12. Creating Dashboards

In this Chapter

• Overview of Excel Services

• What’s New in Excel 2007?

• Setting Up and Understanding Excel Services

• Publishing an Excel Workbook

• Displaying an Excel Workbook in the Browser

• Using the Capabilities of Dashboards, KPIs, and Filter Web Parts

Do you find it slightly annoying that to view an Excel workbook stored in a SharePoint document library, you have to click on the file, choose to open it or edit it, wait for Excel to open on your computer, sometimes put in your password, and then wait for the file to be rendered? Go ahead, you can admit it. All of this and all you really wanted to see is if this month’s goal was 1,500 or 1,600 units. Or maybe you just wanted to find out how close your team was to the goal. Luckily, the enterprise version of MOSS contains the tools to solve these problems and more. This chapter covers the features of Excel Services, using key performance indicators (KPIs), and filter Web Parts to create an integrated business intelligence (BI) solution.