on Excel Services.

What the Diff?

Snapshot has all the formulas behind the numbers stripped out.
Some features within snapshot are stripped out: Conditional Formatting

Why have Snapshots?

Security! Again, Snapshot is another excellent example of how Excel addresses security. This technology will allow authors of these workbooks to prevent readers from surfacing formulas (which could be considered confidential).

Business Scenario

Tracy is a Sales Manager that works for a software consultation company. One of her primary tasks is to conduct client visits and advertise how their company could benefit their client. In order to convince her clients of the benefits of working with her company, she would like to provide each client with a workbook indicating how other company's have benefited from using her company's products. This Excel Services workbook contains a chart indicating that their previous anonymous client have reduced their IT expenditure by 35% over 8 months after using their product. However, Tracy does not want to reveal how the number 35% was derived (via external data or other manners). As a result, she provides each potential client with a Snapshot of the original workbook.

Suggestions on how we could make Excel Services surpass your expectation? Let me know.

Excel Services - Only let them see what you want them to see

Sherman Der — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:14:00 GMT

One of the most impressive controls that Excel Services offers its spreadsheet owners is the ability to limit which parts of the workbook are accessible through the server (IE, sharepoint, API, etc). This is an incredibly powerful ability, especially considering the environment where it is hosted (network).

Why is this so great?

A common scenario: Bob needs to report the overall growth of a small financial portfolio. In order to calculate this trend, he needs to use all the customer financial gains (or loses) within this portfolio. All this information is stored on a single spreadsheet. At the end, he creates a chart displaying a global growth trend for this portfolio and wants all his customers to view this impressive data. However, he doesn't want any one customer to know what another customer's financial growth is.

Excel Services will:

Provide security. Why should users be able to see parts that they have no rights to view or don't need to know about.
Make is easy for customers to view the result on a server. (Yes! No more huge email attachments)

What can Excel Services publish (or hide)

Named Ranges (Essentially a set of cells given a specific name)
Charts!
PivotCharts
Tables
PivotTables

Great, but how do I do this?

As easy as 1-2-3. When you finished working on your spreadsheet, all you need to do is:

Select the Office Menu Button
Select Publish (Save)
Select Excel Services options
Within the Show tab, select the items you want to show

Excel Services: Supported File Format and Features

Sherman Der — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 03:18:00 GMT

By now, most of you have probably encountered the following common error while attempting to load legacy Excel workbooks (*.xls). If you didn't, you must have read-up extensively on MSDN. (Congrats to you!)

File Format

Well, the reason why this message appears is because you are attempting to Load an unsupported file format. Currently, Excel Services support the following two file formats:

Excel 2007 Workbook (*.xlsx)
Excel Binary Workbook (*.xlsb)

This implies that if you attempt to load a legacy *.xls file, it won't work. The workaround is SUPER simple. Open your legacy workbooks in the Excel 2007 client and Save As *.xlsx or *.xlsb. If you have a large number of Excel 11 or older workbooks, it's actually extremely easy to convert them using a batch script into Excel 12 format in order to make them "server friendly". I will post some of these solutions in later posts.

Unsupported Features?

There are 4 main categories of Unsupported Features in the first release of Excel Services:

Workbooks with Security (Permissions, Digital Signatures, Protections)
External Data Queries (SharePoint Lists, Links to other workbooks)
Graphic Objects (Shapes, SmartArt)
Macros or VBA Solutions

Excel Services: A Good Read

Sherman Der — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:29:00 GMT

For anyone who is interested in learning more about Excel Services, this is one of my favorite books (not only because it's written by my colleagues):

I highly recommend reading this one!

Excel Services Trusted Location: Resolving a Common Issue

Sherman Der — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:39:00 GMT

Excel Services is an enterprise-class application server that is geared towards performance, scalability, and security. Trusted Locations is one of the many excellent example of how Excel Services offer security when managing access to workbooks on the server.

