Planning for business intelligence adoption - Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 - page 23

FIGURE 2-1 The business user communities.
The largest community consists of information users, who rely on standard reports that BI
developers publish to a central location. These reports might be accessible either online or in
print, depending on the distribution mechanism that the report administrators implement. For this
information-user community, SQL Server Reporting Services is a good solution, either running as an
independent application or integrated with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. It provides a scalable
online environment for viewing reports that administrators can secure, and it can deliver reports in
a variety of formats on a scheduled basis via email or to a network file share. If information users
require only online access to centralized reports, other good options supported by SharePoint Server
2013 include Microsoft Power View in SharePoint, Microsoft Power View in Excel, or PowerPivot for
SharePoint 2013 workbooks.
Note Power View in Excel and Power View in SharePoint are similar products, but behave
differently online. Both require an instance of SQL Server Reporting Services installed in
SharePoint integrated mode. However, to create a Power View in Excel report that is ac-
cessible in Excel Services, you start by using Excel 2013 to access an internal data model or
a PowerPivot for Excel data model embedded in the same workbook, add a Power View
sheet to the workbook, design one or more visualizations, and then publish the workbook
to a SharePoint document library, as described in Chapter 5, “Using Power View in Excel
2013.” Users can interact with the Power View sheet in a web browser by using features
such as filtering and highlighting, but they cannot edit the visualizations, save the Power
View sheet separately, or export it to Microsoft PowerPoint. Power View in SharePoint, on
the other hand, is the tool you use to create a new Power View report that you store as an
RDLX file in a SharePoint document library. If you open a saved Power View report, you can
use the interactive features with its visualizations, and you can also edit the report by add-
ing or removing fields or rearranging items. You can also export the report to PowerPoint
to create an interactive slide presentation with a live data connection.