I hope you were able to attend my free webinar on Understanding Microsoft Self-Service BI on September 26, 2013.  If you weren’t you can now download the recording here.

Because I covered new material all the way to the end of the webinar i thought I’d also answer some of the top questions I didn’t have time to answer here.

Q: Can an Excel Power Pivot 2013 model be read by Excel 2010 or Excel 2007? What about Excel versions and their compatibility with SharePoint Versions?  I ask because we are upgrading our SharePoint environment to 2013 but most of our users have Excel 2010 (a few have 2007).

You can open an Excel 2013 workbook that has a Power Pivot model in older versions but you cannot modify them.  You can however deploy Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 workbooks to you SharePoint 2013 environment and it they interact the same.

Q: Is there a way for me in us my own map?  ex. wards/districts in my county

I assume this one is referring to Power Map and the ability to map geopolitical regions.  It doesn’t currently have the ability to your own regions yet.

Q: Where do we download power map?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38395

Q: Can you change to use google maps instead of bing maps?

No, Microsoft tool = Microsoft maps!

Q: Could I use relationships using more than one field?

No, Power Pivot only has the ability to create relationships on one field at a time.  If you need to join on more than one field, which in the real world is often, then you have to get creative.  In the quick example I showed we merged two columns together to make a single join column that could be used for our relationship.

Q: Is Power Query available for Excel 2010?

It sure is!  This is one of the great things about Power Query is that it is compatible with both Excel 2010 and 2013.

Q: How can you share Power View reports? Do you have to share the excel file or can you display in SharePoint?

You have a couple options.  You can share the excel file like you’ve suggested or you can deploy it to SharePoint.  If you develop the Power View reports in SharePoint you can also export via PowerPoint.

Q: Will these slides be available

Sure thing!  Download them here.

Q: The maps features is very interesting.  Can it do counties within a state .. and neighboring states?

Yes, Power Map has the ability to regionally map counties and zip codes as well.