A Trusted Location is one of the following areas that contain workbooks in which the Excel Calculation Services (ECS) is allowed to access. The ECS will only open files located in these trusted locations.

SharePoint Document Library
UNC Path (\\ServerPath\)
HTTP Web Site

How can I Add a Trusted Location? (so that Excel Services can access files in this location)

It is actually really simple to add a Trusted Location:

Open SharePoint Central Administration
Select Application Management
Select Create or Configure this Farm's Shared Services
Select your default SSP (probably SharedServices1)
Selected Trusted File Locations
Select Add Trusted File Location

Specify the Address of the location
Select the Type (SharePoint, UNC, HTTP)
Select Trust Childrens

What is a Common Issue that people run into?

Here is a scenario regarding Trusted File Location and UNC paths that some people that encountered. Nancy attempts to load a Workbook on Excel Services (Excel Web Access) from a UNC location that she set as "Trusted" using the steps indicated above. However, she can't see the workbook. Instead, she sees the following error appear.

This is NOT a bug. What's actually happening is a security feature. Although Excel Services "Trusts" this UNC location, the UNC path is being accessed using Sharepoint authentication (Impersonation by Default) and not your personal authentication; so from the point of view of the UNC path, it's not you that's attempting to access it. As a result, the UNC path will deny access to the ECS.

How can you fix this? (Super Easy Solution)

Open SharePoint Central Administration

Select Application Management

Select Create or Configure this Farm's Shared Services

Select Excel Services Setting

Select File Access Method > Process Account

How can my Business Benefit?

Security

Keep in mind, I love hearing from customers.

Installing Excel Services on your Corporate Networks: Quick Reference

Sherman Der — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:54:00 GMT

I have recently received countless request on providing more information regarding Excel Services installation on a Server Machine (Windows 2003). In this blog post, I will outline a quick overview of a Standalone installation for both 32 bits and 64 bits. A Standalone configuration implies that all the components of Excel Services are placed on a single machine (WFE, ECS, SQL DB).

Basic Procedure:

Ensure that Windows 2003 is installed without a previous version of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007
Install .NET Framework 2.0
Install .NET Framework 3.0
Within IIS, set ASP.NET 2.0 to "Allow"
Install Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (Advance > Standalone)
Once the installation is complete, a Post Setup Configuration dialog will appear. Complete the setup by selecting (Next).

Though this is a very high level view of the installation, it should be sufficient for most standalone deployments. some users may experience issues with Trusted Location, SSP creation, Site Collection creation, and other minor configurations. I will write other entries to address these issues in the near future.

Once again, I love getting feedback from users. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions regarding Excel Services, please let me know.

Excel Services: Welcome to the future of spreadsheets

Sherman Der — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:38:00 GMT

Excel Services is a brand new server technology that enables you to Load, Calculate, and Display Excel workbooks on an Office SharePoint Server. Excel Services is currently released with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

There are essentially two ways to interact with Excel Services:

Through an interactive interface provided in the Web browsers
API (Programming Interface)

How can my Business Benefit?

The most frequent scenario that I generally provide users to explain Excel Services is my Financial Consultant example. Mr. Todd travels from client to client providing sound financial advice. Occasionally, he needs to access updated information from his analysts summarizing global market trends and transaction fees on an Excel workbook. However, in order to do this, his analysts email him the latest copy of the workbook and Mr. Todd downloads this workbook onto his clients computer to check the results.

With Excel Services, Mr. Todd will:

Access his workbook with updated data (At the moment of access)
Securely read his workbook without having to worry about forgetting to delete his workbook from his client's computer
Access his workbook on his PocketPC via web browser
Filter unnecessary data using Pivot Tables
Edit Worksheet data by using Parameters
Allow clients to view workbook on their computer without displaying worksheet formulas (Snapshot View)

I will update my blog with many interesting information regarding Excel Services. However, if you have any comments, suggestions, or pain points about this products, PLEASE, let me know. I really enjoy getting any kind of feedback regarding our services.