268 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together Dashboard (Web Part) Pages in SharePoint The lightest-weight dashboard authoring tool is a simple web browser that takes advantage of the user interface that SharePoint has provided to build dashboard pages that use Web Parts. Web Parts are logical containers in SharePoint pages that can display content. The Web Part framework in SharePoint provides easy drag-and-drop interactivity, includes a Settings page, and includes other user-interface features to make conguring pages fairly simple. Web Part pages are generally essential for creating a dashboard-like experience in SharePoint. You would typically use Web Parts when you need to display content from different les or products (such as Excel Services, Visio Services, Reporting Services, and so on) in a page, when you want to display that content side by side with other SharePoint content, or when that content needs to interact with other SharePoint entities in the same page (such as lists or other Web Parts). PerformancePoint dashboard pages are ordinary Web Part pages that contain various com- ponents as connected Web Parts. The Filter, Scorecard, Report, and Stack Web Part are dis- cussed in more detail in the section “Create a Dashboard” in Chapter 7. To create a dashboard page in SharePoint 1. Go to the SharePoint site where you want to add your dashboard page, expand the Site Actions drop-down list, and choose More Options, as shown in the following illustration. Dashboard (Web Part) Pages in SharePoint 269 2. When the Create page opens, on the right-hand side of the page, under Pages And Sites, choose Web Part Page. Alternatively, depending on whether Silverlight is enabled, you might see a slightly dif- ferent user interface. On the Create page, in the Browse From list, choose Filter By Page and then choose the Web Part Page option as shown in the following illustration. Then click Create (on the right-hand side of the page). Now you must make some choices. As shown in the following illustration, you need to select your preferred page layout, enter a name for the page, and specify where to store the page. 270 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 3. Accept the defaults, and name the page WebPartPage. Feel free to experiment with the different layout options available—whatever you nd pleasing. The Save Location is the document library where SharePoint stores your new page. 4. Click Create to display a new blank Web Part page, as shown in the following illustration. Use Excel Services in the Dashboard To make the dashboard more interesting, you can use the next exercise to get some data from an Excel workbook and show it on the page by using the Excel Web Access Web Part. Before doing that though, you need an Excel workbook. You can use almost any workbook to do this. The following example walks you through the steps to create a simple workbook that works with some of the lters you can add to the page in later sections of this chapter. Create the Excel Workbook The workbook creation process has two parts. First you need to add a pivot table connected to OLAP data in Analysis Services, and then you can generate a chart from that data. Use Excel Services in the Dashboard 271 To add a pivot table to a workbook 1. Start the data connection wizard in Excel, click the Data tab, click From Other Sources, and select From Analysis Services, as shown in the following illustration. 2. Complete the Data Connection Wizard to connect to the Contoso Retail DW database, select the Sales cube, and click Finish. 3. In the Import Data dialog box, choose PivotTable Report to create a new pivot table report in your sheet. 272 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 4. In the PivotTable Field List dialog box, choose Sales from the topmost lter to see only those elds relevant for the Sales data. 5. Scroll through the eld list, selecting the check box next to the following elds: Sales Amount, Product, and Calendar YWD. This adds the primary data to the spreadsheet that we are working with. 6. Drag the Calendar YWD eld from the Column Labels area to the Report Filter area, as shown in the following before-and-after illustrations. Use Excel Services in the Dashboard 273 Before After You should end up with a pivot table in your workbook, as shown in the following illustration. 274 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together To add a simple chart to the workbook 1. Continuing with the same le you created in the preceding procedure, make sure your cell selection is located in the pivot table, and on the Insert tab, click Pie to choose a Pie chart. 2. To format the chart so that it looks a little better in the report, move the chart and then grab its corner to resize it so that it ts next to your pivot table. 3. Optionally, choose a chart style that you like from the chart ribbon. 4. On the Chart Analyze tab, in the Field group, click Hide All. You should now have a nished report that resembles the following illustration. 5. Save the workbook to SharePoint, and view it in a browser by using Excel Services. When you view the workbook on the server, make sure the pivot table refreshes and that all your data connectivity is working. If it isn’t, see the section “External Data Conguration” in Chapter 4, “Excel Services,” for some steps that should help. Prepare the Workbook for the Dashboard: Add Parameters Because the ultimate goal is to end up with multiple Web Parts on a dashboard page, you need a way to lter the data on the page at the same time. You can use a SharePoint lter to do this. A SharePoint lter is yet another Web Part on the page that takes a given value Use Excel Services in the Dashboard 275 and sends it to other Web Parts on the page. Then, based on the value provided by the SharePoint lter Web Part, the other Web Parts can change or lter the data they display. This simple mechanism enables users to choose a given value and then see all the different Web Parts on the page get ltered by their choice. SharePoint lters are created either in a SharePoint Web Part page user interface or in SharePoint Designer. Before conguring the Excel Services Web Parts so that they can be ltered, you need to make some simple modications to the workbook le so that it can be ltered in the dash- board. You must modify the workbook so that it can accept a lter value and recalculate based on that value. You do this by specifying workbook parameters. A workbook parameter is a single cell in Excel that accepts input values when the le is loaded on the server. This provides a way to modify a cell’s contents even in read-only or view-only permission situations, without allowing the rest of the workbook to be edited. Workbook parameters are single-cell named ranges that don’t contain any formulas. To specify a workbook parameter In the following exercise, the goal is to allow users to change the date lter for the pivot table. First you need to give it a name. Note This exercise uses the same workbook you created earlier in the chapter. 