SpreadSheetSpace Link WHITE PAPER September 2014

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1 WHITE PAPER September 2014

2 Summary SpreadSheetSpace Link is the basic gateway to the Spreadsheet Space, i.e., a virtual space in which spreadsheets can establish links, exchange updates and maintain alignment. Link can be easily installed as an additional component (add-in) to any Microsoft Windows version of Microsoft Excel without administrative privileges and immediately increases user productivity and collaborative work. Link allows Excel users to expose Views of cells, ranges of cells, tables and whole sheets to other users and to link their spreadsheets to existing Views. The combined action of several exposelink connections gives birth to systems of connected spreadsheets through which Excel users maintain a unique version of a distributed information base. There is no longer the need for the exchange of Excel files in the form of attachments, no more multiple versions of the same file and no more wrong decisions based on out-of-date data. Link gives Excel users the ability to develop personalized analyses and presentations based on data available in the Spreadsheet Space and to rely on the fact that these analyses and presentations are constantly up-to-date. This white paper introduces the Link concept, i.e., why Link was conceived, how it works, what new interaction patterns it enables and how it compares against spreadsheet sharing. It then shortly describes the Link environment and how a user can download and use it. The SpreadSheet Space WHITE PAPER 2

3 The Link concept Link enables workgroup collaboration through tabular data exchange using Excel as an interface. The following use cases explain the typical scenarios that Link addresses. The first use case is related to information interchange hange. Information interchange is currently supported by a user that intends to send Excel data to other users typically extracts the data from a spreadsheet through a copy operation, pastes it in a new spreadsheet, saves such a spreadsheet, attaches it to an message and sends the message. To receive data, an Excel user receives the message, extracts the attached spreadsheet, copies the data of interest and pastes it in the target spreadsheets. With Link, Excel users exchange data without leaving Excel. The sender simply selects the area to send, enters the target Excel users and issues a send command while the receiver simply selects the cell at which he/she wants to place the received data in a spreadsheet and issues a receive command. Neither the sender nor the receivers ever leave Excel. The second use case is related to information pub ublication lication. Information publication refers to the situation in which an Excel user publishes spreadsheet data that evolves over time, to be used by other Excel users to build dynamic analyses and presentations. The fact that the data provided evolves over time forces the publisher to send new data versions at any update and the receiver to check the incoming mail and get the new data with any new message through multiple copy/paste/attach/mail send/mail receive operations. Link allows Excel users to expose Views of the spreadsheet data that they want to publish and to link to exposed Views. The SpreadSheetSpace platform keeps the Views aligned. To expose Views, Excel users simply select the data view that they want to publish, enter the target Excel user list and issue a create command. The target users choose the location at which they want to place the Views in their spreadsheets and issue a join command. The create/join command pair creates permanent connections between the exposed Views in the source spreadsheets and the linked Views in the target spreadsheets, so as to guarantee alignment. The third use case is related to information collection. Information collection refers to the situation in which an Excel user creates a Form to be filled out by another user and provides the Form to such a user to have him/her fill it out, update it and finally submit it. The possibility of updating the Form over time requires the exchange of successive messages through multiple copy/paste/attach/mail send/mail receive operations. Link allows Excel users to create forms and to have other Excel users fill them out. The Form creator creates and formats a cell range, enters the target Excel user requested to fill out the form, and issues a prepare command. The target Excel user selects the location at which the Form must be installed in his/her spreadsheet and issues a fill-out command. The prepare/fill-out command pair creates a permanent connection between the installed Form and the created Form, so that any update in the installed Form is reflected on the created Form. Peer to peer communication is the obvious application of the first use case. Excel users can rapidly exchange data in tabular form inside Excel without resorting to external mail tools. Product list management is a simple example of the second use case. A product list manager maintains the general product list in a central Excel spreadsheet and publishes the regional product lists, which are linked to the general product list, to the regional area managers. The regional managers link their spreadsheets to the central spreadsheet and create personal analyses and presentations. As the regional manager spreadsheets and the central spreadsheet constantly maintain alignment, the personal analyses and presentations automatically follow the evolution of the general product list (e.g., product price variation, stock availability, etc.). WHITE PAPER 3

