Deploying PerformancePoint 2010 Soup to Nuts

The PerformancePoint team receives a lot of questions about how to deploy (or activate) the product now that it lives within the confines of SharePoint. This is definitely a valid question because the “up and running” process is quite different compared to the experience from 2007. To help illustrate the process, I’m going to take you through the steps necessary to get PerformancePoint up and running, from beginning to end. This post may get a bit lengthy, so skip over the parts that you already know or, for whatever reason, don’t apply to your environment.

Current Server Topology

How does the current layout look? How many front end servers (servers that host sites but which don't run the service applications) exist in relation to application servers? Are the SQL servers clustered (or mirrored)? Is the farm distributed across multiple boxes, or is everything located on one physical server? Most farm topologies include at least 2-3 WFEs, an app server, and a database server, as represented in the diagram below:

Typical Farm Topology

 

To deploy PPS in this type of environment, SharePoint Enterprise Edition must be installed on the farm. If you are upgrading from PerformancePoint 2007, you must use the import option on the PPS settings page to import 2007 data to V2. This tool neither facilitates upgrading your actual SharePoint environment nor your PPS V1 environment. It only moves data (e.g. existing dashboards, scorecards, data sources, grids, and charts) from V1 to V2. Before this tool can be run, we recommend that you set up a clean SharePoint 2010 environment. But if you have data from your 2007 environment that you need in your 2010 environment, there are upgrade options. You can read about those, and the upgrade steps, in this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2009/11/16/upgrading-performancepoint-server-2007-to-performancepoint-2010.aspx. In each upgrade case, the PerformancePoint import utility must be used to move content from the 2007 environment to the 2010 environment.

For the sake of simplicity, and because this is such a common deployment scenario, a three-machine farm is the topology that I will use to explain the deployment process. This also assumes a Beta 2 or later install scenario.

Hardware/Software Recommendations

The following are the server and client recommendations for running PerformancePoint.

Server Recommendations (WFE or Application Server)

Hardware	Software
Two, Dual-Core 64-bit CPUs (x64) 4 GB RAM 5 GB Available Disk Space 7200 RPM IDE Drive 1000MB Network Interface	Windows Server 2008 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit (Win 7 server)

 

Database Recommendations

Hardware	Software
2 Quad Core 64-bit CPU 2.5GHz, 6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB 10K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI HDD 8 GB RAM 1000MB Network Interface	Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit (Win 7 server) SQL Server 2008 (64-bit only) SQL Server 2005 (64-bit only)

 

Client Recommendations (for Dashboard Designer)

Hardware	Software
1 - Dual Core 32-bit CPU (x86) 2.5 GHz 2 GB RAM 2 GB Available Disk Space 100MB Network Interface	Windows Server 2003 (SP2 and R2), 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Server 2008 , 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista (Business, Business N, Enterprise) 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit

 

So much of a successful deployment depends on the installation of SharePoint itself. But since this blog is about PerformancePoint, in particular, I’m not going to cover the actual SharePoint installation except for where it makes sense to discuss the overlap between PerformancePoint and SharePoint. I’m going to assume that SharePoint has been installed and that each web front end and application server (as well as any other server attached to the farm) has undergone the setup process. That will allow me to quickly get to the heart of this blog – PerformancePoint configuration and deployment.

Installation Crossroad

Here is a case where I need to point out one of the nuances of the SharePoint installation that will affect the ease of configuring PerformancePoint in a farm environment. Once you finish installing SharePoint, you are asked to configure the SharePoint farm (this won't apply in a stand-alone configuration). There are two options. The first is a wizard that takes users through the process of creating a default site collection with a number of different service applications enabled. This would be the site that appears when users navigate to the server root. The second option takes users directly to the Central Administration default page and requires that the administrator create the default web application, the default site collection, and activate any service applications. For the sake of this deployment guide, we will choose the latter option and create these elements without the wizard. You will then have a better idea of what the wizard does for you when you select that option. Plus, these are the steps that you will need to follow if your SharePoint farm is already running but not quite deployed.

SharePoint Configuration Wizard

 

Creating a SharePoint Web Application

After the SharePoint install has been run, but before you can really do anything with the product, you must create a default web application.