1. In column B of row 1, select the date lter cell (showing “All” in the following illustra- tion) on the pivot table, type DateFilterCell in the box to the left of the formula bar, and press Enter. Now you can refer to that cell by name, which makes it easy to specify it as a parameter later. 2. Click File, click Save & Send, and then click Save To SharePoint. 276 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 3. Click Publish Options (as shown in the right pane of the preceding illustration) to open the Publish Options dialog box, and then, to dene the workbook parameters, click the Parameters tab, shown in the following illustration. 4. In the Publish Options dialog box, click Add to display the Add Parameters dialog box, shown in the following illustration, where you can choose which single-cell named ranges to add as parameters. Use Excel Services in the Dashboard 277 5. In the Add Parameters dialog box, select the DateFilterCell cell that you dened earlier and click OK. 6. Click OK to close the Publish Options dialog box. 7. Save the le in SharePoint. (If you opened the le directly from SharePoint, you can simply click Save, or you can click Save As to overwrite the earlier version of the le.) The workbook you just saved in SharePoint now allows users to set values in the DateFilterCell cell even if the workbook is in read-only or view-only mode. Changing the cell value triggers a refresh of both the pivot table and pivot chart. You’ll use this parameter later when we associate it with a SharePoint lter. Show the Workbook in Web Parts Now it’s time to show the pivot table and chart in separate Web Parts on the dashboard page. The rst step is to add the Excel Web Access Web Parts to the page and congure them. To add an Excel Web Access Web Part 1. From the Page tab of your browser, navigate to the Web Part page you created before. (Remember that it might be in the Site Assets library of your site, depending on where you saved it.) [...]... Web Drawings in other SharePoint pages Using the Visio Web Access Web Part, you can embed either static or data-driven Visio Web Drawings in SharePoint pages The Visio Web Drawing is a new Visio file type (*.vdw) that allows diagrams to be rendered in full fidelity in the browser using Visio Services on SharePoint 2010 You can easily connect your diagrams to one or more data sources, including Microsoft. .. and remain current You have the option to show more data by right-clicking the diagram and selecting Edit Data Graphic Add a SharePoint Filter to the Page To publish to SharePoint 1 On your Business Intelligence Center site, click Libraries, and then click Create Note  The Business Intelligence Center is a site collection template that you can cre- ate after farm configuration The Business Intelligence. .. put a single filter on the page that enables both the chart and the pivot table to update Add a SharePoint Filter to the Page SharePoint provides many different kinds of filters right out of the box You can also add new custom filters to SharePoint but that is beyond the scope of this book The filters that ship as part of SharePoint can take data from many different sources, including a SharePoint list,... existing file If you want the diagram to auto-refresh in a SharePoint pages, you should select the Always Attempt To Use The File To Refresh Data option shown in the following illustration 300 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 9 Click Next to see the Select Data Connection page, as shown in the following illustration, and then click Next again On the Connect To Data page, shown in the following... spreadsheet, don’t have more advanced calculations for KPIs, don’t want to spend the time developing Performance Point KPIs, and just want something quick and simple, SharePoint KPIs might be the way to go Add a SharePoint Filter to the Page 291 SharePoint KPIs are stored as items in a list (like most things in SharePoint) This list is a special type of list—a status list To create a new status list 1 Navigate... connection information from the Excel workbook as a separate connection file (an odc file) to SharePoint so that other workbooks, Visio files, or SharePoint filters can easily reuse the same connection To save the connection information to SharePoint 1 Open the Excel workbook that contains the pivot table and chart you have been working with in this chapter 2 On the Data tab, click Connections, as shown in. .. interface, as shown in the following illustration, you can choose where to save your file In this case, you should save it in a Data Connection Library (if you have one); if not, in the Document Libraries list, simply double-click Shared Documents to save it there  286 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 8 Type the name of the file that you want to use—Contoso Retail DW Sales in this case— and click... Data Connection From section, select A SharePoint Data Connection Library, and then click the Browse icon next to the Office Data Connection File text box 3 Use the SharePoint dialog box to navigate to where you saved the odc file earlier, select it, and click OK to close the dialog box  288 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 4 In the properties task pane, in the Dimension drop-down list, choose...2 78 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together 2 Pick a zone, and then click Add A Web Part to expand the top of the page so that you can choose which Web Part to add 3 As shown in the preceding illustration, select Business Data in the Categories area, choose Excel Web Access in the Web Parts area, and then click Add to add the Web Part to the page in the zone you selected previously... Finish Repeat the steps in the preceding section, but this time set the Named Item to PivotTable1 to display the pivot table you created earlier Notice that in the Excel client you can see the name of each item in the ribbon for that item Feel free to add any other Web Parts to the page as well Add a SharePoint Filter to the Page 283 On the ribbon at the top of the SharePoint page, click Stop Editing . page get ltered by their choice. SharePoint lters are created either in a SharePoint Web Part page user interface or in SharePoint Designer. Before conguring the Excel Services Web Parts so. that SharePoint has provided to build dashboard pages that use Web Parts. Web Parts are logical containers in SharePoint pages that can display content. The Web Part framework in SharePoint. 2 68 Chapter 8 Bringing It All Together Dashboard (Web Part) Pages in SharePoint The lightest-weight dashboard authoring tool is a simple web browser that takes advantage of the user interface