I am new to this.
I built a pivot report in excel 2007 on SSAS. It connects to a cube on my local pc. Now I want to send this pivot report to other people to make them be able to view the pivot report and do some analysis by themselves (expanding year-month-day etc).
When my colleague tried he couldn't expand.
How can I achieve this?
Thank you,
Nian
Your colleague needs to be able to access the cube in order to refresh it. This means that your cube should be on a shared machine (like a server). I would recommend putting the cube on a server and setup a database read-only user login and setup the Excel file to use that username/password. You may be able to have your local machine be accessible, but I don't have experience with this and I would advise against it anyhow (your users wouldn't be able to refresh the cube if you don't have your computer on the network).
Also, even if you send them the file with data cached from the cube, only so much data gets cached. When you expand items, it won't need to request the data from the cube (on your machine/server) if it has that particular data cached. The same may happen when you create filters.
Related
I have no knowledge on computer programming and I need a bit of help.
I'm using automate.io (a drag and drop integration software) to take a new row in excel and insert it into salesforce. That bit works all ok.
What I worry about is my excel document it is connected to an SQL server and auto refreshes every minute. The problem is that I have to have the Excel document open at all times for this to auto refresh to take place.
To combat this I used task scheduler to open the document at 7am even when there is no one logged in.
My question is,
will this work and is it reliable?
Will it work?
Only your testing can answer that.
Watch out for false positives, e.g. new record in database not picked up or not refreshed, and therefore not input to SalesForce in a timely manner.
Is it reliable?
Here are some ways to achieve what you want, in approximate descending order of reliability:
Get a third party to integrate the two databases directly (SalesForce and your SQL server), with updates triggered by any change in the data in your SQL server. There is a whole sub-industry of SalesForce integration businesses and individuals who would consider taking this on in return for money.
Get a standalone script (not Excel) running on a server near your database to monitor your DB for changes, and push new records to SalesForce via a direct API.
Get a standalone script (not Excel) running on a server near your database to monitor your DB for changes, and push new records to text files (not Excel) which are subsequently loaded into SalesForce.
Get Excel to refresh your DB for changes regularly via a data link (i.e. what you outlined), but have it new records to text files (not Excel) which are subsequently loaded into SalesForce.
Get Excel to refresh your DB for changes regularly via a data link (i.e. what you outlined), and have it push new records to SalesForce via third-party software as a substitute for actual integration.
You will notice your proposed solution is at or near the end. The list may inspire you to determine what tweaks you might make to the process to move up the list a little ways, without changing the approach completely (unless you want to and can justify it).
Any tweak that removes a link in the dependency chain helps reliability. Shorter chains are generally more reliable. Right now your chain sounds something like: Database > Server?/internet?/network? > Excel data link > Excel file > Task scheduler > internet > automate.io > API > Force.com > SalesForce.
Transaction volume, mission criticality, and other subjective criteria will help guide you as to what is most appropriate in your situation.
Hello,
I'm publishing a Power BI report with an Azure Analysis Services cube as source. The thing is that when I open it for the first time in PBI Services, all the visuals and measures are loading which is fine. I'm waiting till the end but then if I close the report and come back later, all the measures will load again and it really is a problem for my customers. I know I can schedule a cache refresh but even if I do so, the reports will still refresh every time I open them.
Any idea to solve this ?
Thanks a lot.
In case you are using live connection, switching to imported should speed things up. This means that when getting the data from SSAS, you should select Import option:
When importing data, your report will not work with the "live" data, but with a cached copy. This will speed things up, but you will need to schedule a refresh. However, with SSAS you probably do not work with live data too. Usually there is a nightly ETL, which will refresh the data in your model. So you may want to schedule a refresh of your dataset at appropriate time, after the refresh of SSAS is completed.
You can read more about Live connection vs. Import here.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can switch this option for existing reports. There is an idea for which you can vote, though. So you may need to re-create your report to do that.
I need to combine the energy consumption every month in my company from various sources. I do the calculations in the excel sheets which I receive every month. How do i combine all the sheets and make a dashboard and also update the dashboard every month automatically once the excel is updated?
Which is the best form of tableau to use(Public,desktop or server)?
What exactly is the difference among the three?
Are the excel sheets a good data source in tableau?
You are asking a lot of questions which should probably be raised separately, but I will try to answer some of them anyway since they all relate to the same use case.
1. How do I combine and make a dashboard
Since Tableau 9.3 you are able to use Union. This will combine all your excel files into a single source of data you can use. I think your data sources should however have the same structure. Meaning the sheets containing information should have the same columns.
You can dynamically and automatically do this using wildcard search. This way it will try and add all files that for example are located in the same folder.
More information on this here.
From the moment you have at least one file as a data source you can start creating a dashboard.
2. Which is the best form of Tableau
I don't think you truly understand the difference between the Tableau applications you mention.
You will need Tableau Dashboard to actually create a dashboard.
If you want to be able to share this dashboard through the web you will need either Tableau Server, Tableau Public or Tableau Online. Everything published on Tableau public will be publicly available. So if your data is considered restricted, sensitive or should not be shared outside your company you should not consider this.
Tableau server on the other hand is server software you can install on a local host which allows you to publish your dashboards and sheets so people with a Tableau server license can access it through a web interface.
Then there is Tableau Online which offers almost the same except that Tableau will take care of the hosting. This is the SaaS solution for making your dashboards available online.
Lastly there is Tableau Reader which is a free desktop application that is able to open your Tableau workbooks, but cannot modify them and has limited access to external data sources.
3. Is Excel a good data source
This really depends on your use case and is probably opinion based. Since the possibility of union and the ability to automatically bring in and update data I think Excel files can be a useful resource. What you need to consider is where the Excel files are stored, how you will connect to them and how many users will need to access them. If other users can easily modify the Excel file and create errors this is another downside of using them as a source.
When you publish your dashboard on e.g. Tableau Server and you want the dashboard to automatically change there as well, the Excel file needs to be accessible from there as well and should not be included in the dashboard. If you feel like none of the above is an issue then at the moment Excel is great for you.
I'm working on a power view map to display to our user. I achieved to create a map that display all the data to the user. It look like this exemple. The data source is an SSAS project.
But now, I would like to filter this data depending on the connected user.
For example, we have ProductManager and TerritoryManager. The product manager can see his product on all the map, but only his product. The territory mananger can see all the product, but only on his territory.
The solution that I've found is to create an SSAS project for each product/territory, and after that allow some rights on this files. But this solution is impossible to maintain.
Is there a way/solution/best practice to realize this?
Any help is welcome
Damien
You probably just need one SSAS database. You can set security in the SSAS project. If you are using SSAS multidimensional, see here. For tabular, see here.
As long as you have Kerberos configured, you can have one Power View map and one SSAS source. Then when the user accesses the report, their credentials are passed along with the query, and only the data they are allowed to see will be returned. This will meet the needs you described.
You'll probably want to add a table to facilitate dynamic security. You'll need some way to tie product managers to the products they own and territory managers to the territories they own. You add this to the data in the SSAS model. And then use it to set security. Other than setting the data source for Power View to use Windows authentication, no changes are required to the report.
Essentially I have an Excel file that is going to need to be worked on concurrently for a prolonged period of time. In the past I would simply 'Share the Workbook' and this would allow users on the network to view/change the file at the same time as other users on the network but in this particular instance everyone is disconnected from a central network and there is no mechanism available to place them on the same network. Does anyone know of a service out there that will allow all parties to edit this document in a central location concurrently?
A MOSS box came to mind but that seems like overkill for a single document. Thanks.
You could use SharePoint Foundation 2010 (free if you have Windows Server 2008 - so maybe a better fit than paying for MOSS) and import the Excel file as a list, and then sync the list with Excel.
Or, Google docs has a spreadsheet program - I think it allows importation of Excel spreadsheets.