You can create a standard data mart with the Blackbaud Data Mart Deployment Wizard. The data mart copies records from the selected data source to a data warehouse so you can conduct complex reporting and analysis. To access the deployment wizard, open the \MSBuild\Datamarts folder in the installation directory and run the deploy.vbs file.
The deploy.vbs file runs an executable installer. Because some of the actions performed by the installer require administrative access, running deploy.vbs as a standard user may cause the deployment to fail. When you run deploy.vbs, run it as an administrator.
When you upgrade or patch the program, you must run the deployment wizard again to update the SSIS package for the data mart and run revisions against the Analysis Services database. For more information about updates and patches, see the Infinity Platform Installation and Upgrade Guide posted at Blackbaud CRM User Guides.
After you create the data mart, options appear in the program to manage the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process. The ETL process extracts records from the source database, transforms them for optimal loading and reporting, and loads them in the data mart. From Administration, you can access the Reporting data mart page to monitor ETL activity, schedule business processes to coincide with the ETL process, and manually start an ETL refresh.
In the program, the data mart appears as a record source in Administration, and three smart fields appear for the data mart. From the Data Marts page in Administration, you manage the data mart and the ETL process. In Marketing and Communications and Analysis, you can access the record source to create queries.
The deployment wizard also creates an OLAP cube to conduct complex reporting and analysis on the data in the data mart. The cube increases your ability to manipulate data from the source database, and it allows you to perform advanced reporting. With the OLAP Explorer, you can build pivot tables and charts based on the OLAP cube. The program also includes Microsoft Excel report templates so that you can use subsets of the data in the OLAP cube to create reports in Excel.