Manage Web Applications in SharePoint

 

This is the equivalent of creating a new IIS site. The first web application that you create on the farm will likely be the default web site on the farm, and SharePoint will default to port 80, although you can specify any port that you choose. If a site already exists on that port, it will be stopped, and SharePoint will begin using it. As you proceed through the wizard, you will notice that new web applications can be configured with classic authentication (NTLM) or with claims-based authentication. Claims-based authentication uses a secure claims ticket (instantiated by the secure claims service) and passed between the client, the WFE, and the application server, in order to authenticate the user. In this example, I will use classic mode authentication, which uses Windows authentication to validate users. For Beta 2, Claims Based Authentication was not fully tested, so stick with Classic Mode Authentication when creating new web applications. If you deploy an RTM version of the product, claims is the right option for extranet or internet-zoned sites.

Creating a Web Application in Classic Mode

 

When creating a new web application, it is most secure to create a new application pool identity or to use an existing one that has been set up for this purpose. Administrators can also register a new managed domain account from the Create New Web Application page. The Register Managed Account link allows you to specify a domain account to use with the associated application pool for that web application. When you use a managed account, you let SharePoint keep knowledge of the name/password relationship. Thus, when it comes time to assign an account to a new web application or other service, you can simply assign the account without having to know the password. Note, however, that if you use a new or existing managed account, you will need to grant that user db_owner privileges on the content database associated with that web application. That can be done either manually (using the UI) or via PowerShell.

Here are the PowerShell commands:

PS> $w = Get-SPWebApplication(“web application name”)

PS> $w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("<domain\user>")

If you have more than one web app, you need to specify its identity on the first command. Because each web application uses its own content database, you need to run these commands for any web application that uses PerformancePoint.

This PowerShell command does three things:

1. It creates a new user for the WSS_Content DB.
2. It makes the user a member of the db_owner role.
3. It creates a new schema for the user.

You can also manually create a new DB user for your process identity and add that user to the db_owner role of the content database for the web application. In order to make quicker use of managed accounts, you may want to inform SharePoint about them (or create them in SharePoint) before you get to web application or service application pages. You can define as many as you need by going to Security --> Configure managed accounts in Central Administration. That way, they will be available when it becomes necessary to assign one to a service or to an application.

By default, SharePoint uses the app pool account of the person who installed the product. Most deployments will use a specific domain account with limited permissions. This helps to ensure that functions in SharePoint and PerformancePoint don’t use an account with too many privileges, allowing access to resources that should be reserved for administrators or other higher-privileged accounts.

Creating a New App Pool

 

Creating a Site Collection

Once you have a web application in place, you will need to create a site collection. The first site collection that you create will be the top-level (default) SharePoint site for all of the objects that you create within this collection.

Creating a New Site Collection

 

From the Site Collection dialog, name your site. If this is the first site collection on this site, you have the option of creating the site under the managed path “/sites”. Generally speaking, if this is the first site collection for a particular web application, you create the site at the root level (e.g. http://contoso.com/PerformancePointSite1/). This allows users who visit the root to see content without having to navigate to a managed URL. If this is a subsequent site collection, you will only have the option to create the site collection under a managed path (the default managed path is /sites). You can create additional managed paths in SharePoint Central Administration, under the Define Managed Paths page.

For a PerformancePoint default site, create a default site collection using the Business Intelligence Center template. This is the standard site collection template for PerformancePoint objects. It already contains all of the necessary SharePoint content types used to create BI dashboards. You can certainly add PerformancePoint content types to standard web part pages, lists, and libraries in order to create deployment targets, but it's much easier to use the Business Intelligence Center.

BI Template Selection

If the Business Intelligence Center template isn't visible, it's likely that you aren't using a SharePoint Enterprise license. PerformancePoint isn't included with Standard licenses.

Starting the Service

Before you go much further, I recommend starting the actual services that you plan to run on your application servers. These services, like the PerformancePoint Service, the Excel Calculation Service, the User Profile Service, the Search service, etc., are the actual binaries for each of these services. Instances of these services are called by the service application every time work on the server needs to be done. The beauty of being able to start these services one-by-one is that you only need to start the services that you plan to use, saving server resources. This is the primary advantage of the service model architecture in SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2007, the shared service provider ran all the services, all of the time, regardless of which of them actually needed using. In this case, in order to use PerformancePoint Services, you need to start at least it and the Secure Store Service. I talk more about this in the section, Setting Up Secure Store below.

Starting SharePoint Services

 

Creating a PerformancePoint Service Application

Once the Business Intelligence Center has been created, the administrator must create a PerformancePoint service application. This creates the service application proxy that facilitates web service calls between the WFE and the app server, along the Windows Communication Framework. New service applications can be created from either the UI or from cmdlets. If cmdlets are used, from the SharePoint 2010 Management Console window, the administrator runs the following (run with elevated privileges):

New-SPPerformancePointServiceApplication

If the UI is used, the administrator selects Manage service applications (pictured below)

Manage Service Applications

 

and then from the New menu, selects PerformancePoint Service Application and fills in the requested values.

