Friday, July 20, 2012

Excel Services - Project Online / Project Server 2013

We were playing with Excel Services to see how we can build reports and publish them to the web - same way as we did in 2010. Unfortunately it looks it is not possible now - and it seems this is a limitation of Project Online Preview.

So.
1. There is a step-by-step instruction how to do that - http://officepreview.microsoft.com/en-us/project-server-help/use-excel-2013-to-create-a-new-project-web-app-report-HA102923779.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA102923896

2. When report is created and saved, you can open it in PWA. It opens absolutely fine - but it displays information that WAS already in Excel. 



It is kind of STATIC and in fact it will be outdated. When you try to get data connections refreshed - you get error that external data connection cannot be refreshed:


3. To refresh data, you need to edit it again in Excel 2013 by clicking on Edit Workbook and selecting Edit in Excel - go to DATA Tab and click on Refresh All.


Data will be refreshed, you can save it back to PWA.
I hope that at time of RTM, excel services reports in Project Online will be able to update data dynamically.

Small update:
There is article on TechNet about reporting: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff603998(v=office.15)


"In Project Online, Project Web App data for reporting is only available through the OData feed. The OData feed must be accessed through Excel 2013 Preview. OData reports can be published to the Business Intelligence Center and displayed using Excel Services, but the data cannot be refreshed using Excel Services"


Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. We were playing with Excel Services to see how we can build reports and publish them to the web - same way as we did in 2010. Unfortunately it looks it is not possible now - and it seems this is a limitation of Project Online Preview.timesheet online

    ReplyDelete