4 Budgeting is a simple example of the third use case. A budget coordinator collects budget data from the contributing organizational structures (e.g., procurement, human resource, research, etc.), which in turn collect data from lower level organizational structures. The global budget can be seen as a live composition of data evolving over time, typically following top-down directives from the budget coordinator to the contributors and bottom-up data updates from the contributors to the budget coordinator. How Link improves Excel Link improves Excel by providing a powerful, secure, scalable and easy to use platform to allow Excel users to interconnect their spreadsheets, thus supporting a widespread diffusion of such a practice. More specifically, Link allows Excel users to create Views of Excel data so as to allow other Excel users to keep their workbooks synchronized with these Views in a secure and managed way from any location, thus enabling the creation of customized analyses and presentations automatically evolving with the source Excel data. Link supports the establishment of peer-to-peer relationships as well as the creation of systems of connected spreadsheets when many spreadsheets have mutual dependencies. The distinctive characteristics that make Link unique and distinguish it from what Excel currently supports are listed below: Link gives Excel users the possibility to exchange cells, cell ranges, tables and whole sheets inside Excel without resorting to external mail tools. Link allows Excel users to keep Excel spreadsheets permanently synchronized, thus transforming Excel into a live tool. Link gives Excel users control over data access. Excel users expose Views of spreadsheet data to other Excel users, who simply link to such Views. Link gives Excel users the possibility to configure the synchronization policy that best suits their needs (i.e., automatic, or on explicit user refresh command). Link ensures that all Excel users access the latest data versions and allows each user to manipulate them in identical or unrelated ways. Data integrity is guaranteed. Link supports both raw data Views and data Views enriched with formats, styles and formulas, thus giving Excel users the possibility preparing live presentations. Link overcomes any connection limitation due to its strong security enforcement. It works at the application layer and interoperates with enterprise-grade firewalls and proxies. Link turns out to be a powerful data mashup tool, in that it supports the integration of data exposed by multiple Excel spreadsheets. Link allows performing distributed data analysis in Excel, thanks to Excel s large set of tools and features, such as Pivot tables, Pivot Charts and more. Link works with Excel 2003, 2007, 2010 and It requires neither a special version of Excel (Enterprise, Office 365 Pro) nor a special environment (SharePoint Server ). WHITE PAPER 4

5 Linked Spreadsheets vs. Shared Spreadsheets An analogy that those who hear about SpreadSheetSpace Link typically make is between the linked spreadsheets, supported by Link, and the shared spreadsheets, supported by Cloud based platforms such as Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel Online. It is, therefore, worth explaining the difference between the two concepts. Spreadsheet sharing is a functionality that allows multiple users to edit a common spreadsheet, either simultaneously or at different times. Sharing is supported over the Cloud by Web based platforms under the Software as a Service (SaaS) scheme. Google Sheets and Excel Online are the best known examples of such platforms. The following four distinctive characteristics of shared spreadsheets deserve to be mentioned to understand the differences with respect to linked spreadsheets: Symmetry - The users that share a spreadsheet typically have the same access rights. They can read it and write it freely. Spreadsheet level granularity Sharing applies to spreadsheets and not to parts of them. Either a spreadsheet is shared or it is not. Limited compliance with Excel Being that sharing is supported by Web based platforms, the spreadsheet management program is not the native Excel while it is an Excel emulator running in the browser. Limited privacy The fact that shared spreadsheets must be made available to multiple users implies that they must be stored unencrypted in the cloud storage. Spreadsheet linking, by contrast, is a functionality that allows multiple users to interconnect their spreadsheets through asymmetrical relationships. Asymmetry means that there is a clear distinction between the users who own and expose data, and as a consequence can update it, and the users who link to the exposed data and as a consequence can only look at it and follow its evolution while they are not allowed to update it. The following four distinctive characteristics of linked spreadsheets deserve to be mentioned to see the difference with respect to shared spreadsheets: Asymmetry The user roles are complementary. By exposing data, a user gives other users the right to link to it. By linking to exposed data, a user is granted read access rights to it. Cell level granularity Users are allowed to expose single cells, cell ranges and tables while keeping the rest of the spreadsheet private. Full compliance with Excel Since it is based on Excel, linked spreadsheets are 100% Excel compliant. Full privacy Asymmetry allows the implementation of asymmetric encryption techniques based on a public key infrastructure (PKI). As a consequence, the SpreadSheetSpace platform is transparent and absolutely unable to access the content of the data exchanged by the users. WHITE PAPER 5

