PerformancePoint Services is a performance management service that you can use to monitor and analyze your business or you can say that, PerformancePoint Services is Microsoft’s dashboard delivery tool, which now is part of the SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise platform. PerformancePoint Services enables you to create rich, context-driven dashboards that aggregate data and content to provide a complete view of how your business is performing at all levels.
WHAT WILL PERFORMANCEPOINT GIVE ME?
It provides you with flexible and easy-to-use tools for building Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Scorecards, Analytic Charts and Grids, Reports, Filters and Dashboards. Each of these components is unique to PerformancePoint Services and provides functionality that interacts with a server component that handles the hard parts like data connectivity and security.
WHAT IS PERFORMANCEPOINT SERVICES AS A SERVICE APPLICATION
As you know that In SharePoint Server 2010 services are no longer contained within a Shared Service Provider (SSP) instead you can create a service application for each service and can share them with various existing web applications. To understand better, PerformancePoint Services will be one of the Services that will stay in the application server with a database something like “PerformancePoint Services Service database” in the Sql server box.
What is Secure Store Service: – This service application stores the password for the PerformancePoint Services unattended account.
WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF PERFORMANCEPOINT SERVICES?
* With PerformancePoint Services, the dashboards and dashboard items are stored and secured within SharePoint lists and libraries, providing you with a single security and repository framework. The new architecture also takes advantage of SharePoint Server scalability, collaboration, backup and recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities.
* The Decomposition Tree is a new visualization report type available in PerformancePoint Services. You can use it to quickly and visually break down higher-level data values from a multi-dimensional data set to understand the driving forces behind those values. The Decomposition Tree is available in scorecards and analytic reports and ultimately in dashboards.
* You can access more detailed business information with improved scorecards. Scorecards have been enhanced to make it easy for you to drill down and quickly access more detailed information. PerformancePoint scorecards also offer more flexible layout options, dynamic hierarchies, and calculated KPI features.
* Better Time Intelligence filtering capabilities that you can use to create and use dynamic time filters that are always up to date. Other improved filters improve the ability for dashboard users to quickly focus in on information that is most relevant.
* Ability to include and link PerformancePoint Services Web Parts together with other PerformancePoint Services Web parts on the same page.
* Easier to author and publish dashboard items by using Dashboard Designer.
* The KPI Details report is a new report type that displays contextually relevant information about KPIs, metrics, rows, columns, and cells within a scorecard. The KPI Details report works as a Web part that links to a scorecard or individual KPI to show relevant metadata to the end user in SharePoint Server.
* Create analytics reports to better understand underlying business forces behind the results. Analytic reports have been enhanced to support value filtering, new chart types, and server-based conditional formatting.
WHAT IS THIS DASHBOARD DESIGNER?
PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is the design tool you will use to build key performance indicators (KPIs), indicators, scorecards, reports, filters, data sources, and dashboards. It also enables you to deploy your finished dashboards to SharePoint.
To get started Open the Dashboard Designer. To do these follow the Steps below
Go to the Program Files->SharePoint-->Performance Point Dashboard Designer
Run Dashboard Designer This will download and install the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer to your workstation.
Once the executable file is downloaded and installed on your computer, the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer appears.
Once the Dashboard Designer is installed, you have an empty workspace or else create a new workspace. A workspace is a primary container for all of the elements that you can use to build your dashboard, and it keeps its content synched with the site from which it was launched.
Create Your Workspace -> Create Your Data Source Connection
In PerformancePoint Services you must create a connection to the data source or sources you want to use in your dashboard. All data used in PerformancePoint Services is external data, living in data repositories outside of PerformancePoint. After you establish a data connection, you will be able to use the data in the various PerformancePoint feature areas.
Creating a Data Source
To create a Data Source in the Dashboard Designer click the Create tab then click Data Source
Click the Analysis Services template; the Analytic Grid Report requires a Data Source type of SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS).
Let’s the types of Databases that you can use and there feature
1. SharePoint Lists – Data contained in a SharePoint List on a SharePoint Site can be used in PerformancePoint Services by creating a SharePoint List data source in Dashboard Designer. Please Note that the data from SharePoint Lists can only be read. Modification to SharePoint List data must be done from SharePoint.
2. Excel Services – Data in Excel files published to Excel Services on a SharePoint Site can be used in PerformancePoint Services by creating an Excel Services data source. Supported published data can only be read in PerformancePoint Services. Published parameter values can be modified from the Dashboard Designer. If you use an Excel Services parameter in calculating a KPI, it is easy to make additional changes. PerformancePoint Services supports the following Excel Services components: Named Ranges, Tables and Parameters.
3. Excel workbooks – You may use the content of an actual Excel file as a data source in PerformancePoint Services by creating an Excel Workbook data source connection and select only the data that is to be used. The original Excel file will be independent from the PerformancePoint copy. PerformancePoint Services 2010 supports Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 workbooks as data sources.
