The content for this post comes from David Henderson, lead software developer for the SAS Web Parts for Microsoft Sharepoint. David talks about these and other ideas for SAS-Sharepoint integration in his SAS Global Forum paper.
We are pleased to announce the availability of SAS Web Parts 1.1 for Microsoft SharePoint. The SAS Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint allow you to bring the power of SAS dashboards and SAS analytics to your SharePoint pages. This download currently includes two web parts: the SAS BI Dashboard Web Part and the SAS Stored Process Web Part. The BI Dashboard Web Part displays dashboards and KPIs at a glance to help users monitor organizational performance. Users can delve deeper into analysis using the SAS Stored Process Web Part and drill to other SAS BI tools and analytics products to gain additional insight.
These web parts are for use with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in conjunction with SAS BI Server 9.2. To install these (and any other) web parts, you must have administrative privileges in the SharePoint server and on the SAS BI Server.
This new offering from SAS is being made available via download from support.sas.com. (Here is a direct link to the download package.)
Read on for more details about this offering.
MORE ABOUT THE SAS WEB PARTS
As with any form of information, SAS-produced reports and analyses are only useful if the people who need the information have ready access them. If your organization uses SharePoint as a portal for collaboration or information dissemination, placing SAS content on SharePoint pages makes it easier for users to find and monitor those reports. Because these Web parts are pulling SAS content in real time, the viewer is seeing up-to-date reports and not reports that were created at some point in the past. This integration approach works well for content that be generated quickly.
The SAS Web Parts also handle authentication for the viewer. When a viewer opens a SharePoint page, that viewer is authenticated by SharePoint. Because the SharePoint site has verified the viewer’s identity, the SAS Web Parts use that identity to authenticate with the SAS server.
SAS STORED PROCESS WEB PART
A SAS Stored Process is a SAS program that is registered in the SAS Metadata Server and can be executed by SAS applications and clients such as SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Web Report Studio, and the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. The SAS Stored Process Web Part allows you to run a stored process and include the results in a Web parts page.
If the stored process includes prompts, the viewer of the SharePoint page sees those prompts before any content is generated. Once the viewer has provided values for the prompts and clicked Run, the results of the stored process are displayed. If the stored process doesn’t include prompts, the stored process is run immediately and the viewer sees the results. The Web part is using the SAS Stored Process Web application to prompt the visitor, run the stored process and render the results. Therefore, it is capable of handling any stored process that is supported by the SAS Stored Process Web application. Supported stored processes include those with dynamic and cascading prompts and those that generate tables, images and other content.
SAS BI DASHBOARD WEB PART
Included in SAS Enterprise BI Server is the SAS BI Dashboard Web application, which is a powerful tool to assist you in monitoring the health of your organization. The SAS BI Dashboard Web Part allows you to include dashboards in a SharePoint page.
Dashboards displayed in the Web part are fully interactive. If an indicator in the dashboard is linked to other SAS content, clicking that indicator takes the viewer to the appropriate SAS Web application to view that SAS content.
SAS INTEGRATION WITH MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT
We are excited about this initial release of the SAS Web Parts, and we hope you find them useful. As with any first release, there are features that aren’t there, but we’re not done yet. We have plans to provide deeper, richer integration with SharePoint, so stay tuned.
10 Comments
I am trying to find out if the SAS webpart for Sharepoint will ever work with the new SharePoint 2010?
Santhan,
SAS WebParts for Microsoft SharePoint 4.3 does support SharePoint 2010. The 4.3 version (using SAS 9.2) supports it with this hotfix. The 4.31 version, which ships with SAS 9.3, supports it right out of the box.
I'm using SAS Web Parts 5.1 in an implementation of SharePoint 2010 that contains two web front ends. Am I correct in assuming that the WebPartsSetup.exe would need to be run on both web front end machines?
Hi Tony, the answer is "Yes". If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to call on SAS Technical Support.
What could be possible cause for this error "Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority 'sharepoint04'.
Details: The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.".
I could see one resolution at this link http://support.sas.com/kb/45/853.html but im using iis 7.5 so this does not apply to me.
Also is it possible that similar error will come if i try to use sas web parts 1.1 with sharepoint 2010? Will this resolve if i use 4.3 or higher version?
please help
Guarav, this sounds like an issue you should track with SAS Technical Support. They'll want more details about your configuration and exactly what you're experiencing.
If we have the full version of SAS desktop on our PCs and only want to house our sas files in a SharePoint library rather than a fileshare, how can we do this? We do not need SharePoint to perform analytics and dashboard or do anything with our SAS data, simply host the files so we can open them into our full desktop SAS application.
Jeff,
In this case you could simply use Sharepoint as a file system, referencing the data via UNC paths (\\myserver.sp.company.com\Documents\Data) just as you would with any SAS library.
Or, if you want to access the data files via HTTP, you can use PROC HTTP to "download" each file that you need into your SAS session. See this post about Dropbox (similar concept) here.
Hi Chris!
Hope things are good so far in 2021!
Just checking in to ask whether the Web Parts interface was ever updated for Sharepoint Online (O365)? I didn't think it was going to be supported as Sharepoint moved more deeply in O365 with Azure etc. but thought I would ask anyway!
Thanks very much!
Hi Matt - I know that SharePoint Online is on the roadmap for integration with SAS Viya, especially when running in Azure. But I'm unsure on timing for this right now.