6 The Link Functionalities Link enables three functionalities, namely Send/Receive, Create/Join and Prepare/Fill-Out. Send/Receive (Snapshots) Send/Receive can be seen as a mailer integrated in Excel. It provides a simple visual interface integrated in the Excel ribbon and an electronic mail engine to allow Excel users to exchange cell ranges called Snapshots over the SpreadSheet Space. The cells may have formats and styles and may contain formulas. If they contain formulas, the formulas which refer to cells internal to the range are sent with the range so that they appear at the destination whereas the formulas which refer to cells external to the range are not sent while the corresponding values are sent with the range. Through Send/Receive a snapshot of a cell range is transferred from a user to another user. No permanent relationship is configured as a result of send/receive operations. Create/Join (Views) Create/Join creates a permanent asymmetric connection called View from the spreadsheet of the Excel user who distributes information (i.e., the source) to the spreadsheets of the Excel users who receive information (i.e., the targets). The permanent adjective denotes the fact that the relationship remains until it is removed. The asymmetric adjective denotes the fact that the two Excel users play different roles. The source exposes a View of a cell range (of fixed size) or of a table (of variable size) while the targets create local images of such a cell/range/table by linking to the exposed View. Being images of something else, linked Views are write protected. Any update in an exposed View appears in the linked Views. Four aspects are described in more detail. Formats and Styles: The formats and the styles assigned to cell ranges and tables exposed as Views are preserved in the linked Views Formulas vs Values: Values and not formulas are reported in the linked Views. The information on the way the cell values are computed is lost in linked View to exposed View synchronization. Cell ranges vs Table: While cell ranges are rectangular areas of fixed size, tables, in the Excel sense, are rectangular areas of variable size, typically made up of records having the same structures in the rows. When an exposed View is related to a table the size changes are reported in the corresponding linked View. Update policies: When the value of a cell included in a cell range/table exposed as a View changes, it is expected that the change appears in the linked View. This is actually what happens, but the time at which it happens depends on how the source and the target user have configured their operation. Both the expose operation, at the source, and the link operation, at the target, can be configured either in manual mode or in automatic mode. Automatic update at the source means that a change in an exposed cell range/table automatically reflects on the exposed View, whereas manual update means that the update of an exposed View is subject to an explicit command issued by the users. Analogously, automatic update at the target means that a change in a linked View automatically appears in the target spreadsheet, whereas manual update means that the update of a linked Views is reported on the target spreadsheet only if explicitly requested by the user. Prepare/Fill ill-out (Forms) Prepare/Fill ill-out creates a permanent asymmetric connection from a spreadsheet of an Excel user who is requested to fill out a Form to the spreadsheet of the Excel user who is supposed to collect the form. The Prepare/Fill-Out process is activated by this latter user, who prepares the form, i.e., formats a cell range, enters the id of the user to be requested to fill out the form, and WHITE PAPER 6

7 issues the create command. The user who is requested to fill out the Form selects the location at which he/she wants to install the Form in a spreadsheet and issues the Fill-Out command. Once the command is executed, a permanent asymmetric connection from the installed Form and the original Form is created. The Link Environment Link consists of two components, namely the Excel Add-In and the Management Console. The Excel Add-in The Excel Add-In allows the Excel users to send and receive cells, cell ranges, tables and sheets to expose cells, cell ranges, tables and whole sheets and to link to them, and to create and fill-out forms. The Excel Add-in is compatible with Excel 2003, 2007, 2010, The Add-In exhibits a user interface matching the Excel look and feel, adding the SpreadSheetSpace tab in the Excel ribbon. Through such an interface, the users may configure sheet synchronization, display the update notifications and edit the update policies. The Web Console The Web Console provides the functionalities to manage and control the Link service. In particular, it supports the management of all the user s Views and Forms (both inbound and outbound objects). The Web Console also allows the management of the user s profile data (e.g., name, password, etc.) as well as to set the user s preferences (e.g., notifications, language, etc.). Link Provisioning Link is provisioned in the form of a service. Any Excel user that wants to use it must simply access the SpreadSheetSpace web site ( and follow the instructions. Two actions are required, namely registration in the SpreadSheetSpace platform and Excel configuration through an add-in download. The add-in can be easily removed through the standard Windows procedure (Control Panel->Uninstall). WHITE PAPER 7

8 Link Quick Factsheet Link enables Excel users to exchange Excel data and to link spreadsheets. Pros: o Easy to install. o Key addition to Excel to produce live reports and presentations. o Real-time synchronization for data mashup, i.e. an instant integration from multiple data sources to produce live dashboards. o No specific training required. o Data integrity guaranteed. o Autonomy of the end user. o Major productivity enhancement. In order to use the Link service the Excel users o register in the SpreadsheetSpace web site, and o download and install the Link Excel Add-In. The Link Excel Add-In: o Works with Windows versions of Excel 2003, 2007, 2010 and o Can be downloaded and installed with no local Administrator privileges. o Works both in desktops connected to the Internet and in desktops connected to enterprise private networks protected by firewalls and proxies. SpreadSheetSpace, Inc Ada Street, Berkeley CA 94702, USA - Copyright 2013 SpreadSheetSpace, Inc. Microsoft, Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Excel, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.