Business Intelligence Site in Sharepoint 2010

Now that we have SharePoint platform up and running in our system, lets go ahead and create a Business Intelligence site. There are various types of sites which you can create from the site collections available in the sharePoint portal, the details of the same is given here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262410%28v=office.14%29.aspx).

So what is a Business Intelligence Site?
        A Business Intelligence site is used for storing reports and its data connections which will then be consumed in web parts and displayed on the portal. It also has a special feature called performance point services using which you can create interesting reports which is different from your conventional SSRS reports which I will take up in the next post.

    Features of Business Intelligence Sites are
    1) Excel Services
    2) Power Pivot
    3) Reporting Services
    4) Performance Point Services

So how do I set up a Business Intelligence Site in SharePoint 2010

Step 1: Ensuring the required services are up and running-

    Ensure that Performance point Services feature has started on the system, to check this go to "Application Management" and click on "Manage services on server"
as shown in the image below

You can now see all the services present in SharePoint and also check if the services have started or not. Now scroll down and you can see the Services PerformancePoint Service and Secure Store Service and make sure its Started, if it is stopped Start the service by clicking on Start on the Action Column.

Step 2: Ensuring the services are configured properly-

a) Ensuring Performance Point Services is configured properly
    Now that the services are running, we will check if the services have been configured properly. Go to Central Administration and click on Manage Service Application as shown below

Once you do this you can see the list of services as shown below

go to Performance Point Service and click on it will take you to the manage screen, click on the PerformancePoint Service Application Settings

In the Settings screenm you can see if the user name has been configured or not. For now we will keep the default, except for the User Name (you need to add a user name if there is no user name in the Unattended Service Account).

b) Ensuring Secure Store Service is configured properly

    Secure Store Service is a service which helps in single sign on for its users, this service needs to work properly for you to go ahead and create any site. Sometimes the key might have generated properly or it might be missing hence we need to verify if this is done properly.
    Go back to the page where we saw all the services and click on "Secure Store Service" as shown in the image below

Once you have done this, check to see if there is a key generated for PerformancePoint Service application, if its not generated or if there is some problem go ahead and delete if there are any existing keys for PerformancePoint Service and click on Generate New Key as shown in the image below.

Step 3: Creating the Business Intelligence Site

    To create a new site, Click on Central Administration and click on Create Site Collections as shown in the image below

    It will now take you to a Create Site Collection Screen where in you can configure all the site properties like,

Web Application      - Defines the site under which the site collection should be created.
Site Name       - The name of the Site.
Web Site Address  - Configuring the URL through which you can access the new site.
Template Selection- There are various templates available in SharePoint as mentioned at the start of this post, since we are creating a Business Intelligence Site             click on Enterprise Tab and then click on Business Intelligence Center.
Primary Site Collection Administrator - User Name of the Admin has to be specified.
Secondary Site Collection Administrator - User Name of the secondary Admin has to be specified.
Qutoa Template - No Quota

The configuration will be as shown below

Once done, click on OK and the Site Collection will be created and once it is done you will get the screen shown in the image below.

Click on the link and the you will be taken to the screen where you will deploy, view reports.

Sharepoint2010 Installation

          Now that you have downloaded the installable lets go ahead and install the platform on the system.

Step 1-

Before you start installation download the update given in the link →  

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8165 

Step 2-

Once you install the updates click on the exe file to start the installation and you will see a splash screen of the SharePoint, 

when you click on Install Sharepoint Server you will see an error message as given below.

This error appears because SharePoint is by default set to be installed on the server and not on the normal OS. But there are 2 workaround for this by modifying the config.xml file.

a) When we started with the installation by clicking on the exe file it would have extracted all the files to a location on the machine. So if you go to Process Explorer while the splash screen is still present then go to the sharepoint process and check the Image properties in the Properties window then you can see the location where it has extracted the files.

b) if you dont want to do all this then just execute the following command in the command prompt

<path of the executable file> /extract:<path of the extracted files>

Once this is done then go to the config.xml in the setup folder and add the below tag into it

<Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True”/> . This setting will allow you to install the file on normal Windows OS as well. The config file now should look like the code given below.

<Configuration>
        <Package Id="sts">
                <Setting Id="LAUNCHEDFROMSETUPSTS" Value="Yes"/>
        </Package>
        <DATADIR Value="%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web 

ServerExtensions\14\Data" />
        <Package Id="spswfe">
                <Setting Id="SETUPCALLED" Value="1"/>
        </Package>

        <Logging Type="verbose" Path="%temp%" Template=

"SharePoint Server Setup(*).log"/>
        <!--<PIDKEY Value="Enter Product Key Here" />-->
        <Setting Id="SERVERROLE" Value="SINGLESERVER"/>
        <Setting Id="USINGUIINSTALLMODE" Value="1"/>
        <Setting Id="SETUPTYPE" Value="CLEAN_INSTALL"/>
        <Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="Never"/>
        <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>
</Configuration>

 

Step 3 –

Now click on the executable file from the folder which has the extracted files and you will see the splash screen again. Now install all the prerequisites required for SharePoint.

a) Microsoft Sync Framework
b) SQL Server Native Client
c) Windows Identity Foundation (Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu)

 

Step 4 –

Once these are done go ahead start of with the installation, It will ask you for a product key even though its a trial version.

 So use the key VK7BD-VBKWR-6FHD9-Q3HM9-6PKMX which is also given in the details section in the page where you downloaded SharePoint. 

Step 5-

Next it will ask you to choose between StandAlone and FarmMode, I will choose Farm Mode since some of the features like PowerView and Excel Services require the Sharepoint to be Farm Mode. The installation starts and will take sometime depending on the hardware configuration on your system.

Step 6-

Once you complete the installation you need to configure the SharePoint installation. The Farm Mode requires you to have Domain\Account, if you are using your personal system which does not have a domain controller the UI wont allow you to install in the farm mode, but there is a workaround for this as well,

Go to Sharepoint Management Shell located in the start menu (given below is the image for the same)

Right Click on the Sharepoint 2010 Management Shell and click on 'Run as Administrator' A command prompt opens up, here you need to execute a SP which helps you configure Farm Mode by using your system account itself rather than using a Domain Account.

SP Name :New-SPConfigurationDatabase

DatabaseName :<your Database Name>

DatabaseServer:<Database Server Name>

FarmCredentials: it will open up a pop up window where you need to enter your credentials. For Username please use <domain>\<username> (if you dont have name, your machine name itself is the Domain).

PassPhrase : Password for the sharepoint.

Once this is done run the configuration, there will be a screen where you can choose to create a new Server Farm or connect to an existing farm. Since we already have created farm we will choose connect to an existing farm.

Step 7 -

it will then ask you if you want to configure the port for Central Administration and also its security settings. We use the default setting which port 16915, NTLM as Security Setting and click on next.

Step 8 -

You will notice that it has already picked up the farm database and other details. Click next and it will configure the sharepoint 2010. Once done you will get a image which is shown below.

Step 9 -

Once this is done click on the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration in the start menu as shown below.

This should open up a web page as shown below.

You have now successfully installed and configured SharePoint 2010. Please let me know if you have any trouble while installing the same.

The next post will be about configuring services and accounts on the SharePoint portal.

Sharepoint Introduction

What is SharePoint?
    SharePoint is a platform which traditionally was used for content and document management but now Microsoft is trying hard to change this perception. The SharePoint now has the capability to host Intranet portals, extranets, websites, discussion boards and Business intelligence; with the latest version of SharePoint 2013 they have also provided the social network integration.


    The first release of SharePoint was in 2001, the various versions of SharePoint released from 2001 till 2013 are given below -

1) Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001
2) Microsoft SharePoint Team Services 2002
3) Windows SharePoint Services 2003
4) Windows SharePoint Services 2007
5) Microsoft SharePoint Services 2010
6) Microsoft SharePoint Services 2013

In this blog I will be taking you through various features of Sharepoint, but it will be concentrated more on the Business Intelligence part of it, I will be considering SharePoint 2010 and may be in future will write about SharePoint 2013 :) .

There are 2 versions of SharePoint 2010

1) Standard Edition
2) Enterprise Edition
The Enterprise Edition will have Access, Excel, Visio, Performance Point services which is not present in Standard Edition. In this blog I will be using Enterprise Edition for all demo purpose.

You can download the SharePoint software from the Microsoft WebSite, the link for which is given below.












http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=16631