Building Performance Point Dashboards.

Within a few days the new RTM version of SharePoint 2010 (SP2010) will finally be launched! As we already know from the Beta and RC version: SP2010 will bring us a lot of new and cool stuff!

One of these  new things is: Microsoft Performance Point Services 2010 (PPS2010). In the 12 Wave it was a separate product called: Performance Point Server 2007. Within the 14 wave it is integrated in the SP2010 product stack as a separate Service Application.

With PPS2010 you can do your performance management based on underlying datasources. PPS2010 can be split into three parts:

• Monitoring; What is happening and what is happened?
• Analysis; Why has it happened?
• Plan/forecast; What is going to happen/next steps, what do I want to happen?

To answer the above questions you can generate PPS2010 functionalities like:
(Balanced) Scorecards, KPI's, analytical reports (with drilldown) and trend analysis.

Example

Withing this blog we will show you an example of the easyness of creating a
Performance Point dashboard within PPS2010/SP2010.

Prerequisites

• SharePoint 2010 Enterprise
• SQL Server 2008 (x64)
• Contoso Retail DW SQL2008 Example DB (see: codeplex.com or Microsoft.com)
• Business intelligence center template created in SharePoint 2010, from this
   site you can start the Performance Point Dashboard Designer
• A Secure Store Service Application with a master key and application key set.
• A PPS2010 target application ID in Secure Store service application with the
   the credentials set for this target application ID

Steps

1:
From the business intelligence center start the Dashboard Designer. Click on
create dashboards and then click start using performance point services.(see picture below).

2:
Click on the button "Run dashboard designer". The Performance Point service will now download and open the designer application from the SharePoint Server.

3:
The next time you can open the dashboard designer from the Start-menu.

4:
The Dashboard designer start page will look like this:

5:
Make sure that you first created a connection to the Contoso Retail DW in the dashboard designer. This will not be shown in this example.

6:
The next step is to create the scorecard where the KPI's will be integrated. On the create tab click Scorecard. Choose for Microsoft - Analysis Services

7:
Choose the Contoso Retail DW Datasource and click next

8:
Select Create KPI's from SQL Server Analysis Services measures and click Next

9:
Click Add KPI (this will give you the possibility to add an existing KPI from the cube. If you choose for Select KPI you can choose a KPI you created in this workspace. Rename the name of the KPI to: Sample_KPI

10:
In the next screen select a dimension, choose Sales Territory country

11:
Next, choose a measure filter for the target and the actual of the KPI, Choose Greater China as actual and India as target.

12:
In the Add member columns screen, check <Add column members> and choose the date.calender Year field in the dimension textbox. In the member textbox select the years 2008 and 2009

13:
Choose the location in SharePoint (document library) where you want to place your Dashboard content, click Next.

14:
Click Finish and rename the scorecard to: Sample_Scorecard. Your scorecard should look like this:

15:
In the details pane (right) open the dimensions group and pick the field <Category Name> and move it to the right hand side of the <Sample KPI> in the scorecard.

16:
A Screen opens, right click <All Products> and choose Autoselect members --> Select Children. All the underlying categories will dynamically be shown in the scorecard.

17:
Click update in the edit-tab and the scorecard should look like the following:

18:
When you created your first scorecard, we will go further by creating an analytic report, click on the create-tab on analytic chart. You can see that you can also choose an Excel Report or Reporting Services Report.

19:
Choose the Contoso Retail DW Datasource and click finish

20:
Rename the report to: Sample_Pie

21:
Drag the dimensions, measures or named sets you want on to the report designer as shown in the picture below:

22:
Now you can change your report type to: Pie Chart by right clicking on the report

23:
Create another Analytic chart with report type: Line Chart. Choose the dimensions and measures that areshown below:

24:
Call the chart: Sample_Line

24:
On the Create-tab, click KPI details. Rename this one to Sample_KPIDetails.

25:
The last step is to create a dashboard and drag and drop all the items we just created on the dashboard. On the Create-tab click Dashboard and choose 2 zone dashboard. In fact: you're now are going to create a SharePoint site with some webparts in two webpart zones.

26:
Give the page a name, e.g.: Sample_Dashboard. Right click on the dashboard and choose add below. You now will create a zone below, after that click in the new zone and choose: split zone. You now have created a four webpart site.

27:
Now drag and drop your items from the details pane to the dashboard until your screen looks like the following:

28:
Keep your mouse on the scorecard part of the dashboard and drag the Member Unique Name to the Piechart part, you've now created a connection between the both parts.

29:
Drag the Cells context field to the KPI details part of the dashboard, after you've done with this you're dashboard should look like the following:

30:
The most exiting part!! Right click on the dashboard in the workspace browser and choose: Deploy to SharePoint. You're new dashboard will now be uploaded to SharePoint (it creates a new page, with the necessary webparts and publishes all your items to SharePoint). You're Dashboard should look like this:

31:
If you click on Performance Point Content you can see the items you've just created.

Congratulations! You've just had you're first PPS2010 experience!