Web Usage Scenarios
There are a number of situations in which consumption of a PowerPivot for SharePoint solution via a web browser is advantageous. Deskless workers—those who perform their duties while not tied to a desk—aren't likely to have a dedicated PC, and often benefit from access through a browser on whatever PC they can find. Members of mobile and field service workforces may consume all of their analytics from a browser on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Finally, even traditional information workers that enjoy desktops and laptop computers occasionally have the need for browser access to analytics when traveling.
Excel via the Browser
For some time now, Microsoft Excel has been the lingua franca of business number crunchers. Consider for a moment the impact of enabling legions of Excel developers and power users with web publishing skills. Imparting such skills is one of the major impacts of PowerPivot for SharePoint. Solutions can be opened and interacted with via a web browser alone, with no desktop installation of Microsoft Excel required. This functionality is available via current versions of Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
For example, from a browser window, open a PowerPivot Gallery as pictured in Figure 7-12. In this case, I have an example from earlier in the book, NCAA Dashboard.xlsx, available in this PowerPivot for SharePoint installation.
Figure 7-12. PowerPivot Gallery
To open the file, single-click the file name in the PowerPivot Gallery. By default, this will open the workbook using Excel Services. The result should be similar to Figure 7-13. Notice the grid-lines and slicers, similar to the presentation in the desktop version of Excel. Additionally, we are simply rendering this inside an Internet Explorer tab. Except for the browser, no desktop software is required to present the worksheet to a user in this mode.
Figure 7-13. File open in web browser
While the display of the file may be less than remarkable, there is more. All of the slicer and filter interactions possible in the desktop version of Microsoft Excel are available to the web user via Excel Services. For example, with a Shift-click of the Florida item in the Team slicer, the charts in the dashboard are updated to add data for Florida, as pictured in Figure 7-14.
Figure 7-14. Slicer update in web browser
However, the web presentation of PowerPivot solutions does carry limitations. No “authoring” capabilities are available for web users. There is no way for a user to change the layout of an existing PivotChart or PivotTable via the web interface. The exception to this would be columns and rows that may be added to (or removed from) a PivotChart or PivotTable (for example, the foregoing Florida data) via a user's interaction with a slicer. However, there is a compelling case to be made for SharePoint as a consumption tier for a group of users making decisions by interacting with but not creating PowerPivot solutions. This limitation can be considered an advantage in that Excel web users cannot change the underlying PowerPivot solution from a data or layout perspective. Instead, we have the ultimate in a “protected” workbook as an ad hoc analytics platform.
PowerPivot from an iPad or Other Tablet
The good news is you can access PowerPivot for SharePoint workbooks from a tablet device—for example, an iPad. The bad news, however, especially on the iPad, is limitations, because Silverlight simply is not available on the iOS. Therefore using the graphical preview PowerPivot Gallery presentation methods (Gallery, Theater, and Carousel) is not possible. This is because each of the gallery views relies on Silverlight as the presentation layer. The All Documents view is a simple list of the PowerPivot Gallery content that will render correctly within a browser without Silverlight (such as Safari on iOS).
Figure 7-15 contains an example of using the All Documents view of the PowerPivot Gallery from an iPad. The solution can be opened on the device, and the primary user interface elements of PowerPivot for SharePoint respond to gestures. These user interface elements include slicers and the filter context menu.
Figure 7-15. PowerPivot Gallery, All Documents view on iPad
Figure 7-16 is an example of interaction with a PowerPivot for Excel solution via Safari on the iPad. However, the diagram does not indicate the navigation differences that may become issues in a real project. For example, the ability to Ctrl-click (or Shift-click) to select multiple slicer values is not apparent, if at all possible. Additionally, the usual mouse navigation to move around the worksheet is another unimpressive user experience.
