Excel Services Reports Displayed in SharePoint 2013

One of the other advantages of using the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is that you can include Excel Services reports in your PerformancePoint dashboards. Excel Services reports are Excel workbooks that have been published to a SharePoint Server. You can display a single item in the workbook, or the entire workbook in your PerformancePoint dashboard.

When you use Dashboard Designer to include Excel Services reports in your dashboard, you do not actually create the reports. Instead, you create PerformancePoint Web Parts that are designed to display Excel Services reports and receive dashboard filters.

Use Excel Services reports for purposes such as the following:

• To display view types that you cannot be created using Dashboard Designer. Examples include PivotChart reports, PivotTable reports, and tables that contain conditional formatting or other custom formatting that is not available in analytic grids.
• To save time by displaying existing reports instead of creating (or recreating) new Excel workbooks.
• To include interactive reports in your dashboards that users can either view in a web browser or open in Excel.
• To create reports that use data source types not available in Dashboard Designer.

These are only some examples of how an Excel Services report can be useful. An Excel Services report displays all or part of an Excel workbook that was published to SharePoint Server 2013 using Excel Services. You can include Excel Services reports in your dashboard, either as a single item on the page or as an item alongside other dashboard items. In addition, you can connect dashboard filters to Excel Services reports, together with other kinds of PerformancePoint reports and scorecards.

Interactive functionality in Excel Services reports

You would typically include one or more Excel Services reports in your dashboard to enable dashboard users to easily view and explore data. Depending on how you set up your reports, dashboard users can perform the following kinds of tasks:

• Browse through pages in Excel workbooks without opening Excel
• Apply (or change) internal filters for charts and tables that were created in Excel
• Sort rows or columns in charts or tables
• Use the Refresh button in the browser window to restore the Excel Services report to its default view

Data sources for Excel Services reports

Excel Services reports can use various data sources, such as those in the following list:

• A SQL Server database
• A SQL Server Analysis Services data cube
• A Access database
• An online analytical processing (OLAP) database
• A relational database
• An Excel workbook
• A text file
• An external data connection file that is defined as a trusted data provider. Examples might include those in the following list:
  
  
  • SQL Server OLE DB, ODBC, or OLAP
  • OLE DB and ODBC for Oracle
  • OLE DB and ODBC for IBM DB2

Overview of Excel Services reports displayed in PerformancePoint Web Parts

 

Now we will create an Excel Services report and display it with different web parts.

The initial step is to open an Excel sheet and click on the Data tab, then select the data source option “From Other Sources”. It shows the various options and we select “From Analysis Service”.



Enter the Server name here:



Select the database that contains the data you want.



Here the file that I give likes my Data Connection in the SharePoint site as in the following:



Select the Authentication setting as none.



Select one of the options for how you want to view the data in this workbook.



Now we have created a simple chart report.



In the properties tab of the connection, we have the option for exporting a connection file.



The connection file is saved in the Data Connections folder of the SharePoint site as in the following:



The next step is to upload our Excel file into Documents as in the following:



Open the Performance Point content and click on the new item.



Select the report template "Excel Services".



Select the uploaded file from the Documents Library and click on the view, now the workbook will be opened in the browser.



The next step is to display this report in a Performance Point web part.

Create a new page and insert the Performance Point Report web part as in the following:



Select the file location of the Excel file form Performance Point and insert it, it's displayed in the page as in the following:



Now we will display our report in Excel Web Access.

Create a new page and insert the Excel web access web part.



Open the tool pane as in the following:



Select the file here and insert as in the following:

 

 

Now it's displayed in the page.



When we try to refresh the report data the following error messages may be shown.







To resolve these errors we need to do some configurations.

"Central Admin" => "Application Management" => "Service Application" => "Manage Services on server".

Start the service for "Claims to Windows Token Service" and "Excel Calculation Services".



Then open the Mange service application as in the following:



Click on the Excel service application as in the following:



Create a new Unattended Service in global settings and create a new trusted file location as in the following:



Now it shows our data fields (measures and dimensions) and we can edit our reports.
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References

• The data connection path in the workbook points to a file on the local drive or is an invalid URI.
• Using Office Data Connection files (.odc) and the DataConnections Web Part in SharePoint to Specify External Data Connections in Newly Created Excel Workbooks.
• The data connection uses Windows Authentication and user credentials could not be delegated.

Summary

In this article we explored how to do Excel Services reports displayed in PerformancePoint Web Parts and Excel Web Access and Excel Service configuration in SharePoint 2013.