Gael Duhamel [MVP]

To follow up my post on Power Pivot and Commerce Server, I decided to show you how to achieve three different dashboards and give to you the excel file.

The goal here is not to show you how to create the data source, the relationships and so. You can find very valuable information on a lot of web sites:

• Créer des rapports simples et efficaces pour Commerce Server grâce à PowerPivot (aka Gemini)
• Tutoriel PowerPivot pour Excel – Partie 1/2 : Construction d’un modèle PowerPivot à partir de plusieurs sources de données
• Power Pivot : How To

To achieve theses scenarri you must have:

• Excel 2010
• Addin Power Pivot pour Excel 2010
• A Sql connection to the Commerce Server databases

The databases

To create our different dashboard, we need to connect to two databases:

• Profiles (here SPGael_profiles) : Owns all the profile information for the customers
  • In this table, I have a custom field to store the birthday date. All the others data are native in Commerce Server
• Transactions (here SPGael_transactions) : Owns all the orders information
  • All the data are the native one with Commerce Server.

Select the tables :

• Orders 
  • DiscountsApplied : Owns all the marketing discounts applied on the orders;
  • LineItems : Owns all the line items in the orders;
  • OrderAddresses : Owns all the adresses used for the check out (billing and shipping);
  • OrderForms : Owns the container for the line items (one order has from 1 to n OrderForms and  one OrderForms has from 1 to n LineItems);
  • PurchaseOrderPayments : Owns the different payment methods used during the checkout;
  • PurchaseOrders : Owns the general information about the orders;
  • Shipments : Owns the shipping information used during the checkout;
  • ShippingDiscounts : Owns the shipping discounts applied on an order;
• Customers 
  • UserObjet : Owns the customer information

General dashboard

Order’s dashboard

Customers’ dashboard

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In one of my previous post, I explained how to configure the analytics reports for Commerce Server, and I’m sure that most of you guys was disappointed by the result (who says everyone?).

Even if the cubes provided by Commerce Server can be a good starting point, the import process is fully out of date and close to a kind of a black box where trying to tune something is an exploit. And I’m not speaking about the reports that have not evolved since 2001…

In short, you will have understood, it is time that the Commerce Server team focuses on this feature to give it a good blow paint!

So, what we can do?

• Develop new reports based on the existing cubes
  • Pros:
    • No cube development;
    • Depends on your needs, not so much development time to add some new information;
  • Cons
    • Hope that the import process running well and rich your goals ;
    • Redesign all of your reports if you want more modern ones;
    • The structure of cubes does not necessarily correspond to your need;
    • Require IT intervention for all adjustments;
• Develop your own cubes
  • Pros
    • You stuck to your goals;
  • Cons
    • Require IT intervention for all adjustments;
    • May be lengthy implementation time;
• Do nothing
  • 

In any cases, you have to work with your IT department and you may not have the time to wait for them. Or you may want to explore the data as you want, because you’re the best person to understand your ecommerce web site . The miracle solution is:

Hello and welcome to Gemini, sorry Power Pivot

Power Pivot is a new tool developed by Microsoft to facilitate and give users the power to create compelling self-service BI solutions. Power Pivot is a data analysis add-in within Excel 2010 (and only with Excel 2010):

• Microsoft Office 2010 Beta
• Power Pivot for Excel 2010

I tested the solution against one of my Commerce Server project and I can confess that I’m excited by getting started ease and speed execution.

It’s really easy with Power Pivot to a data source. Because of the user friendly and guided interfaces:

And voilà, in 5 minutes, I imported my 2Go Commerce Server transactions database. And cherry on the cake, my Excel file is only weight 43 Mo. You don’t trust me?

With the relational and multi-dimensional structure of Power Pivot, you are able to design quickly and simply powerful charts or cross tables in a couple of minutes. Let’s take an example with a chart that displays the number of orders by day:

• First, select in the menu the chart

• Then, add the number of tracking number in the value box and in axis the created field.

• Not readable? I’m agreeing The problem here is the created date contains the date and time when the order was created. We need to have only the date without the time. For that we just have to create a new column in the “Purchase Orders” section by using the DAX language (which is very close to the Excel one): RIGHT("0" &MONTH([Created]),2) &"/" &year([Created])

• Refresh the data source to have the new column available:

Easy isn’t it?

You understand it’s therefore very easy to implement powerful dashboards through Powert Pivot (for data) coupling to Excel (for formatting), example:

For more information:

• Power Pivot for Excel 2010 : Introducing Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview
• Site Officiel de Power Pivot
• Official Blog

In the Commerce Server enterprise edition, you can have access to the analytics reports and to a data warehouse.

In this post, I will show you how to configure them, and in the same time have a quick look on what it’s look like.

Before to start the installation, you have to install and configure:

• SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Please, be sure that you have the mandatory prerequisites:

• For SQL Server 2005
  • Install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2
  • Install Microsoft SQL Server 2000 DTS Designer Components
• For SQL Server 2008
  • Install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components
  • Update all the reports to SQL Server 2008. For that, open it all with the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008. The RDL’s files are stored in: %commerce_server_root%\RDLs

Now it’s time to unpup the ressource file for the data warehouse (the file takes place in %commerce_server_root%\Pup Packages\DW.pup). This ressource will create the database which will be the cube’s data source.

Beware: if you install your data warehouse in another language than english you must change the file %commerce_server_root%\Data\CommerceOlap.xmla  line 9679 and replace the “Everyone” string by “Tout le monde” for the french environment.

<Roles>
  <Role>
    <ID>All Users</ID>
    <Name>All Users</Name>
    <Members>
      <Member>
        <Name _loc="locData">EveryoneTout le monde</Name>
      </Member>
    </Members>
  </Role>
</Roles>

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