Plan for business intelligence

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Topic Last Modified: 2015-06-08

Business intelligence enables you to store data that represents your organization's key business processes, to organize that data in a useful manner, and to present that data as meaningful information. Knowledge workers can then act on that information to increase productivity and to provide feedback that improves underlying business processes.

Business intelligence planning is a key part of any deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. You start by identifying the business needs of your organization. Then, you identify the features of Office SharePoint Server that can help you collect, present, and act on data in your organization.

Plan for business intelligence and business data by using the following steps:

1. **Plan for business intelligence needs   **Consider the business processes and business data applications commonly used by your organization, plan the scenarios in which you work with business data, and determine the scope of the business intelligence analysis that your organization is considering. Use the following articles to help plan for business intelligence needs:

   • Determine business data and business intelligence needs provides a discussion of using business intelligence and business data presentation to increase the effectiveness of data analysis and business processes for the common business scenarios of your organization.

   • Determine scope of business intelligence analysis provides a discussion of the appropriate depth of planning for analysis and use of business data.

2. **Plan for business intelligence   **Plan data sources for the core business intelligence functionality of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and then plan the analysis tools used in SharePoint sites based on those data sources. Use the following articles to help plan for business intelligence:

   • Plan data connection management provides a discussion of connecting to data in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services cubes and other databases.

   • Plan key performance indicators provides a discussion of calculating easy-to-use scorecards from ranges of data in data connection libraries, Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 worksheets, business data lists, and SharePoint lists.

   • Plan reports provides a discussion of presenting key performance indicators (KPIs) and business data Web Parts in Report Center pages and other sites to improve analysis of business data and key business processes.

   • Plan dashboards and filters provides a discussion of displaying multiple related reports and KPIs, and connecting the Web Parts for business data so that you can filter data based on key business properties for all reports on the dashboard page.

3. **Plan for Excel Services   **Plan to use Excel Services to analyze business data and increase business intelligence. Use the following articles to plan for Excel Services:

   • Plan Excel Services security provides a discussion of security considerations to use with Excel Services.

   • Determine resource requirements to support Excel Services provides a discussion of the factors that can affect the performance and availability of Excel Services.

   • Plan rendering Excel KPI data provides a discussion of how data in spreadsheets can be rendered in KPI List Web Parts or aggregated into a dashboard.

   • Plan Excel reports against OLAP cubes provides a discussion of online analytical processing (OLAP) functions and formulas that can be used to create customizable reports.

   • Plan access to Excel spreadsheets provides a discussion of spreadsheet management and controlling access to workbooks.

   • Plan external data connections for Excel Services provides guidance for configuring Office SharePoint Server 2007 to enable workbooks loaded on Excel Services to successfully refresh external data.

4. **Plan for business data presentation   **Plan to use data from line-of-business applications to analyze and act on data in your SharePoint sites. Use the following articles to plan for business data presentation:

   • Plan for business data connections with the Business Data Catalog provides a discussion of registering applications in the Business Data Catalog.

   • Plan for business data profiles provides a discussion of which business data types and properties to include when registering applications in the Business Data Catalog.

   • Plan business data lists provides a discussion of adding columns to SharePoint lists that contain data from applications registered in the Business Data Catalog.

   • Plan business data Web Parts provides a discussion of creating Web Parts based on the data in business data lists, the many types of business data Web Parts, and the sites that can benefit from using these Web Parts.

   • Plan business data actions provides a discussion of creating actions based on properties of business data, and displaying those actions in Web Parts that can be connected to other business data Web Parts and filter Web Parts.

5. **Plan for business data search   **Plan to include data from business applications in search queries from your SharePoint sites. Use the following article to plan for business data search:

   • Plan for business data search provides a discussion of adding business data content sources, mapping crawled business data properties to managed properties used by search queries, and modifying the search experience so that business data is easier to find and business data search results are more relevant.