6 Ways To Visualise Data In Office 365

6Ways to Visualise
Data in Office 365
WRITTEN BY:

Dave Paylor
Senior Consultant - OBS

Visualise your business data using Office 365
Data visualisation is the presentation of complex data to a business
audience to provide valuable insight. In this presentation Dave will
discuss 6 tools that can be used to create charts and other visualisations
on Office 365.
He has detailed their strengths, weaknesses, use scenarios and licensing
implications.
Power BI

XSLT

Excel Services

Display Templates

Visio Services

jQuery

1. Power BI
The term Power BI is relatively new, it refers Microsoft‘s
new generation of BI tools. PowerView is one of the
elements and has been available for a few years now. It
enables dynamic, interactive visualisations which are
easily created and consumed by business users. It’s
probably one of the most useful of the Power BI suite.
Other elements of Power BI, such as Power Map and
Power Query, are tremendous tools for situational
visualisation. You can experience Power BI in Excel
2013 and Office 365 (as of the 11th of Feb 2014).

Office 365 Compatible

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Example: Activation data for

SharePoint 2013 Compatible

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Enterprise licence of SQL

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Enterprise licence of SharePoint

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Marine Rescue allowing analysis by
squadron and cause including
geospatial representation of
locations

Powerful, dynamic user
interface
Little or no customisation

2. Excel Services
If you have content or data in Excel that you would like
presented via SharePoint, then Excel Services is a great way to
visualise it as charts, graphs, etc. on selected pages. The Excel
Web Access web part allows you to connect to an Excel file
which is located in SharePoint and surface selected
elements, such as a chart, onto the page. The users who see the
chart do not need to have Excel installed.
The Excel REST API is one of the best kept secrets of SharePoint
and it is certainly one of the most powerful. The look and feel of
a chart is managed in Excel and the chart is returned as an image
which can be embedded anywhere in SharePoint
Dave’s Fav

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Example: Country Manager using
Excel to set targets for states and
changing chart template with actual
data coming from a SharePoint list
entered by regional managers

Easy to use
REST charts are not
interactive

3. Visio Services
Visio objects can be connected to data, including
SharePoint lists. This means that the content of a Visio
diagram can dynamically change based on the incoming
data. The Visio Web Part connects to a Visio file in
SharePoint and presents this interactive visualisation of
data which will dynamically change as the source data is
updated. The API allows further customisation of the
way it interacts with other content on the page resulting
in a very powerful way to visualise information.


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Example: Seating plan linked to
people search so clicking from search
shows where the person sits and
clicking on the desk shows who is
there

JavaScript API allows for
powerful interaction
Files grow quickly with a lot
of objects

4. XSLT
XSLT is commonly used to present bar charts, but other
visualisations, such as status indicators and colourcoding can also easily be achieved. It’s ability is only
limited to what can be achieved with HTML.
With minimal training, content authors can easily apply
pre-prepared XSLT to their views via the XSL link with
web part settings, although one wouldn’t expect
business users to create their own XSLT.


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Example: Apply an XSL template to
a risk register in a SharePoint list to
represent the content in an ISO
31000 risk matrix

Server-side processing
Needs knowledge to create
XSL templates

5. Display Templates
Display Templates are still relatively new, they were
introduced with the launch SharePoint 2013, but the
possibilities they offer are very exciting. In many cases,
Display Templates have the potential to replace XSLT for
simple visualisation techniques such as indicators and
colour-coding.
Tool with great potential!


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Example: Apply a display template
to a list of projects and convert a
choice field value to a KPI indicator
to produce a simple project
dashboard

Can effect a single field of a
view
Care needed with multiple
views on the same page

6. jQuery
There are a number of jQuery plug-ins that offer some
great visualisation capabilities. A couple of examples are
jqPlot and Amcharts. These require some technical
configuration, but it is all client-side and can produce
some great results for your efforts.
Amcharts is based on jQuery so also offers extensive
animations which may be a little gimmicky but can also
really bring a chart to life.


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Example: Absenteeism summaries
held in a SharePoint list and
presented as a chart using jQuery

JavaScript API allows for
powerful interaction
Files grow quickly with a lot
of objects

Contact Dave if you
have any questions.
WRITTEN BY:

Dave Paylor
Senior Consultant - OBS
E: dave.paylor@obs.com.au
L: http://au.linkedin.com/in/paylord

OBS:

6 Ways To Visualise Data In Office 365

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