Add a report to a dashboard

Dashboards are used to communicate status and to drive action. A Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 dashboard is a Web page template that allows you to assemble and display information from disparate sources such as reports, charts, and key performance indicators (KPIs). This topic describes how to add a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbook, or report, to a dashboard page by using the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access Web Part.

Adding a report to a dashboard requires the following three steps:

• Prepare to add the report to the dashboard

• Save a workbook to a SharePoint site

• Display the worksheet on the dashboard

Step 1: Prepare to add the report to the dashboard

Note: To use Microsoft Office Excel Web Access, you must be using the version of Excel 2007 that comes with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 or Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007. In addition, the server that is running Office SharePoint Server 2007 must have Excel Services enabled.

To display an Office Excel 2007 workbook on a dashboard, the workbook must be saved in a document library on a SharePoint site and the library that contains the workbook must be defined as a trusted location for Office Excel 2007. To save a workbook in a document library, you need permission to contribute to the site that the library is on.

You can also display a workbook that you, or someone else, have already saved in a library. To do so, you need permission to view the workbook.

Permissions and trusted locations are usually set by the site administrator.

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Step 2: Save a workbook to a SharePoint site

If the workbook that you want to use is not already in a SharePoint library, you need to publish it by using Office Excel 2007. Publishing the workbook by using Office Excel 2007 is a better option than uploading it by using the Upload menu on the SharePoint site. When you use Office Excel 2007 to publish the workbook, you can define the parts of the workbook (such as individual worksheets, named ranges, or charts) that you want Office Excel 2007 to display in Microsoft Office Excel Web Access. By displaying only specific parts of the workbook and by using Office SharePoint Server 2007 permissions to help protect the workbook from unauthorized access, you can keep data in the workbook confidential while allowing authorized users to refresh, recalculate, and interact with the viewable data.

You can also define parameters. A parameter is a single cell that you name before you publish the worksheet. You can expose the cell by using the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access Web Part. Users can then enter values in the cell and recalculate the workbook to analyze the data.

Note: Not all Microsoft Office Excel features are supported by Office Excel 2007. For information about unsupported features, see the links in the See Also section.

The example used in the following procedure publishes a workbook to the Reports library of the Report Center site. However, as long as you are assigned the Contribute permission level, you can publish to any SharePoint site.

1. Open the workbook that you want to publish by using Office Excel 2007. If you plan to define parameters, name each cell that you want users to be able to use for input.

2. Click the Microsoft Office Button , point to Publish, and then click Excel Services under Distribute the document to other people.

3. In the File name box, enter the path to the server and the file name. For example, to save the file Test.xlsx to the Reports Library in the Reports Center site, in the Contoso top-level site, type: http://Contoso/Reports/ReportsLibrary/Test.xlsx.

   Important: If you copy and paste the URL for the destination SharePoint library directly from the browser into the file name box, you must remove the extra characters that prevent you from copying a file to the destination library. In this example, the extra characters in the URL are Forms/current.aspx.

4. Click the Excel Services Options button, and then choose the options that you want to use to display the workbook, or part of the workbook, in Office Excel 2007.

5. To verify that the viewable areas of the workbook appear correctly in the browser, select the Open in Excel Services check box.

6. Click OK, and then click Save.

7. In the Choose Document Type dialog box, in the Document Type list, select Report

8. After you click Save, a view of the workbook will open in the browser. This is the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access view of the workbook. You can return to the Reports Library and refresh the list of reports to view the newly saved file.

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Step 3: Display the worksheet on the dashboard

After the workbook that you want to display is on the site, you add the workbook to the dashboard by using the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access Web Part.

1. On the dashboard page where you want to add the worksheet, click Site Actions , and then click Edit Page.

2. In the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access Web Part where you want to add the worksheet, click the Web Part edit menu , and then choose Modify Shared Web Part.

3. In the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access tool pane, under Workbook, click Select a Link , and then use the Select a Link dialog box to locate the workbook.

4. To display only part of a worksheet, do any of the following:

Option	Description
Named Item	Click , and in the Text Entry box, type the name of a range of cells that you defined in the worksheet. The Web Part displays only this range.
Rows	Type the number of rows of the worksheet or the named range that you want to display. For example, if you type 5, then the first five rows of the worksheet or named range appear.
Columns	Type the number of columns of the worksheet or the named range that you want to display. For example, if you type 5, then the first five columns of the worksheet or the named range appear.

Find links to more information about using the Microsoft Office Excel Web Access Web Part in the See Also section.

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