Designing Mashups with Excel and Visio

Abstract

Business Intelligence and reporting have been two of the most important functions of data management systems over the last several decades, and as technology changes, the means for reporting and creating dashboards has evolved to meet the changing needs and capabilities in the market. In today’s world, the availability of services such as geographic mapping and social networking on a global scale has led to the redefining of how information is organized and portrayed on the Web. In many cases, dashboards now need to provide a high level of relevance, far beyond a simple tabular report or even charts, and the information expressed should be cohesive and dynamic, allowing the user to incorporate the data they need with external systems that complete a picture for them. This new dashboard for the Web is known as a mashup, and in SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has provided a framework for completing their services that they refer to as Composites. With tools such as Visio, Excel, and PerformancePoint Services, SharePoint has a full feature set for reporting. This chapter will address some aspects of how to extend the out-of-the-box experience from Visio and Excel to quickly create a mashup.