Excel Share a report with someone without access to refresh SSAS

Question

I've created a report that uses SSAS to create a Pivot table. I have to authenticate with username/password when I refresh it. Once it's refreshed I want to send it to someone else.

However when they open it they can't drill down in the Pivot table because it asks them to authenticate as well.

I can't remove the connection from the file because then you don't have the data for the Pivot so it doesn't let you drill down either.

Is there a way to work around that, to make the Pivot table available for use (to drill down, no need to change the fields) to the other person?

Answer 1

If you want to provide a self-contained Excel file with the detail data to support an interactive PivotTable then please look at Power Pivot . In newer versions of Excel it is called the Excel Data Model. You load the model with detail data, define your calculations and relationships between tables. The data is compressed and stored in the Excel file so except during refresh from your relational source (which you could do before sending the Excel file) the user doesn't need any access to servers.

You will have to rebuild the data model in Power Pivot. If your SSAS model is a Tabular model then the concepts should be pretty similar.