Exploring the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

 

Matthew Nunn, Dell | Plural Professional Services
Frank C. Rice, Microsoft Corporation

October 2002

Applies to:
   Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard
   Microsoft® Excel
   Microsoft Outlook®
   Microsoft Word

Summary: Learn how to use the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard to add flexible data analysis functionality to your Microsoft Office applications. (8 printed pages)

Download bi_st.msi.

Contents

Introduction
Installing the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard
Connecting to a Cube
Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Word
Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Excel
Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Outlook
Conclusion

Introduction

The Business Intelligence (BI) Smart Tag Wizard can be integrated into your Microsoft® Office applications to include Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook®, and Microsoft Word, in order to provide flexible data analysis by turning any level in a cube into a smart tag recognizer. For instance, if someone types the word dairy into a document, a smart tag recognizer could recognize this as a term associated with a grocery product and provide an option to insert a PivotTable® report or PivotChart® report into the document, based on the underlying cube data. In addition, by using the BI Smart Tag Wizard, you can also easily enable interoperability between your Office applications. For example, if someone types What’s happening with beverages? into an Outlook message, a recognizer could recognize the term beverages and provide options to view the details of the cube in a PivotTable report inside of an Excel worksheet, or in a PivotChart report inside of a Word document.

In this article, we will examine installing and using the BI Smart Tag Wizard in Excel, Outlook, and Word.

Installing the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard

In order to use the BI smart tag recognizers in your Office applications, you will first need to download and install the BI Smart Tag Wizard on the computer where it will be used. To install the BI Smart Tag Wizard, perform the following steps:

  1. Download and save the file bi_st.msi to your hard drive.
  2. Locate the bi_st.msi file, and double-click the bi_st.msi to activate the installation.
  3. Click Next in the first screen. In the next screen, type your name and organization in the boxes, and then click Next.
  4. Browse to the location where the BI Smart Tag Wizard will be installed or click Next to choose the default location.
  5. Click Next to begin the installation. Click Finish.
  6. Navigate to the download's \bin\scripts directory and double click the batch-installweb.bat.

Next, we will connect the BI Smart Tag Wizard to a cube in a Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services database.

Connecting to a Cube

The following procedure assumes that you have access to an Analysis server installed with the FoodMart 2000 database:

  1. From the Start button, point to Programs, point to Microsoft BI Smart Tag and then click BI Smart Tag Wizard.

  2. In the first screen, type the name of your OLAP server (see Figure 1a). You can also use a local cube (see Figure 1b). The one included uses a Great Plains sample cube that was created using a product called QuickOLAP from Corporate Renaissance Group. Corporate Renaissance Group is a Microsoft Great Plains partner and a finalist in the 2002 Microsoft Great Plains-Office XP Solutions Challenge.

  3. Once you have chosen the OLAP server, type the name of a data provider or choose the default. Click Next.

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    Figure 1a. Select a Server and Provider screen (click picture to see larger image)

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    Figure 1b. Select a Local Cube and Provider screen (click picture to see larger image)

  4. In the next screen, click the catalog (database) that contains the cube you will use (see Figure 2). For this example, click the FoodMart 2000 database and then click Next.

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    Figure 2. Select Analysis Services Catalog screen (click picture to see larger image)

    In the next screen, you can select the cube that you want to query (see Figure 3). For this example, click the Sales cube and then click Next.

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    Figure 3. Select Analysis Services Cube screen (click picture to see larger image)

  5. In the next screen, you select the dimension or dimensions and the members of the level that you want to smart tag enable (see Figure 4). For this example, we will select the Product Family and Product Department levels in the Product dimension and the Education Level level in the Education Level dimension. Click Next.

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    Figure 4. Select Members and Retrieve Recognizer Terms screen (click picture to see larger image)

  6. The next screen is a confirmation screen (see Figure 5). Click Finish.

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    Figure 5. Confirmation screen (click picture to see larger image)

  7. Next, a dialog box appears indicating the location of the XML file that contains the cube selection metadata (see Figure 6). Click OK.

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    Figure 6. Local File Saved dialog box

  8. And finally, a dialog box appears indicating that Word or Excel must be closed and reopened before the terms from the levels will be smart tag enabled (see Figure 7). Click OK.

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    Figure 7. BI Smart Tag Client dialog box (click picture to see larger image)

The list of smart tag recognizers is now available for use in your Office applications.

Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Word

When a user starts Word, Word loads all installed and enabled smart tag dynamic-link library (DLL) files including the two DLLs (BISmartTag.dll and BISmartTagAddin.dll) representing the BI Smart Tag Wizard. The loaded smart tag DLLs then wait for Word to pass in text to analyze for recognized terms. If a term is recognized by the smart tag, the text is marked. This marking information is stored or embedded in the document. Word displays this recognized smart tag to the user with a light dotted underline. A drop-down list of options is then presented to the user to perform some action.

Now, we’ll look at an example of using BI smart tag recognizers in Word.

  1. Start Word 2002 and open a new document.

  2. Type the term beverages anywhere in the document. Notice that the term becomes underlined with a dotted line to indicate that it is a smart tag recognizer.

  3. Hover the mouse over the term and notice the icon with the down arrow. Click the down arrow and you are presented with a list of options (see Figure 8).

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    Figure 8. List of Word BI Smart Tag options (click picture to see larger image)

  4. Now scroll down the list and click Insert Pivot Table Into Word. A PivotTable report, filtered by beverages, is inserted into the document (see Figure 9).

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    Figure 9. PivotTable filtered on beverages (click picture to see larger image)

    Notice that, using the BI smart tag option, it was relatively easy to include just the right amount of information into the document in a form that was immediately useful. Without the BI smart tag option, you would need to connect to the cube, create the PivotTable report, slice the data on the appropriate dimensions, and then drill-down to find the member that you want to analyze.

    Also notice that a BI Smart Tag button has been included on the Word toolbar.

  5. Click the down arrow on the BI Smart Tag button to reveal two options; one to run the BI Smart Tag Wizard from within Word and another to see a list of recognizer terms (see Figure 10).

    Note   If you are ever unsure of which terms are being used as BI smart tag recognizers, you can use this option to see a list of all recognizer terms.

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    Figure 10. The BI Smart Tag toolbar button options

  6. On the BI Smart Tag button, click the Current Term List menu item. A dialog box with a list of recognizer terms is displayed (see Figure 11). From this list you can check the list of available recognizer terms or insert a term into the document.

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    Figure 11. A list of recognizer terms in Word

  7. Click Cancel to close the dialog box. Click to move the cursor below the PivotTable report. Click the down arrow on the BI Smart Tag button, click Dairy, and then click the Insert button. The term Dairy is inserted into the document.

  8. Hover the mouse over the term, click the down arrow, and then click Insert Static Pivot Chart Into Word. A PivotChart report is inserted into the document (see Figure 12).

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    Figure 12. PivotChart inserted into Word (click picture to see larger image)

Now let’s look at using BI smart tag recognizers to automate interoperability between Office applications.

Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Excel

In this section, we’ll look at how we can use the options provided by the BI smart tag recognizers in a Word document to export a PivotTable report to an Excel worksheet.

  1. While still in the Word document, hover over the recognizer term Dairy, click the down arrow, and then click View Details in Excel Pivot Table. Excel starts and displays a PivotTable report filtered on the Product Department level (see Figure 13).

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    Figure 13. PivotTable report in Excel created from Word (click picture to see larger image).

    From this worksheet, we can use the BI smart tag recognizers to perform other tasks such as inserting a PivotChart report into the spreadsheet or even inserting a PivotChart report into another Word document. And just as we saw in Word, the BI Smart Tag Wizard also added a BI Smart Tag button to the toolbar. Now let’s look at the list of Excel options provided by the BI Smart Tag Wizard.

  2. Type the term beverages in an empty cell in the worksheet, hover the mouse over the term, and click the down arrow.

    Comparing the list of options (see Figure 14) to those we saw in our Word example (refer to Figure 8), you can see that the BI Smart Tag Wizard tailors the list of options based on which application the recognizer is being used in.

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    Figure 14. List of Excel BI Smart Tag options

  3. From the list of options, click Insert Pivot Chart for Cube. A PivotChart report is inserted into a new worksheet similar to the one we saw earlier in Word (see Figure 12).

Now we will briefly look at using the BI smart tag recognizers in Outlook.

Using the Business Intelligence Smart Tag Wizard in Outlook

In addition to using the BI smart tag recognizers in Excel and Word, you can also use BI smart tag recognizers in Outlook to add data analysis functionality to your e-mail. The following procedure assumes that Word is your default e-mail editor.

  1. Start Outlook 2002 and create a new blank e-mail message. Notice that the BI Smart Tag Wizard also added a BI Smart Tag button to the toolbar.

  2. In the body of your e-mail message, type What’s up with beverages?. You will see a line appear below the word beverages indicating that the term is recognized as a smart tag recognizer. Hover over the term and click the down arrow (see Figure 15).

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    Figure 15. List of Outlook BI Smart Tag options (click picture to see larger image)

  3. Click the down arrow and then click Insert Active Pivot Chart Into Word. You will see the PivotChart report displayed directly in the e-mail (see Figure 16).

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    Figure 16. PivotChart report in Outlook (click picture to see larger image)

There are also other options available from the drop-down list that you should explore.

Conclusion

In this article, we examined installing and using the BI Smart Tag Wizard in an Excel worksheet, Word document, and Outlook e-mail. We also looked at using the BI smart tag recognizers to automate interoperability between Office applications. As we have also seen in this article, adding BI smart tag options to your custom applications is relatively easy and can add considerable flexibility for your users.