Live Excel

PRESENTER: Brad Leupen | CTO, Entrinsik | 10-11-2010

What is Live Excel?

• Live Excel Spreadsheets maintains a “live” connection to the report even after the browser window is closed

• Data may be refreshed periodically, updating the spreadsheet cells and charts

• Spreadsheet may be enhanced with charts and formulas and distributed to others without losing this connection

• Changes to the report on the server will be reflected in the spreadsheet the next time it is refreshed

Why use Live Excel?• Great for management who are comfortable

working in Excel• Excellent tool for driving mail merge documents

and email campaigns• Great way to link Informer data with Microsoft

components

Creating a Live Excel document

• Export button on report details or report output

• User must have the “Create a Live Excel Spreadsheet” permission

The I-Query File

• Informer doesn’t actually create a spreadsheet, it creates an “I-Query” file that contains a URL to the Informer report

• Excel interprets the .iqy file as a new Data Connection

Web Query Security

• Informer embeds an encrypted “token” in the iqy report parameters• The token indentifies the report to run and the user to run the

report as• Therefore, each live excel spreadsheet is bound to a specific

user/report• Excel does not prompt for Informer username and password

– Insecure

– Unpredictable output

• You should control access to Live Excel spreadsheets on your network just as you would regular spreadsheets with the same information

Opening in Excel

• To open in new spreadsheet: double click the .iqy file

• To add to existing spreadsheet: Data Tab -> Connections -> Add… -> Browse for More…

Refreshing Web Query Data

• Data -> Refresh [All]• Properties

– Refresh every n minutes– Refresh on opening

• New report columns will appear in Live Excel output

Runtime Parameters

• To view runtime parameter settings, click Data -> Connections -> Live Excel Connection -> Properties -> Definition -> Parameters… (whew!)

• Excel will prompt for runtime parameters by default

• Enter “*” to use as a wildcard

• Parameter values may be re-used automatically

• Prompts may be replaced by cells in the worksheet– Make sure all parameter cells are formatted as “Text”!

• Runtime parameter cells can be set to refresh the spreadsheet automatically

Runtime Parameters Cont’d

Editing Connection Properties

• Data -> Connections -> Properties• Edit query to change the URL (e.g. If your

Informer URL changes)• Parameters to change runtime parameter

defaults

Formulas

• You can create formulas that work off live data the same way you would static data

• Properties -> Fill down formulas in columns adjacent to data

Formulas Cont’d

Pivot Tables• Use Pivot Tables to summarize data and perform drill downs

Pivot Tables Cont’d

• Tip: Use a dynamic named range to handle new columns and variable row count:

– =OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,0,0,COUNTA(Sheet1!$A:$A), COUNTA(Sheet1!$1:$1))

• Drag and drop fields into the Row Labels / Column Labels / Values buckets to change the table.

• Use “Value Field Settings” to change the aggregate function on Value fields (e.g. Sum, Count, Avg)

• Use the right-click -> group feature to group date fields into month, quarter, yearly intervals

Pivot Charts• Similar to Pivot Tables but allow you to view the summary data in chart form

Mail Merge

Thank you! Any questions?