Understanding how Power Pivot and Power Query contribute to a successful Business Intelligence project built with Power BI

For readers familiar with Microsoft’s Power BI suite of tools for Excel, but not clear as to how Power Pivot, and Power Query interact within a Power BI project, a webcast from TechEd Europe 2014, titled Overview of Business Intelligence in Office and Office 265 may be worth watching. The webcast is led by Peter […]

Data Visualization is a popular requirement for Office 365 computing built on Business Intelligence components

Microsoft’s TechEd Europe 2014 event, which was held in October, 2014, included a presentation on the Business Intelligence (BI) opportunities presented by Microsoft Office and Office 365 products. The title of this presentation, which is now available for public viewing as a webcast on Microsoft’s MSDN Channel 9 web site, is Overview of Business Intelligence […]

Is Power BI the ‘Must Have’ Feature Organizations need to Hasten their Pace of Signing Up for SharePoint Online, Office 365 Computing?

Microsoft’s promotional materials for Office 365 include the phrase ‘self service business intelligence’. This phrase was actually coined by Forrester Research, for The Forrester Wave™: Self-Service Business Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2012. To provide a summary of this concept, one result of the consumerization of IT and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomena of the […]

Transform On Premises SharePoint Into a Business Critical Solution with Curated Sets of Video Training Content

Microsoft’s Business Critical SharePoint web site presents a series of high value solutions presented along with supporting success stories. SharePoint stakeholders may benefit from reviewing some of the information on this web site before commencing work on an implementation plan for SharePoint. Many of the examples presented illustrate how valuable features of SharePoint, for example, […]

Using SharePoint Workflows to Identify Inefficiencies in Business Processes

Workflows built on SharePoint lists and libraries can be used to identify problem points in business processes. Our newest DVD set of specialized training content for SharePoint 2013, Cheap Thrills in SharePoint presents several workflow examples useful for this purpose. Why would an organization consider implementing workflows for this purpose? Any SharePoint stakeholders monitoring their […]

Business Intelligence Systems can be Successfully Built on a SharePoint Server Foundation

This is the latest in our current series of blog posts. In this series we provide readers with some familiar application drivers, which some businesses will want to capture should they decide to implement SharePoint. Each of these drivers amounts to a popular solution in today’s enterprise computing markets. Once an organization decides to pursue […]

Use the Open Data Protocol to Include Data from Business Silos in SharePoint Online

The OData Protocol is defined as ” . . . a standardized protocol for creating and consuming data APIs. OData builds on core protocols like HTTP and commonly accepted methodologies like REST. The result is a uniform way to expose full-featured data APIs.” This definition may be useful for software developers. Steve Fox, a Director […]

An Inexpensive Method of Integrating Business Intelligence Features Into SharePoint 2013

Our video tutorial set, “SharePoint 2013: Business Intelligence” provides any organization looking to add truly useful business intelligence (BI) features to its SharePoint 2013 computing environment with an inexpensive method of performing the systems integration required to deliver the desired functionality. With the release of this set for purchase, individuals and organizations can now access […]