Excel Services enables you to view and use workbooks that have been published to SharePoint. These published workbooks can include reports, scorecards, dashboards, and data models. A Data Model is an important part of the self-service business intelligence capabilities that are available with Office Professional Plus. You collect data in a Data Model and then use it as a source for reports and scorecards that you can then publish and share.
What is a Data Model?
A Data Model is essentially a collection of data that you create and organize by using Power Pivot for Excel. A Data Model typically consists of one or more tables of data. When you create a Data Model, you bring together data from one or more sources that can include Microsoft Access 2013, Microsoft SQL Server, OData data feeds, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, XML files, Oracle, Teradata, and other kinds of data. You can sort and organize the data, and create relationships between different tables by using Power Pivot for Excel.
For more information about Power Pivot for Excel and data models, see the following resources:
Why use data models?
Data models in Excel enable you to gather data from a wide variety of sources, create a cohesive data set, and then use it to create powerful reports, scorecards, and dashboards. Data models offer certain advantages over simply connecting to external data sources:
-
You can bring in data from multiple sources and put it together as a single data set.
-
You can use Flash Fill functionality in Excel 2013 to format columns to make the data easier to read and use.
-
You can view, sort, and organize the data.
After you have created a Data Model in Excel, you can use it to create charts, tables, scorecards and dashboards. For example, you can use Excel 2013 to create interactive PivotChart reports and PivotTable reports. Or, you can use Power View to create mashups that include interactive views such as line charts, bar charts, bubble charts, and more.
For more information about how to create and use data models, see the following resources:
How does Excel Services work with data models?
Excel Services enables you and other people to view and use workbooks that have been published to a SharePoint library, including workbooks that contain data models. Depending on your particular environment, Excel Services retains connectivity to external data sources so that the data remains live and up to date. This can save a lot of time and effort. In addition, you can use SharePoint permissions to control who can view and use them.
For more information about Excel Services, see the following resources:
