“HFG needed to hire a ‘cube expert’, and that’s exactly what we got with David Shroyer. David is in a class by himself – he’s thorough yet efficient, extremely knowledgeable, and a pleasure to work with. David is an excellent teacher; he doesn’t do the driving, he makes the students drive.”

Roger Beard,
Director of IT,
Horizon Food Group

Analysis Services (SSAS) Mentoring Training

Analysis Services Mentoring and Training

We offer customized "mentor" training for Analysis Services 2000, SSAS 2005 and SSAS 2008. We have found that most companies benefit more from a more customized approach rather than a formal "canned classroom" environment. Our approach is to work with your developers and teach both the basics and advanced topics while working through YOUR data. By the end of the "class" not only will the participants be able to build and maintain business intelligence applications, but they will have a good head start on their internal project.

This approach does not include a formal training manual with examples. This information can easily be purchased through a good quality technical book.

This is a very "risky" approach for typical consulting companies to recommend because "you never know what is going to happen" when you walk into a class. But, it is by far the best approach for knowledge transfer. Everything is "relevant" because throughout the class we work with your data!

The items that are typically covered in a one week SSAS mentoring engagement include:

Discussion and review of your star schema database
Best practices for creating dimensions with attribute relationships
Walkthrough of the various dimension properties
Discussion and review of your measure groups and cubes
Creation of some basic cube calculations (based upon your need)
Creation of date based named sets, which allow for "dynamic" reporting
Creation of date based global calculations, such as year over year variances, MTD, QTD, and YTD.
Creation of a sample SSAS KPI
Discuss drill to detail functionality and implement if requested
Discuss cube security and demonstrate "dynamic" role based security
Discuss the various methods for creating cube aggregations and tips on how to insure that your cube is getting good query performance.
Discussion of the various Microsoft Front End Tools such as ProClarity, Reporting Services, and PerformancePoint Services for Sharepoint

All Analysis Services mentoring is tailored to fit to your needs!

Is this "formalized training"? No. In reality it is a combination of consulting and training which we call "mentoring". Oftentimes, people will take classes with objectives in mind that are never met with the generalized training. This approach insures that relevant issues are addressed during the training sessions. If you are in search of "formal" Microsoft Analysis Services training then we recommend:

Solid Quality Learning

This is also a cost effective approach if you have more than one participant. We can provide a custom mentoring experience for approximately the cost of a typical formal course.

If you are interesting in more of a hands on mentoring approach, then you can contact us by using our contact form.