are you fan of creating VMs? do you like to have your own environment signed by your name as your companion in developing Microsoft BI applications, creating POCs or even trying and learning some new stuff? I Love doing this very much… So I listed below the steps that you need to follow in order to have your own Environment ready.

so here’s the recipe that at the end you’ll end up having a VM with SQL server total installation with Analysis service both multidimensional Mode for your dashboard and KPIs and tabular mode for your new PowerView report, SharePoint with PowerPivot for SharePoint installed for your Self-Service BI.

Ingredients:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

2. SQL Server 2012

3. SharePoint Server 2010

4. SharePoint Server 2010 SP1

5. Microsoft Office 2010

6. PowerPivot for Excel

Directions:

1. Create a New VM with HD of Size 200GB form Hyper-V manager

2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 (if the Windows version without SP1 then Install SP1 separately after finishing the installation).

3. Create a Internal Network connection adapter on Hyper-V. We’ll call it LoopBack Adapter and we’ll give it IP 100.100.100.1 in the Host and Gateway to 100.100.100.2

4. In the VM assign a fixed IP to the Network Connection with 100.100.100.2 and gateway 100.100.100.2

5. Open run and Type dcpromo to start creating a domain for your VM choose any name for example milkyway.local keep the rest default settings and after it finishes restart the machine and login with the domain administrator account.

6. in the Server Manager > Roles add the Application Server Role

6. Install SQL Server 2012 with all components (choose the analysis services instance to be Multidimensional).

7. Install SharePoint Server 2010 and don’t Configure it then Install SharePoint Server 2010 SP1.

8. Install a new instance from SQL Server and choose only the Analysis services, name the instance .\TABULAR and in the type of Analysis choose it as tabular mode.

9. Install the PowerPivot for Sharepoint (from the installation Pack of SQL Server 2012). Un-check the include Database engine option.

10. after installation finishes open the SQL Server 2012 > Configuration Tools > PowerPivot Configuration Tool put the domain administrator account for configuration and choose the default database instance then Validate, if validation went Run

11. Install Microsoft Office 2010 and after it install PowerPivot For Excel (make sure the same version either x64 or x86).

12. Install the reporting services Shared feature on the SharePoint using these steps.

a. open the Sharepoint 2010 management shell and type

      command> Install-SPRSService

      command> Install-SPRSServiceProxy

      command> get-spserviceinstance -all |where {$_.TypeName -like “SQL Server Reporting*”} | Start-SPServiceInstance
(here’s a detailed info from this blogpost on Configuring SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services SharePoint 2010 Integration)

b. open SharePoint central administration > Application Management > Manage Service application > New > SQL Server Reporting Service Application. choose a name for it and database connection

P.S. you may also need from this screen to add PerformancePoint Service Application.

and We’re Done Enjoy your VM. you may add your own spices to it ( silverlight, zoomit, … )

My original post on my website can be found here

with the release of SQL Server 2012 different versions until the RTM last week. Microsoft introduced a one kicking feature in the Business Insight Pillar with the new Amazing easy-to-use reporting PowerPivot that you can simply export this report to PowerPoint and when your slides are running the report can start being interactive.

well not only this. you can even turn you report to be editable so you can start creating some charts and do ad-hoc analysis within your presentation. so how can I do this let have a look

1. A key thing you need to know is that when you export your PowerPivot Report to PowerPoint the object that is exported is connecting to the report on the Sharepoint not connecting to the datasource of the Report. something like this

2.  So after you export your Report to the PowerPoint right click on the object in the slide and click properties and in the InitParams scroll to the end and change AllowEditViewMode and set it to True

3. when you present your slide Deck you’ll be able to do edit the report and start dragging and dropping same experience as the Web One.

PowerPivot is an amazing experience for Personal BI and demonstrating how easy and a flexible tool it’s to quickly get up from a database to an interactive editable report inside a presentation

 Manually modifying the InitParams or any of the Silverlight control properties is not an officially supported scenario. See msdn.microsoft.com/.../hh759323(v=sql.110).aspx. Thank you Riccardo Muti for the Heads-up