PowerPivot is a Microsoft Excel add-in which can be used to incorporate Business Intelligence (BI) into an excel environment. Data is imported into PowerPivot as tables and these tables are shown as separate sheets in the PowerPivot window, similar to worksheets in an Excel workbook.
PowerPivot provides significantly different functionality from what is available in an Excel worksheet. You can create calculated columns and measures using formulas, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, and perform advanced data analysis.
Microsoft have updated the features for PowerPivot in your Office 365 subscription, these updates include:
Save relationship diagram view as a picture
In Excel 2016, the data model diagram view can be saved as a high resolution image- once the data model diagram is saved in this format it can then be used for printing or analyses of the data model. To do this, in the PowerPivot add-in, click File and then select Save View as Picture.
Enhanced Edit Relationship dialog
With PowerPivot, users can manually add or edit a table relationship while simultaneously looking at a sample of the data (which can have up to five rows of data in a selected table). By doing this you can create faster and more accurate relationships without needing to go back and forth to the data view every time you want to edit a table relationship.
Multi-core processor and extensive support of data sources.
You can use the multi-core processor and gigabytes of memory for fast processing of calculations and to process millions of rows of data in the time it would normally take to do thousands. With really efficient compression algorithms you can also load large data sets into memory. Moreover, PowerPivot allows you to import and combine source data from any location for extensive data analysis on the desktop- including but not limited to cloud services, Excel files and data feeds.
Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
DAX is a new formula language that extends the data manipulation capabilities of Excel to enable more sophisticated and complex grouping, calculation, and analysis. The syntax of DAX formulas is very similar to that of Excel formulas. You can now work with large data sets and perform advanced analytics in Excel.
Security and Management
PowerPivot’s Management Dashboard enables IT administrators to monitor and manage your shared applications to ensure security, high availability, and performance.
These are just a few of the cool features Microsoft have incorporated into this add-in. Microsoft have offered various tutorials for PowerPivot and have also provided instructions on how to install the add-in and explore more of the features in full.
