Office 2013 and SQL Server 2012: an integrated, powerful BI solution

I have recently read that PowerPivot and Power View are natively present in Office 2013 and especially in Excel 2013. I found this fun and decided to install the preview of Office 2013!:-D

First, what are PowerPivot and Power View?

PowerPivot is an add-on to Excel which is used for adding and integrating large amounts of data in Excel workbooks.
More information here.
Power View is a feature of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience.
More information here.

Office 2013, a native Business Intelligence tool

Don’t download additional add-ons anymore, with Office 2013 these 2 Business Intelligence add-ons are directly present in the Office edition.
For the license, no problem, it’s included in the Office price!
To see all new features in Office 2013, go to this web site.

Excel 2013 configuration

The first thing we can see are the new Office icons with Outlook in blue (before, it was yellow).

Now, run the Excel 2013 Preview.

Select a blank workbook, then go to the FILE tab.

Click on Options.

In Add-Ins, you can see the 2 cCom Add-Ins (PowerPivot and Power View). This is just to verify that they are installed.

HOHOHO! I was talking about Add-on in my introduction and now about Add-in…

Do you see the difference? 😯

No! Ok, I explain it to you:

• Before Office 2013 –> Separated installation  –> Add-On term is used
• Since Office 2013   –> Included in Office setup –> Add-In term is used

Power View Reports in Excel 2013

Go to INSERT tab and you can see two sections:

• PowerPivot with PivotTable and Recommended PivotTables
• Power View with Power View Reports

Click on Power View Reports.

Enable the add-in.

Continue and wait…

And Oops, a warning is displayed!

Indeed, Silverlight is a requirement for PowerView, so you have to install it.

Now, we can unleash our creativity for our reports.

Conclusion

I’m very impressed with the easy integration of SQL BI in Office. I hope that this short article gives you the desire to try it as well, go further and create great reports.

Your boss will be impressed if you use these news features from Microsoft Office…:-D