To get started with OLAP for SharePoint, just insert the Web Part on your page, open the On-Board Designer, and navigate to your data source. The data will automatically load and be available for your pivoting grids and charts.

Choose from many different aggregations for the totals (Value field). Choose from Sum, Count, Average, Maximum, Minimum, First, Last, Variance, Standard Deviation, and Variance Population.

You may add as many value fields to a view as you want. This enables users to aggregate totals for multiple measures from the data set. For example, create a view that compares both total revenue and cost side-by-side.

Set conditional format thresholds as absolute values or as percentages in the On-Board Designer. Make certain values stand out to draw attention. For example, apply a unique style for values in the top 10% and another style for values in the bottom 10%. This is a great way to build in key performance indicators.

OLAP for SharePoint automatically creates a chart from the view you create. It supports five different chart types (Bar, Column, Area, Line and Scatter), automatic tooltips, stacking and palette selection.

To narrow down the data pool, use the filter feature. You can filter on multiple fields. Just right-click on the field you would like to filter and select Field Settings. From the Field Settings dialog box, you can create your custom text filter. No coding required. The filter settings get saved with the view so they are there the next time you load the view.

Create a view you like and save it as a definition file to a SharePoint Library. It can then be loaded into the OLAP Web Part for other users and on other pages.