TechEd NorthAmerica 2010 Sessions

For those interested, I will be giving the following sessions at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans – June 7-10, 2010 – Come Join US!!
(http://www.microsoft.com/events/techednorthamerica/)

1. BIE04-INT Building Custom Extensions to the PowerPivot Management Dashboard 
   

Room 241, Monday, June 7
1:00 PM – 2:15

The PowerPivot management dashboard allows administrators to identify bottlenecks, track resource consumption and in general understand how the PowerPivot parts on the farm are running. An important feature of the dashboard is that it is extensible. Administrators can write and add new reports to the dashboard. In this chalk talk, we present the reporting schema that PowerPivot provides and show how some of the most frequently used reports are implemented. We take a few, sample ‘what-if’ scenarios and show how to solve the requirement via a report and then link that report into the dashboard. To have the scenarios be as real-world as possible, we open up the list to suggestions from attendees prior to the session and let them submit their requests for what kind of reports they would like to see us develop in the talk. 

2. BIE22-INT Tips and Tricks for Troubleshooting a Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint Installation

   Room 241, Wednesday, June 9
   8:00 AM – 9:15 AM

   PowerPivot presents an interesting challenge for debugging and figuring out what is happening when problems occur. There are a lot of moving parts on a running farm. PowerPivot uses a mixture of SharePoint and SQL logging, tracing and debugging. In this chalk talk we review the various logs and trace files that are generated by SharePoint and SQL (and how they map to PowerPivot features). We take some common usage scenarios, inject faults, and show how you identify and rectify the problem. When do you look at IIS logs; when the NT event log; when SQL? And what do you do on a large farm where the various machine logs and traces are not consolidated. A customer’s first impression of a new product is all-important. This chalk talk is designed to help you guide customers, whether you are a TS, MCS, or support person. We give you the knowledge that will help you help your customers.

3. BIE401 Deep Dive on PowerPivot Technologies

   Room 238,  Wednesday, June 9
   1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

   This session provides an in-depth technical review of the PowerPivot architecture. We look at the PowerPivot Excel addin, its various components, how they interact, and the ways that they communicate with the server. On the server side, we look at how PowerPivot uses the new SharePoint 2010 shared service architecture and how it accomplishes its main capabilities: data access (connections to PowerPivot data), data refresh, report gallery (with its various Microsoft Silverlight controls) and its usage infrastructure and reporting system.

4. BIE303 Deploying and Managing PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

   Room 252, Thursday, June 10
   9:45 AM – 11:00 AM

   This session focuses on the role of IT professionals in the Managed Self-Service BI environment consisting of PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint. We show how to set up a new SharePoint farm with PowerPivot from scratch, and also how you can add PowerPivot into your existing SharePoint installation. We also demonstrate the tools and services available to IT professionals for managing the PowerPivot environment in SharePoint, including the Management Dashboard.

So . . . What do you think? Any changes or suggestions? If you are a reader, make sure the come by and introduce yourself after the session! I’d love to meet you and find out how you are using PowerPivot.

Enjoy.