Introduction
This Guide shows you how to create and solve conventional optimization and Monte Carlo simulation models, and to analyze and visualize your data using the Solver Add-on, Risk Solver Add-on and XLMiner Analysis Toolpak.
Applications are moving to the Web. It's a better way to share models and data with many users. And browser-based applications can be used from PCs, Macs, and mobile devices such as tablets and phones. Sharing your analytics-based application via the Internet, or an intranet within your company, makes a lot of sense.
In the past, sharing or "deploying" your applications meant a lot of work. Most analysts have needed help from IT or professional programmers to create Web-based applications. Now, it's a lot easier: With Google Sheets, you can just insert one of our Add-ons into a Google spreadsheet, save it to your online Google document library, and open it in Google Sheets.
Each add-on – Solver, Risk Solver, and XLMiner Analysis ToolPak – offers “high-level” capacity and performance: They have all the power needed to solve many common business problems, but they have maximum limits on model size or data set. The even more powerful Platform products match or exceed the capacity and performance of the best software available anywhere (inside or outside Excel); they can solve the same problems handled by much more expensive software offered by other vendors, such as IBM and SAS. For more information on these models, click the Examples menu item at the top of this webpage.