4. SQL Server tables – You can create a data source connection to a SQL Server database and use the data within PerformancePoint Services. SQL tables and SQL views are supported data sources within PerformancePoint Services.
5. Analysis Services – Use data residing in a SQL Server Analysis Services cube in PerformancePoint Services by creating a data connection to the source. PerformancePoint Services lets you map the desired time dimension and the required level of detail for its hierarchies to the internal PerformancePoint Services Time Intelligence.
After selecting Analysis Services as the Data Source type, provide a name for the Data Source. If you enter a display folder location, a folder will be added under Data Sources in the Workspace Browser and the new Data Source will be placed into that folder. Checking Grant read permission to all authenticated users is usually a good idea; otherwise you can fine tune the security in a later step.
After clicking Finish on the Create a Data Source dialog, a tabbed dialog is displayed to define the Data Source. The Editor tab is used to specify the connection settings for the SSAS database and cube.
The Properties tab allows you to specify some general properties, your own custom properties, and permissions. There are two roles in the permissions - Editor and Reader. An Editor can change the Data Source; a Reader cannot.
Publishing the element takes its definition in the Dashboard Designer workspace file and saves it to the PPS Monitoring server database where it becomes available for use. There are several options for publishing:
• Right click on the element in the Workspace Browser and select Publish from the popup menu
• Select the element in the Workspace Browser and click the Publish Item icon on the Home tab
• Click the Publish All icon on the Home tab
Creating KPI –
Now that we have our connection ready lets create our key performance indicator (KPI). In order to create a new KPI to track whatever you want to track for your company, you need to follow these steps:
1. Right – click the PerformancePoint Content folder and select New ➪ KPI. OR select from the tab.
2. In the Select a KPI Template dialog, select Blank KPI, and then click OK.
3. And once you have your KPI created, you can define your actual and Target values. Also, select the data source and the measure.
Select Appropriate measure
Select Data Source
4. Select the Target row, and click the Set Scoring Pattern and Indicator button in the Thresholds area.
5. Next, In the Edit Binding Settings dialog select the first option (Band by normalized value of Actual/Target) from the Banding method drop – down, and then click Next.as above.
6. In the Select an Indicator step, select an indicator to use for the target that clearly shows whether the goal is met. You can choose from a collection of indicator templates available in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer. Once you are done, click next.
7. In the last step of the wizard, leave the value intact and click Finish.
8. Save the KPI by right – clicking it in the Workspace Browser, and then selecting Save.
Creating a Scorecard
Scorecards are becoming an integral part of many BI applications. They offer an easy way for a business user to see how the business is doing. Scorecards can be developed to measure the performance of many different parts of the business such as the total company, divisions, departments, etc. In each case the scorecard clearly enumerates the objectives, targets, and actual results of the particular area of the business. The power of the scorecard is its ability to present this information in a way that allows us to focus on whether the actual business results are meeting our stated goals and objectives.
To create a Scorecard in the Dashboard Designer click the Create tab then click Scorecard.
For our example we are going to build a scorecard that uses data from the sample AdventureWorks cube that comes with SQL Server Analysis Services 2005. Select Analysis Services as the Template and make sure that "Use wizards to create scorecards" is checked. When you are getting started with developing scorecards it's a good idea to use the wizard provided by the Dashboard Designer.
After checking the Wizard option, you will be guided through a sequence of dialogs to define the scorecard. First you will name the scorecard. Check Grant read permission to all authenticated users if you want everyone to be able to view the scorecard; you can also fine tune security later if necessary.
Select AdventureWorks for the Data Source. A scorecard can contain KPIs from multiple data sources; however, the wizard only allows you to select a single data source. After you complete the wizard you can add KPIs from other data sources if necessary.
The Analysis Services template allows you to create KPIs from measures in the cube or import KPIs already defined in the cube. For our example we will create KPIs from measures in the cube. Defining KPIs in the cube is a best practice that you should consider; however, it does require a good understanding of MDX.
After deciding to create KPIs you will have the opportunity to choose measures from the cube. Each time you click the Add KPI button, another measure will be added to the list below. Keep clicking the Add KPI button until there are no more measures to add. You can delete measures that you don't want by highlighting the row(s) then clicking the Delete Selected KPIs button.
Now that we have created a sample scorecard, our final step is to create a dashboard and add our scorecard to it. Make sure that you have published the scorecard and all of the KPIs.
The scorecard shows actual results, targets and a visual indicator which clearly shows whether we are meeting our objectives. The indicator above is the default stoplight that comes with PPS. Green means we are on target, yellow means we are slightly off target, and red means we are way below the target. The indicators allow us to quickly spot the problem areas.
