The PivotTable Life Cycle

Quick reference

• 00:04 Before we jump in and start actually building and configuring PivotTables,
• 00:08 I'd just like to cover off the differences between building a PivotTable solution and
• 00:12 building what I call an ad hoc reporting solution.
• 00:15 Ad hoc reporting solutions are generally what we're used to,
• 00:18 where we take some data and we use a lot of formulas to manipulate it and
• 00:21 update it in the worksheet grid.
• 00:23 PivotTable solutions are very different.
• 00:26 When we build the PivotTable solution,
• 00:28 we actually have a process that we end up going through.
• 00:31 The very first thing that we're gonna do is, we're gonna go and
• 00:34 we're gonna source our data.
• 00:36 And then we're going to lay out the PivotTable design,
• 00:41 we'll add some calculations to our PivotTable.
• 00:44 We'll do a little bit of formatting, polishing, and whatnot to make it look
• 00:48 really, really good, and then at that point in time, what we'll do
• 00:51 is we'll actually release our PivotTable to our audience to use, and that's
• 00:55 a little bit different maybe than the way that we build some of our original stuff.
• 00:59 The overall kind of goal is kind of the same, normally when we're building an ad
• 01:03 hoc solution we'll still source our data and we'll build our report and
• 01:07 add our calculations, and polish it off and release it to the audience.
• 01:09 But the big difference is what the PivotTable solution give us next.
• 01:14 So, when we're actually working with a solution that's actually built
• 01:19 using PivotTables, the way that we do that is we'll send our report off to our user.
• 01:25 They'll open up the file.
• 01:27 And when they do that, they'll go through the process of refreshing the data and
• 01:31 this is the big difference.
• 01:33 Rather than having a report that's static and
• 01:36 never changes, the user can actually open up and refresh to pull the latest
• 01:41 data from whatever the data sources are so that they can understand what's happening.
• 01:45 Now we're just happened.
• 01:47 At that point the user has the control to go and slice and
• 01:50 filter the data in the way they would like to use it.
• 01:53 So they can start drilling into the specific areas that they want to see.
• 01:58 Once they've done that, of course they're gonna make some observations and
• 02:01 the hopefully if our business process supports it, they'll go and
• 02:04 act on those observations.
• 02:05 And then this is where the PivotTable really changes the game.
• 02:09 Once they've acted on those observations and
• 02:11 they wanna see what kind of effect they had.
• 02:13 They will refresh the data that we end up getting into a cycle where they can
• 02:18 reuse the same piece of infrastructure or
• 02:21 the same reporting system over and over and over again without always
• 02:26 have to sending it back to the original report developer to do the updates.
• 02:30 And this is the big beautiful thing about working with PivotTables, driving our
• 02:34 business intelligence versus the static report the user has to constantly go and
• 02:39 update themselves.
• 02:41 Now, the big differences that we see in these, in the classic reporting solution,
• 02:46 again, we've got a manual report design, which makes sense.
• 02:49 We've got manual report updates, that's the killer.
• 02:52 And most of the time when when we actually get those report updates,
• 02:55 we have to go back and we have to modify things to fit.
• 02:58 Whether it's the source data has to be recleaned again or brought in and
• 03:02 copied and pasted and cut down.
• 03:04 In order to drive those reports, something new comes out of it.
• 03:07 It's not in a structure that can be reused and for
• 03:12 that reason the classic report is very much what I call developer driven and
• 03:15 I'm not talking about your programmer in the organization.
• 03:19 I'm talking about the business analyst person.
• 03:22 He is the developer of that specific report.
• 03:27 In the case of a PivotTable solution, things are a little bit different.
• 03:29 We design the report once, we refresh it often and often.
• 03:33 Now, that design is done by our developer.
• 03:37 But the refresh, and the actual digging into the data to see what's going on
• 03:42 by the slicing and dicing of it, is all user-driven.
• 03:45 And that is the big benefit of a PivotTable right there,
• 03:48 is that we can actually use our developers to develop more reports.
• 03:53 And again, I'm talking about the business analysts, or accounts, or
• 03:55 your engineers that are actually trying to drill in and figure out what's going on.
• 03:59 They can build that report and then they can send it off to their manager or
• 04:02 to their subordinate to say you just refresh and
• 04:05 this will give you the answers to the questions that you need.
• 04:07 I'm gonna go and spend my time developing another analysis that
• 04:10 the business needs to understand.
• 04:12 So that's where PivotTables can really start to add to our overall
• 04:17 reporting environment and why they're so important to business intelligence.

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