How to create m2m relationship in PowerPivot

Question

So I am trying to link an employee metrics pivot chart with an employee project table with one slicer. I want an employee slicer that manipulates all charts but the data is coming from 2 different places (SQL, Sharepoint). When I try to create a relationship based on Employees I get the following error: "The relationship cannot be created because each column contains duplicate values. Select at least one column that only contains unique values."

So one chart has quantitative items while the table has qualitative items and I want one slicer to manipulate both at the employee level.

I want to see all the data on both charts for the selected employee, and not just single items linked by unique values. I can use unique values, and have created relationships that one slicer can manipulate however I only get one record at a time that way and therefore the slicer has thousands of buttons (one for each record).

I wouldn't think this would be that difficult and I hope it's really not.

Please Help!

Answer 1

M2M relationships in PowerPivot will most likely cause more headaches than solutions unless you are aware of what you are doing. After some thought, I realized that I really do not want an m2m relationship because it would result in junk data for what I wanted. I just wanted to start my answer off acknowledging that I did not achieve an m2m.

So if you want to link SharePoint data to Excel here is what you need to do:

Export SharePoint data as an RSS feed. If this is something others will need to refresh then the rss file will need to be stored on a shared drive.

Add PowerPivot if you have not already done so. In PowerPivot get external data from other sources (rss feed) then add your file. To link data you will need a Unique ID to join tables on.