Microsoft Demos PowerPivot Business Intelligence with Calendar Analytics
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is offering a free Calendar Analytics application to demonstrate the power of its PowerPivot business intelligence tool.
The new Calendar Analytics PowerPivot application from Microsoft's Business Intelligence team helps solve a problem many busy professionals have — how to make better use of work time and figure out which tasks should be given more or less time to best meet productivity goals.
The Calendar Analytics time management app retrieves meeting and other information from Exchange and presents it in a simple and easy-to-read dashboard. This lets executives and administrative professionals analyze how time is being used in compared to the real priorities. In some cases the data can also be changed to create a better match between time and priorities.
Tom Casey, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Business Platform Division, and executive assistant Melissa Krohn both use the new Calendar Analytics application to review and adjust how Casey spends his time. For Casey and Krohn, the time management analysis helps ensure day-to-day work is contributing to larger goals.
Casey, who beta tested Calendar Analytics for more than a month, said the first few summaries of his calendar showed him he wasn't necessarily spending his time the way he wanted to be. Calendar Analytics, along with a little help from Krohn, was able to categorize all of his appointments and track his time in a highly accurate way, then make adjustments to his day-to-day schedule.
“In an email-and-calendar-driven world, having a tool for everyone from administrative professionals to information workers to executives to analyze how time is spent is invaluable,” Casey said.
Before using Calendar Analytics for time management, Krohn used to hand-compile information into an Excel spreadsheet when asked to present an executive with an accounting of time spent.
Microsoft says the Calendar Analytics time management application shows the company's commitment to making business intelligence available to everyone.
Microsoft's Business Intelligence team launched the app in honor of Administrative Professionals' Day and it can be downloaded along with a video that introduces the new time management business intelligence application. Calendar Analytics requires a Windows 7 operating system, Microsoft Office Excel 2010, PowerPivot for Excel 2010, 2GB of RAM and 5MB of available disk space.
For more on Microsoft PowerPivot, see Is PowerPivot the Future of Microsoft Business Intelligence?
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