Add Power View Reports to Your PerformancePoint 2013 Dashboards

Previously here at the SQL Server Pro BI Blog, we've shown you methods of using Web Page reports in PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010 (PPS) to add Power View reports into your dashboards. In that posting, I also introduce you to methods that allow you to use PPS filters to change the Power View report context so that your dashboard can remain interactive. Some of the primary reasons to use PPS for your BI dashboards in SharePoint is so that your Web parts work together in a cohesive manner for your users with interactive filters and from individual reports that are built from different reporting tools. PPS provides that single cohesive dashboard view for your users within the context of SharePoint so that you can also take advantage of SharePoint's collaboration capabilities, search, content management, etc.

In the case of Power View, what you have is essentially the most exciting BI reporting tool available from Microsoft with interactive graphics that enable powerful data visualizations. So you don't want to keep those from being added into your PPS dashboards. Even though Power View appears within the framework of SSRS and an RDL (RDLX) language, Power View reports do not fit within the SSRS server mechanisms and require other methods to include them into your dashboards.

What I want to do here is to introduce you to a new method available in SharePoint 2013 and Excel 2013 where you can build the latest Power View reports natively in Excel and then publish the embedded Power View report through Excel Services:

Step 1: Build your PowerPivot model and create a Power View report from that model

Step 2: Publish just that worksheet to SharePoint 2013 from Excel 2013:

Step 3: In PPS Dashboard Designer, create an Excel Services report for that Power View worksheet. Note that in the previous article that I wrote for including Power Views in SharePoint, we had to use Web Reports. That's because prior to Excel 2013, the only way to create and share Power View reports was from a Web URL in SharePoint.

Step 4: Now that we have a report type using Excel Services, PPS can include that report type in your PPS dashboard and it will only show that Power View worksheet. Using Excel Services is a very nice way to make Excel 2013 your one-stop shop for creating BI reports and using PPS to build a dashboard with those reporting assets.

One final note: If you want to try the latest SQL Server 2012 Power View CTP (aka beta) here, you will find that Microsoft has added new and improved support for URL parameters when calling Power View via Web URL, which will help with the filtering and controlling of Web Parts in SharePoint & PPS that use the Web Report method from the previous blog link at the top of this posting, instead of the Excel Services method that I demonstrate here.