Getting to Know the Excel Services Service Application

From a high level, Excel Calculation Services (Excel Services) is a shared service in SharePoint 2010 Enterprise that allows users to publish Excel workbooks to a document library. Excel Services can open workbooks from SharePoint libraries as well as from UNC paths and HTTP websites. For initial testing purposes, it is generally recommended to start with SharePoint library-based workbooks and then extend to other sources.

This is not meant to replace the other means of making Excel data available in SharePoint 2010 as outlined in the previous section, but is meant as a means of managing and securing the workbooks and publishing content through the SharePoint interface. For example, if Company ABC wants to make their Product Sales Spreadsheet available to all users in the organization so that they can input their personal sales information, Excel Services would not be the best way to do this. Rather, the manager, who wants to leverage SharePoint technologies, would ask users to update a SharePoint list (such as Product Sales List) and then review the information to ensure it was accurate. The manager would then export this content to create a spreadsheet, add graphs for ease of analysis, and then publish it using Excel Services. This example is shown in action later in this chapter.

Before the process of publishing using Excel Services is reviewed, the Excel Services service application will be reviewed from a high level because it is important for the farm administrator to understand the different tools available for configuring and managing the Excel Services service application before opening it up to users for testing purposes.

Excel Services was introduced in SharePoint 2007, and there are a number of new features in the product, including the following:

• Excel Services is now a service application, and as such is more manageable and customizable than it was in SharePoint 2007, where it was part of the shared services provider.

• Excel Services now leverages PowerShell for management instead of the stsadm tool.

• REST API: The REST API is a client/server software architecture/protocol that uses hyperlinks and lets the user access entities (such as ranges and charts) in workbooks using Excel Services through HTTP and also provides a method for users to set values in these ranges, including single cells.

• JSOM or ECMAScript (JScript or JavaScript object model): ECMAScript enables syndication, mash-ups, automation of Excel Services, and the extension of Excel Services by third parties. It also provides a subset of Microsoft Excel Web Access functionality that lets an administrator or developer insert JavaScript code on a web page to affect range navigation, cell values, and other grid operations.