Today's business-intelligence tasks require that you process internal and external data from a wide variety of sources, including the cloud, data services, sales automation tools, Customer Relationship Management systems, and so forth. While there are dedicated business-intelligence applications, many organizations are finding that many of their needs are met using tools provided in Microsoft® Office. You may already use Microsoft® Excel® PivotTables and PivotCharts to create your own reports and data dashboards, but you may have experienced some of Excel's limitations, such as the amount of data you can process and what you can do with data from different sources. Power Pivot overcomes many of these limitations, enabling you to create more sophisticated models and perform powerful data analysis right within the Excel interface. To get started using Power Pivot with Excel, there are some setup tasks you need to perform.

Now that you have Power Pivot enabled and have worked with the Data Model, you are ready to visualize your Power Pivot data into reports such as tables and charts. This enables you to organize data for easier analysis. Once you have created a report, you may realize that you want to view information in a specific way that you don't readily have available in your data. Usually, though, you already have the pieces you need and they just need to be manipulated in a different way. This is where calculations are useful. By using the data you already have and applying calculations to it, you can add data to the Data Model to enhance your reports.

Now that you have created a report from your Power Pivot data and created basic calculations for use in PivotTables, you are ready to work with more advanced functionality. Often when you analyze data, you are measuring performance by comparing it to some sort of goal or target. Additionally, you are often comparing data over time to measure performance or to find trends. Can Microsoft® Excel® help you with these tasks? Fortunately, Power Pivot includes specific functionalities to help you measure performance and analyze data over time.

You'll wrap things up and then validate what you've learned in this course by taking an assessment.