15

Implementing Data Refresh in Excel Services and PowerPivot

In Lessons 12 and 13 you learned how to deploy Excel and PowerPivot reports you have created to SharePoint. This was great because it gave everyone in your company easier access to reports that were created from the report designer's desktop. Though this is helpful, it provides only a static view of the data set represented in the report. Implementing a scheduled data refresh of these reports can help give consumers of the report the most up-to-date data.

When you begin the process of scheduling a data refresh you should always ask yourself these questions:

• Does this data actually need to be refreshed?
• How often will this report be viewed?
• How often is my source data updated?

It seems obvious that you would want data to be refreshed, but depending on the circumstances that is not always the case. For example, maybe you would prefer that someone review the data prior to it being published. You could have frequently changing business rules that would prevent you from assuming that what was right on Monday is also right on Wednesday. In this case you want someone who is very familiar with the business rules to review the report prior to publishing it on SharePoint.