Organizations typically have many different data sources that are disconnected but contain valuable business information. The data sources consist usually of Customer Relationship Management systems such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce, ERP systems, Oracle databases, Excel workbooks and more. In order to extract useful business information, typically information workers have to rely on out-of-date reports, static charts embedded into PowerPoint presentations. In order to look for the required information themselves, users have to familiarise themselves with the location of the data, and also different user interfaces to learn. Often the data is not found and therefore duplicated costing the company time and money.
These silos of data may also be stored on servers, workstations, or in the cloud which makes it difficult to connect to them and view the data in one place.
Lightning Tools offers three products that can assist with this problem that can occur in any organization. Using our BCS Bundle, you can connect to almost any external data source whether it is on premises, or in the cloud. Once you are connected, that data can be searched, displayed, manipulated, used as lookups, charted, and conditionally formatted. All of this can be done without a single line of code.
BCS Meta Man
BCS Meta Man is a Business Connectivity Services tool that allows you to connect to almost any external data source without having to write any code at all. The tool is intuitive to use and allows database administrators, SharePoint architects, Developers, and information workers to create BCS External Content Types within just a few minutes.
Data Viewer Web Part
Our Data Viewer Web Part for SharePoint 2013 enables you to connect either directly to external data sources such as Oracle, Excel, SQL and ODATA, or you can connect to any BCS External Content Type. Once you are connected, you can style your data as you please applying conditional formatting, KPI’s, applying filters, organizing the views of your data. You can even connect to SharePoint lists and do the same with them too. The Data Viewer Web Part is available for both SharePoint on-premises as a Farm solution or within the app store for Office 365. The Data Viewer web part is a perfect web part to add to any SharePoint business data dashboard.
Chart Web Part
The Chart web part empowers you to create powerful 3D and 2D charts in a matter of minutes. Whether you are basing your charts on external data such as Oracle, SQL, Business Connectivity Services External Content Types, or Excel Workbooks (Even without Excel Services), the chart web part will have you building great looking and useful charts in minutes. The chart web part also allows you to connect to SharePoint lists.
So, with our BCS bundle, you can bring all of your islands of data together into SharePoint without any learning curve or coding saving your organization thousands of dollars. You can also achieve all of this with just SharePoint Foundations!
Free Training
To ensure that you get the most out of Business Connectivity Services and our bundle. We are throwing in a four hour training session on Business Connectivity Services for as many people in your organization as you like.
The training is provided by Brett Lonsdale – Author of the Microsoft Press Business Connectivity Services book.
To learn more about Business Connectivity Services out of the box, take a look at our post from the archives which introduces BCS: https://lightningtools.com/bcs/business-connectivity-services-bcs-introduction/
All of these products are available for a free trial.
