Ben Sullins Tech

Me and Rick trying to decide who is going to try the mic first

Wow, what a day yesterday. Gave a presentation at the Microsoft Healthcare User Group Conference with Rick Garcia of Methodist hospital to two completely packed rooms. Funny thing, Rick and I had no clue we were supposed to be using the microphones because there was another room full of attendees that obviously couldn’t hear us without them.

In the presentation Rick talked about how they, with the help of Courtyard Group, have reformed their Business Intelligence (BI) organization to be driven by the end-user versus by the IT team. This is key in all BI organizations as, it is not something that IT (in most cases) will truly understand usually.

When IT is the driver behind BI initiatives what I’ve found is that users will simply take the data that IT is providing them, import it into Excel or Access, and then build their own BI from it. This is bad. From an organizational standpiont you have a valuable resource spending time collecting, formatting, and organizing data (something much better handeled by IT when given proper requirements) rather than doing the true analysis. From an Business Continuity (BCP) standpoint you are also now subject to a single point of failure since the analyst will most likely save the reports to their desktop

My portion of the presentation covered the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack and how we are using that to help Methodists IT group focus more on delivering the analysis tools to the users rather than doing the reports themselves. This falls into that category of “BI for the masses” and helping create that reality where IT’s main focus is to integrate the systems and present the analytical tools to the business users to do the analysis. This is how I believe BI works best and provides the most value to an organization. Of course, all of this is delivered in SharePoint as this is where all end-users are being driven to store, manage, and find any and all information.

I am really excited about where Methodist is going with their Business Intelligence initiative and hope to follow up with some more great details at the next Microsoft Healthcare User Group Conference.

Cheers!
Ben

References:

MS HUG Breakout Sessions: http://www.mshug.org/events/exchange_Sept2009.aspx

Presentation Slides: http://www.mshug.org/docs/exhange2009/Garcia_LeveragingSharePointBI.pdf
Methodist Hospital System: http://www.methodisthealth.com
Courtyard Group: http://www.courtyard-group.com/
SharePoint360: http://sharepoint360.com

If you’ve not heard of Gemini yet you’re in for a treat. I found these videos on youtube yesterday of the Gemini demo from the BI conference last year that you can view below.

Gemini is a new part of the MS BI stack that is an add-in for Excel that allows power-users the ability to essentially create their own cubes using virtually any data they can get their hands on.

Being the MS BI geek that I am, this opens up all sorts of new opportunities for prototyping solutions and enabling the business to build their own BI applications.

The key here, that I see, is that these solutions are not managed by IT. So, as soon as one of these Gemini cubes becomes business critical, it will need to be built using formal BI methods and tools so that the proper support procedures can be implemented. This is what scares me :-S

I can foresee smaller businesses that are resistant to change, or are scared of the term “Data Warehouse” from prior failed projects, that would want to implement Gemini solutions as business critical applications. Simply because it’s cheaper to implement in the short term, ignoring the lack of sustainability that a more traditional BI solution yeilds.

Enough rambling for now, watch the videos and let me know what you think…

Below is a recent screencast I recorded showing how to build a project timeline (gannt chart style) using MS Excel. It’s simple and easy and works great for porting it around to other office apps (eg. Word, PowerPoint). Let me know if you have questions by posting a comment and enjoy!

I was recently fighting with Excel because I was sick of it wanting to run in Compatibility Mode by default. Everything I found out there said that you simply need to change the option for Save-As to be the 2007 format. This only seemed to work on the workbooks I had open. If I closed and re-opened Excel it would be back in Compatibility Mode.

Remembering from my old days of hacking Excel 97 workbooks and creating templates with Macro’s I recalled a way to change the default workbook that Excel would use when starting up. This is where the ‘ah-ha’ happened.

Below are the steps you may use to force Excel out of Compatibility Mode when it starts up if changing the aforementioned Save-As method does not work for you.

1. Open Excel (you should get Book1 [Compatibility Mode] by default)
2. Save-As (F12) and save it as Book1.xlsx (the 2007 format) in the following location:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART

3. Restart Excel

That’s it! Excel by default will look in this location (based on where you installed Excel) for the default workbook it uses when starting up. Since you have saved it in the 2007 format Excel will no longer run in Compatibility Mode by default. It will only do this when opening .xls files that were saved in Compatibility Mode. For those, just save as .xlsx and you should be good.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Ben

Recently I was on a call with a client and one of their IT guys asked if the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack can do everything Exclesius can do. In short, the answer is sorta. Through reporting services the MS BI stack can provide similar functionality however, it cannot provide the flash animations you get in Excelsius. The good news is however, that Excelsius can use the MS BI stack as a source for its data. This means if a client has already invested in Excelsius they can still reap the benefits of using the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack and are not locked in to using Business Objects for their entire Business Intelligence platform. I have included some links below of Excelsius demo’s you can view if you’re unfamiliar. Hope this helps!

Excelsius Demos – link

Business Objects SharePoint Integration Options – PDF