Vivid - Excel add-in for SSAS by Varigence (commercial)
This powerful add-in for Microsoft Office extends Excel with new features that will allow your organization to more effectively collaborate, while at the same time greatly simplifying the process of building insightful reports, even against the most unwieldy SQL Server Analysis Services OLAP cubes. You will soon never want to use Excel without Vivid.
Read more and download trial version here...
Cube Navigation
Vivid makes it easier than ever to explore an SSAS cube in Excel. Plus all of the power of Excel is done over actual Excel pivot tables, which allows Vivid to enhance, rather than replicate Excel's capabilities. It also allows you to work seamlessly, even with those colleagues who aren't yet using Vivid.
- SmartFilter:The fields of the pivot table are filtered to only show the relevant fields
- Quick Search:Search for any measure or hierarchy right from the pivot table editor
- Type Icons:Measure and dimension type icons displayed in the pivot table editor
- Cube Search:Full cube search including dimension properties
- MDX Query Viewer:View the MDX that Excel is generating for its pivot tables
- Tooltips:Display measure/hierarchy properties, such as unique name and expression
- View Members:Easily search and view hierarchy members, without changing the pivot table
- Large Hierarchies:Pivot table editor highlights hierarchies with a large number of members
Pivot Table Transformations
Ad-hoc analysis is accelerated with Vivid's pivot table transformations that allow you to quickly drill into data points of interest. All of the transformations support doing the transformations in the current pivot table, or in a copy of the pivot table in a seperate sheet, so you never lose the original.
- Clone Pivot Table:Cloning your pivot table in just a click
- Swap Row/Column:Swap all of the hierarchies from the row to column axis and vice-versa
- Isolate Cell:Isolate the value from a specific cell
- Isolate Row/Colum:Isolate a specific row or column
- Cross Drill:Drill into an item in the pivot table, by another item in the cube, with just a few clicks
- Hierarchy Descendants:Instantly drill down (or up) to a specific level in a hierarchy
- Drillthrough Detail:Enhanced drillthrough that supports multiselect filters and calculations
Client-Side Perspectives
Creating perspectives typically requires modifications to the cube definition on the server. Vivid's client-side perspectives give you the ability to build custom views of the cube directly inside of Excel. No server-side intervention needed, and the changes are local to your workbook.
- Calculations and Named Sets:Simple MDX editor supports drag/drop and auto-completion
- Edit Items:Edit an existing measure, attribute, calculation, or named set
- Display Folders:Create display folders to store sets and calculations in convenient locations
- Hide Items:Hide any item in the pivot table editor.
Date Intelligence
Dealing with date/time is one of the most fundamental aspects of most cubes and pivot tables. Vivid presents new functionality that makes building pivot tables with sophisticated usage of date and time hierarchies easy.
- Periods to Date:Get roll-ups for the current member up to a specified period
- Parallel Periods:Compare current member to previous periods, such as year or quarter
- Rolling Result:Get roll-ups for the trailing X periods
- Last N Periods:Sets that contain the a dates corresponding to the last N periods
- Date Intelligence Sets:Date-relative sets automatically update with each passing day
Commentary
Today most conversations relating to workbooks happens in email with Excel as an attachment, rather than directly in Excel. Vivid introduces a new, more powerful, Excel commentary system that bring the conversation back where it belongs, in Excel.
- Rich Text:Bullet-lists, colors, and more bring your comments to life
- Threading:Respond directly to other comments to ensure your point isn't lost
- Attachments:Attachments such as cell ranges, worksheets, images, and server-side workbooks
- View All Comments:Convenient window allows you to see all comments in the workbook
Workbook Publishing and Repository
With the optional Vivid Server, Vivid adds the ability to publish and store your documents in a centralized repository. Runs directly on SQL Server, no need for Sharepoint.
- Publish:Quickly publish your workbook to a central repository, with tags and permissions
- Two Click Download:Directly from within Excel, download a report from the server with two clicks
- RSS/Atom Feeds:Notifications for uploaded documents and embedded comments via RSS or Atom
- Permissions:Role and organization based permissions allow full control over document security