Slide deck from my European SharePoint Conference 2014 session on Building dashboards using Visio Services in Office 365

1. Building BI Dashboards
Using Visio 2013
Alan Richards

2. Agenda
1 Introductions
2 Architecture & Performance
3 Why SharePoint 2013 & Visio Services
4 Creating a Visio Solution
5 Using Excel Services
6 Demo Single Data Graphic
7 Demo Multiple Data Graphic
8 Summary

3. Introductions
• Consultant
• SharePoint MVP
• 18 years experience in IT
• Worked with SharePoint since
team services
uk.linkedin.com/in/richardsalan
@arichards_Saruk
www.edutechnow.com
arichards@edutechnow.com
+44 (0) 794 468 8612

4. Architecture
www.sharepointeurope.com
Visio Web
Access
Custom Data
Providers
Visio JSOM
Mash-Up API
Web Part
Connections
Visio Proxy
Visio Graphics Service
VDW/b/mSQL
OLEDB/ODB
C
XLSX SP Lists

5. Performance
• Size of diagrams
• Number of connected diagrams
• Performance of data sources
• Data refresh frequency
• User load on diagrams
• User load on data sources
• Complexity
www.sharepointeurope.com

6. Why SharePoint 2013 &
Visio Services
• Visualise Data
• Move away from grid style presentation of data
• Stock of graphics and data diagrams
• Comments
• Collaboration
• Dashboards
• BI
• Easily created
• Levels of depth – Drill down
Text CalloutsLabel Value Label Value
Value Label Value
Icon Sets
Data Bars
32
15
32
57
50 30 20
Color By Value
sql-sales-01
IP Address 10.0.1.104
Memory 32 GB
CPU 1.60 Ghz
Windows Server 2008 R2
L
S
XL

7. Creating a Visio Solution
www.sharepointeurope.com
Save VSDX file to SharePoint
Server 2013 or Office 365
• Create Diagram
• Use Data Linking and
Data Graphics
• View diagram in web browser
• Opens diagram in Visio
• Click Refresh to update data
graphics
• Data refresh can be automated
by setting interval time
Data Source
• SharePoint List apps
• Excel Services
• SQL Server
• OLEDB / ODBC

8. Using Excel Services
• Requirements for refreshing from a published
workbook
• User needs access to the diagram and workbook locations
• Refreshed using current user credentials
• VSDX/VDW and XLSX published on the same farm
• No network shares, must reside in a document library
• No old XLS formats
• Link and Refresh from
• Sheets / Tables / Named Ranges / Custom Range

9. Using Excel Services
• Using Excel with external data source = Bad practice
• Use the root data source

10. www.sharepointeurope.com
Click the image for the demo video or follow this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woZhx5UNOpw&feature=youtu.be

11. Demo Single Data Graphic
• Simple single data graphic
• One stock shape connected to data source
• Load diagram in SharePoint
• Show ability to comment
• Data source

12. www.sharepointeurope.com

13. Demo Multiple Data Graphic
• Multiple data graphic demo
• Imported images as data graphics
• Hyperlinks to drill down into data
• Simple BI dashboard

14. Summary
• Plan out you Visio infrastructure
• Architecture & Performance
• Visio provides lots of tools to create diagrams
• Callouts
• Stock graphics
• Use other images
• Excel Services
• Requires additional considerations
• Users
• Interaction
• No need for client
www.sharepointeurope.com