Sharing sensitive business data such as financial plans or sales reports can be challenging. Sending spreadsheets in an e-mail message can risk exposing confidential data, and it can be difficult for users with bandwidth constraints to open large spreadsheets. Furthermore, you cannot control who might view a spreadsheet, or specify that only certain sections of a larger spreadsheet can be viewed.
Office Excel 2007, combined with Excel Services, a new technology that will ship with Office SharePoint Server 2007, provides significant improvements for sharing data with greater security. You can share sensitive business information more broadly and securely with your coworkers, customers, and business partners.
Accessible, Browser-Based Data
Providing universal access to spreadsheet information in a browser helps you share data more easily and securely. External users, like customers or business partners, can access and interact with your data without the ability to see formulae, macros, or other confidential business logic that might be contained in a spreadsheet.
Excel Services also gives you more control over published workbooks. You can specify particular sections that should be rendered, like a chart or table, while concealing other sections that contain confidential data.
In addition, when you publish a spreadsheet to Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can specify particular cells within a spreadsheet to be used as input cells or parameters for performing calculations in a custom application within a Web browser. This helps workers across any organization to take advantage of the same calculation model by entering their own values for the parameters.
Dynamically Render a Spreadsheet in HTML
With Excel Services you can render a spreadsheet dynamically in HTML for browser-based viewing. You can permit others to view the entire spreadsheet or only parts of it. In addition, you can help:
• Ensure that any customer or partner can view the data properly—even if they do not have Office Excel 2007 or are using a previous version of the software.
• Protect your company’s intellectual property that might be contained in the data, formulae, or custom-defined macros.
High Fidelity Between the Excel Client and a Spreadsheet
Excel Services renders a high-fidelity version of an Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet for viewing in a Web browser, so you can navigate, filter, sort, and interact with PivotTable views even when using a Web browser.
Figure 30: PivotTable interactivity in a Web browser
Dashboards Created from Spreadsheets
Excel Services also simplifies the process of creating Web-based dashboards from business information. You can track KPIs by using dashboards that are created from Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, Excel Web Access, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Excel Services in Action
When the CEO asks Sylvie to prepare a series of financial dashboards to track Fabrikam Inc.’s KPIs, Web-based dashboards simplify the task. Sylvie can create a broadly accessible dashboard that reveals unit sales and product margins. Now, Fabrikam Inc.’s senior executives can monitor the health of the business more closely by using a Web browser. Sylvie also published a portion of the dashboard for her customers, giving them full access to the data while enhancing protection of the confidential data contained in the spreadsheet’s macros.
Excel Services API
The benefits of Excel Services extend beyond the end user. With the Excel Services application programming interface (API), corporate developers can take advantage of the powerful calculation engine in Excel in other applications. By using the Excel Services API, developers can control and perform other functions, such as:
• Loading an Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet on the server.
• Changing the values in one or more cells of a spreadsheet—either by changing a cell's value or by refreshing an external data connection—and recalculating the spreadsheet based on these new values.
• Retrieving all or part of a spreadsheet for viewing or to use within a larger business process.
Support for New File Formats
Office Excel 2007 offers support for new file formats that improve data integration, boost performance, and make it easier to share business information across platforms.
Office XML Formats
Office Excel 2007 supports the new Ecma Office XML Formats. The Excel XML Formats improve data integration between Microsoft Office system documents and back-end systems. The file formats have open, published format specifications that any technology provider can use to integrate Microsoft Office system documents into their solutions.
Because the file formats are compressed, they result in substantially smaller file sizes than with previous versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, thereby reducing storage and bandwidth requirements. Segmented data storage within the file formats greatly aids in recovering corrupt documents because the corruption of any part of a document does not prevent you from opening the entire document.
Support for XPS and PDF
When you need to create a fixed version of your spreadsheet, you can now save it as an XML Paper Specification (XPS) file or Portable Document Format (PDF) file. This “locks” your data while providing a polished report for customers.
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