• July 25, 2013

Business Intelligence Demo VHD (Part 10 of 10) – Awesome Demos!

Finally, with all the required software loaded we are ready to show awesome demos of Business Intelligence running on SharePoint 2013 and SQL 2012.  Woohoo!  

Please leave a comment below if you found these posts helpful.   I’d like to send a major thank you to Ivan Sander (@iasanders) for his work on https://sharepointdemobuilds.codeplex.com/ to provide these great BI examples to the SharePoint community.

If a picture is word a thousand words, this VHD takes that to a whole new level.

Visio Data Diagrams

Below are .VDW files (Visio Web Drawing) which are included in the http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/ sample site.  There are many great examples here to give an idea of how Visio can be used to improve Business Intelligence at your organization.

Examples components include:

• Pivot Shape (one shape per row)
• Color shading (driven by threshold.  think  stoplight Red, Yellow, Green)
• Data icons (driven by threshold.  think  stoplight Red, Yellow, Green)
• Percent background shading
• Gauges (thermometer dial)

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/Network_Diagram.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/Web_Site.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/HR%20Process%20Library/

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/HR%20Process%20Library/Hiring_Process.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/Room_Vacancy.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/Casino_Floor.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/Data%20Center.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/HVAC_Security.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/ValueStreamMap_Final.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/User%20Mailbox%20Monitoring.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/ValueStreamMap_Final.vdw?Web=1

Multiple Visio web parts can be combined on a page for an executive overview to quickly glance at key data and diagrams for context. 

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/SiteAssets/Hotel%20Rooms.aspx

Web part connections can be used to provide a filter into the Data Diagram.  That allows to easily interact and navigate the diagram.  Pretty cool.

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/SiteAssets/NetworkStatus.aspx

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/SitePages/Home.aspx

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Contoso%20Processes/Approved%20Contracts/SupplyChain_v3.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Loan_Consolidation.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Sales_Team.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Ski_Map.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Floorplan.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Insurance_Claims.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Manufacturing_Plant.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Supply_Chain_Diagram.vdw?Web=1

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/VGS/Shared%20Documents/Visio_Ribbon_Visualization.vdw?Web=1

Dashboards

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Visio%20BI/Pages/ExecutiveDashboard.aspx

I use the word Dashboard loosely for any page with multiple BI components.    Here we have Excel Web Part and Visio Web Part for a merger of table data with org chart.  Good for executive summary.

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Visio%20BI/Pages/RetailOperationsDashboard.aspx

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Visio%20BI/Pages/Analyst%20Dashboard.aspx

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Visio%20BI/Pages/Store%20Manager%20Dashboard.aspx

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/videos/SitePages/Home.aspx

The demo site even includes videos on how to configure Visio Services with intro, web part connections, and more.

Excel Services

Web based charts can be quickly created in Excel and published by any end user for wider consumption.  Thumbnails on the right pane help users navigate to relevant pages quickly.

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/Shared%20Documents/SlotMachines.xlsx?Web=1

Data Connection Library

Multiple BI presentation layers can display from a common source.   Shared data with ODC files can be a smart way to reuse a connections.

http://intranet.contoso.com/Sites/Visio/DataConnectionLibrary/

PowerView

My understanding is that PowerView is the new SQL Reporting Services 2012 file format RDLX (4 letter) for looking at data in more interactive ways.   This is a very compelling display.   The ability to adjust filters, navigate data, and integrate with PowerPoint are just fantastic.   The new interface even works great on tablets and touchscreen UI.

http://intranet.contoso.com/SelfService%20BI/Forms/Gallery.aspx

“Discover new insights with a highly interactive, familiar, browser-based data exploration, visualization, and presentation tool” http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/Products/PowerView.aspx

Thanks for browsing this blog post series.  I hope it was helpful to see Business Intelligence on SharePoint 2013 and how to build a working virtual machine for your own demos.   The best way to learn is hands-on with a real working site.  Please leave a comment if you found this helpful.  

• July 25, 2013
• 4 Comments
• Uncategorized

• July 22, 2013

Business Intelligence Demo VHD (Part 9 of 10) – Visio Services

Now we’ll load the Content pack for Visio Services.  First, we browse for the file “VisioServicesDemo 15.2.4.zip” and Add.

Now, we have Visio on the Content Pack menu and can click Install.

You’ll be prompted for a web application URL.

The script shows % complete progress while running.

You might encounter the above error regarding missing SharePoint cmdlets.  If so, what I did to workaround was open a PowerShell window as Administrator and then run the “Install.ps1” file manually.

Now when browsing to http://intranet.contoso.com/sites/visio  we get the Visio samples homepage.  Woohoo! 

• July 22, 2013
• 4 Comments
• Uncategorized

• July 21, 2013

Business Intelligence Demo VHD (Part 8 of 10) – Self Service BI

Now we’ll load the Content pack for  Self-Service BI. 

Execution of PowerShell script failed:  The term “Restore-SPSite” is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.  Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

After seeing this error and based on experience from “Step #7 – People” I decided to try running “Install.ps1” for this Content Pack manually in a PowerShell window.  NOTE – Be sure to include the URL for Contoso Intranet.  When I ran the PS1 with no arguments it failed and said that a target Web Application URL is required.

PS C:\Content Packs\Packs\Self-Service BI Demo 15.2.6> .\Install.ps1 http://intranet.contoso.com/

All Operations Completed Successfully!

Starting Incremental Crawl, this may take 5-15 minutes…
Launching Post Install Instructions…

Now when browsing to http://intranet.contoso.com/ we get the BI samples homepage.  Woohoo! 

NOTE – If you see the below Access Denied message, then double check the Super User and Super Reader accounts.   They should be two unique domain users which are not used for any other purpose and have no rights.   Using the SPFarm account for Super User will cause the pages not to load.  See below links for more detail.

• https://sharepointdemobuilds.codeplex.com/workitem/1480
• http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/357baa27-ba31-4415-82b6-33e8064f2c7b/access-denied-to-user-accessing-sp-site-after-upgrade-even-after-explicitly-granting-rights
• http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/SharePoint-Powershell-6df7c19d

• July 21, 2013
• 4 Comments
• Uncategorized

• July 19, 2013

Business Intelligence Demo VHD (Part 7 of 10) – People

Now we’ll load the Content Pack for People. 

Execution of PowerShell script failed:  Unable to connect to SharePoint.  Please verify that the site ‘http://mysite.contoso.com/’ is hosted on the local machine.

After seeing the above error, I decided to open MySite with IE to warm up the IIS memory cache.  Also, I added the SharePoint cmdlets to the default PowerShell “$profile” which helps with general admin work too.

This time instead of clicking the “Install” button I opened PowerShell and manually navigated to the “C:\Content Packs\Packs\PeoplePack – UserProfile Provisioning Demo 15.2.5\” folder to run “Install.ps1” manually which seemed to work much better.  Maybe having that working directory context allowed it to find other resource files.  I don’t know which of the 3 changes (HTTP cache, $profile cmdlets, or manually running “Install.ps1”) was the fix but I’m glad to see it populating now.

Installation Complete!

• July 19, 2013
• 9 Comments
• Uncategorized