Step by step guide on installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on a single machine

http://www.powerpivot-info.com/post/66-step-by-step-guide-on-installing-powerpivot-for-sharepoint

Personal Intelligence - Personal Dashboards

We know how Business Intelligence Dashboards can benefit the enterprise.  But what about Personal Dashboards?  Personal Intelligence?

Dashboard Definition From Wikipedia

Digital dashboards allow managers to monitor the contribution of the various departments in their organization. To gauge exactly how well an organization is performing overall, digital dashboards allow you to capture and report specific data points from each department within the organization, thus providing a "snapshot" of performance.

Benefits of using digital dashboards include:

• Visual presentation of performance measures
• Ability to identify and correct negative trends
• Measure efficiencies/inefficiencies
• Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends
• Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected business intelligence
• Align strategies and organizational goals
• Save time over running multiple reports
• Gain total visibility of all systems instantly

I use two Personal Dashboard Services to monitor my financial and physical health. 

Mint.com aggregates all the transactions from the various financial institutions you have accounts with to provide you with a quick snapshot of your finances.  You can set budgets, see your current net worth and even drill down on the categories of spending and places you spend your hard earned dollars at.  For example if found out that when my friends wife is out of town I tend to spend more money at bars and restaurants than normal.  The next month I scaled back and brought my spending back in line with historical norms, and saved a few hundred dollars in the process.

Runkeeper.com is a dashboard that allows you to see how much exercise your getting, the calories your burning and even the miles and elevation gain that you achieved during your workouts.  The data is collected via an iPhone or Android app using GPS.  My dashboard: http://runkeeper.com/user/Abram indicates that I hiked or walked about 44 miles in March and only 14 this May, so no wonder I gained a few pounds.  Time to turn off the computer and go for a walk! 

 

Posted via web from This Week In Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence Center site in SharePoint 2010

• Activate the PerformancePoint Service in Central Administration
• System Settings
• Manage Services on Server
• Performance Point Service
• Click Start
• Create the PerformancePoint Service Application
• Application Management
• Manage Service Applications
• New PerformancePoint Service Application
• Give Name
• Click Add this service to applicaiton's proxy
• Create or use an existing application pool.
• Go to your site and activate the features needed.
• Click on Site Actions, Site Settings
• Site Collection Administration, Site Collection Features
• Activate Sharepoint Server Enterprise Site Collection Features
• Activate Sharepoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
• Activate PerformancePoint Services Site Collection Features
• Navigate to the Site or Subsite you want to create your BI Center in.

• New Site
• Business Intelligence Center will now be available. 
• Type in Title and URL and hit Create!
• SUCCESS!!!!

Posted via email from thisweekinbi's posterous

SQL Server 2008 R2 - Managed Self Service Business Intelligence

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-self-service-BI.aspx

PowerPivot - I just loaded 37593185 rows into Excel

After working a long week working with COGNOS, I decided to spend my Friday evening taking the wraps off the the very top of Microsoft's new BI Stack.  I could possibly take a year and 5 months worth of history (37 Million Invoice Facts) and load it into Excel 2010 with PowerPivot?  Since all this data is loaded into memory, my 2 GB RAM VMWare Sandbox could not handle it.  Next up I tried out Physical Sandbox which has 16 GB of RAM (I am very blessed to have many development boxes at my disposal.)  While the load took it's sweet time (next time I will time it) and Excel convulsed and said "Not Responding" several times, in the end it loaded!  I have to hand it to Microsoft, they have figured out the in memory thing.  In the weeks and months ahead, we shall see how well this compares to COGNOS' TM1 solution.  

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from thisweekinbi's posterous

Microsoft BI

www.microsoft.com/bi
Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solutions on your existing technology investments so employees gain access to accurate, up-to-date information for better, more relevant decision-making.  Our BI solutions integrate the strengths of SQL Server, SharePoint and Office on a single platform to empower informed decision-making that moves your business forward

COGNOS

www.cognos.com 

More than 23,000 leading companies and organizations around the world choose Cognos performance management solutions. Use business intelligence software to understand performance and make better decisions. Use financial performance management software to set targets and allocate the resources to achieve them.