Download Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint ePub

This past month I purchased both of the PowerPivot books that were available. The first one I got was the Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint (wow, that was a mouthful). I would have to say that this book is geared more toward the IT Professional where it does a great job covering the installation setup on the server side, managing and troubleshooting techniques, and going over some of the development.

The other part that I really like about this product was the additional insights that were provided by the product team members talking about how the product came to life and the different paths that were explored initially (originally MS Access was looked at...phew). The exercises that were provided were helpful and the troubleshooting section was very useful, especially coming from the IT side of the world. All-in-all I would highly recommend this book to the IT Pro and would give this book 5 out of 5 stars. Definitely worth the $$$.

The new free add-on for Excel 2010, PowerPivot, allows users to do more self-service BI than having to go through the time consuming process of getting database administrators to create time consuming cubes. This book does a great job of walking the reader through creating powerful BI solutions with just Excel, the free PowerPivot add-on for Excel and an understanding of your data.

Professional Microsoft PowerPivot is an excellent manual authored by key members of the Analysis Services & SQLCAT teams. With topics including introductions of the PowerPivot technology, self-service analytical construction, and server configuration & management the book provides solid content for all PowerPivot audiences. Additionally, the authors walk you thru a step-by-step exercise of building a sample PowerPivot application in parallel with progressive content. If you are serious about mastering the new self-service BI technology you should consider the manual as required reading.

Between this book and the blog they mention in the book, this was a worth the money spent. Some of raw details in the book leave something to be desired, but the troubleshooting was worth it all.

If you don't already know, PowerPivot for SharePoint integration is a real bear to install and configure unless you're starting from scratch. Even then things don't go smoothly. This book had some great pointers and resolutions in the later chapter on how PowerPivot works inside the SharePoint environment and helped me figure out what services needed to be running and other details that just aren't explained elsewhere.

If you're having trouble installing and configuring PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010, then this is a must have resource and reference book.

I am a fan of the Wrox Professional series of computer books because they are direct and comprehensive. This one disappointed me. It deviated from their normal "talk to you like you are a professional" format into a "hold your hand and walk you through a bunch of disjointed tasks step by step" format. If I wanted PowerPivot for dummies, I would have looked for that. Worse, the step-by-step tutorials are poorly written and missing key steps.

I was very disappointed in this book.

I bought the book and read it during the weekend, even if I have worked a lot with PowerPivot I learnt some things. The printed version is weak on the PowerPivot for Excel part. It mainly goes through how to create a sample app in Excel. The part about PowerPivot for Sharepoint have more depth though. However to be fair the download page for the book has a pdf with the best DAX reference that I have seen.

I would recommend people to buy and read this book.

//Simon

(This is a condensed version of my full review at [...])

What the book is NOT

1) It is not the first book an Excel pro should pick up. It covers too much, and comes from a perspective that might seem a bit foreign. Start with Bill's book if this is your background.

2) Like Bill's book, it is only a light treatment of DAX. Again, this is wise, because DAX really deserves its own book. Those seeking a detailed DAX book should look forward to an upcoming title from Marco Russo.

3) It does not cover the real-world gotchas encountered in a full adoption of a PowerPivot system. After a full year of applying PowerPivot to real-world problems - six months as a product team member in exile (in Cleveland), and the last six months putting the full system into action at Pivotstream, I can say that there are a number of "gotchas" that you have to look out for in PowerPivot v1. They are not fatal - Pivotstream's PowerPivot platform is very much thriving - but you only discover them, and learn to avoid/overcome them, via real-world practice.

Anyway, for a just-released product, it's not like we can expect ANY book to cover that kind of thing. There's probably room for a book like "PowerPivot in the Trenches" but someone else needs to volunteer, as I, um, rarely get out of my trench :)

What the book IS - Consistently readable and info-rich

1) Great Information Density, but High Readability - When I finished the book, I immediately dropped an email to Denny/Ron/Siva and told them how impressed I was with the balance between density and clarity. As a de facto tech writer myself throughout my career, I can say that I struggle with this, and typically end up jamming in too much at the expense of readability, or a 50-page doc with so much whitespace that 20 pages would have covered it. Perhaps you have noticed.

It's hard to put my finger on how the book strikes such a nice balance - perhaps it's the editing, or the layout style - but I consistently noted how MUCH was conveyed on each page, while at the same time, it felt like a light read. That's saying a lot considering the list of topics covered.

2) Benefits of Three Product Team Authors - When you include all of the folks from teams like SharePoint, Excel, SSRS and others that contributed to PowerPivot, it's probably safe to say that the product reflects the efforts of 200+ people for several years. No one human being could possibly span all of that, and it only gets harder if you weren't directly involved in that process.

These three guys were working on the book for a long time, while the product was still in development. They all had different areas of focus, both in terms of natural affinities and in terms of dividing up their assignments. They then had a lot of time, and access to the people who were building the product, to refine the content.

The benefits of this authorship approach are evident in the book. You'll see what I mean - I always expect some "uneveness" in a tech book of this length because the talents and endurance of a single author are themselves uneven. Chapter to chapter, the red book's quality remains consistent.

Overall Recommendation

If you fit any of the following descriptions, I rate this book as a must-read:

- Anyone leading or contemplating a PowerPivot deployment (the total system, as opposed to just viewing it as Excel 2010++)

- Excel pros who have read Bill's book and want to expand their expertise - I suspect a lot of you will decide, correctly, that a full PowerPivot system makes your talents a lot more valuable and visible, and will find yourselves on point for test deployments

-BI or SharePoint pros who are ramping up on PowerPivot (or evaluating PowerPivot's impact on their work)

Rob Collie
PowerPivotPro