Create a PerformancePoint Service App

 

A new PPS service application requires the following properties: Name and Application Pool. The Name is the name of the PPS service application itself. The name is different than the service application’s identity. The identity is a GUID, assigned at creation time, and used to distinguish this service application from any other service application. No two applications can have the same GUID. In the case of PPS, the Name parameter must also be unique. This may not be the case with other SharePoint service applications. In addition to the Name field, the admin must also specify whether this service application instance should exist within the farm’s list of default service applications. However, even though a service application proxy exists within the default group of proxies, it does not need to be the default proxy within the default group.

New PerformancePoint Service App

 

For a proxy to be the default of the default group, it must be designated as such on the Configure Service Application Associations page. A default proxy means that all service applications, for that SharePoint web application, use that proxy to communicate with that service application’s web service. Only one proxy group can be associated with a web application. Within that proxy group (associated with the web application), you can enable as many proxies as necessary. If you disable proxies, the associated service applications won’t be available to use within SharePoint applications.

One Proxy Group per Web App

 

If a proxy is not enabled, that web application cannot communicate with the service running under that web application. PerformancePoint Services currently doesn’t have properties associated with its proxies, so it doesn’t matter which proxy acts as the default.

Configure Service App Associations

 

In order to change the default association, click the [set as default] link. Once the new Service Application has been named, fill in the Application Pool section. An admin can use an existing application pool or create a new one. The SharePoint Web Services System app pool is the default application pool available to all new service applications (PerformancePoint or otherwise). If a new application pool is created, you will need to use the Configurable option and either choose to run the app pool under an existing account or to register a new managed account. You cannot use the Predefined option when it comes time to create dashboards, so the recommendation is to assign a domain account during this part of the process. Using any of the Predefined options imposes a security risk. Network Service, for example, comes with too many privileged actions to make it a production-worthy service account.

New PPS Service App Pool Picker

 

Clicking on the Create button will take you back to the list of SharePoint’s service applications. You can click on the newly created PerformancePoint service application, and it will take you to the PerformancePoint landing page, where several options become available with which to administer settings. Incidentally, new PPS Service applications can also be created using PowerShell cmdlets. The ability to fully administer PerformancePoint with PowerShell is a wonderful thing, but is a bit outside this blog's scope. I'll write up something on that topic shortly.

Service Application Databases

Once you finish installing SharePoint, you can see that it installs a number of different databases. In addition to the SharePoint configuration and content databases, PerformancePoint installs its own database for storing a user’s filter selections, annotations and comments, and temporary first class objects (FCOs). This database is created when you create a new PerformancePoint Services Service application. In order to ensure a unique database name, most of the service app databases created by default include a GUI appended to the name. Some of the service applications allow administrators to change the database name to meet specific business rules. As of this writing, however, the PerformancePoint database name cannot be modified – either before or after its creation – without rendering the product unusable.

The PerformancePoint Database

 

By default, all new PerformancePoint databases will be installed on the same server as SharePoint’s configuration database. But you can use any SQL Server instance to connect PerformancePoint content to dashboards, assuming that the proper security context has been set up for the users who view and create those dashboards.

Most SharePoint topologies use a separate server to house associated databases, but it is also possible to install everything on a single-box environment (this is the Standalone option presented to administrators when installing SharePoint). If you choose this option, SharePoint will automatically install SQL Server 2008 Express to store content and configuration settings. The SQL Server setup and configuration is straightforward, but a detailed install procedure is beyond the scope of this blog.

Setting Up Secure Store

One of those settings is for the Secure Store. Without it, you cannot use PerformancePoint’s unattended service account to connect to data sources. As with the 2007 version of the product, which used the application pool account as the application identity, the unattended account cannot use the application pool identity to connect to data sources. Rather, it must use a domain account, whose password is stored in the secure store. If you have created a new PerformancePoint service application and there is no secure store set up in the default proxy group, you will need to configure the secure store. You can tell whether things have been set up correctly when you go to the PPS settings page. You will see a warning indicating that the secure store hasn’t been configured.

Secure Store Warning

 

In order to configure the secure store, you will need to create a secure store service first. Do that by clicking on New (in the ribbon) from the Manage Service Applications page. If the Edit functions in the ribbon appear inactive, make sure that the secure store service has been started. You can check this by going to the Manage services on server page in Central Administration. If it hasn’t been started, start it, and proceed with the steps below. Fill in the parameters, and click OK. Once the service is created, you can configure it.

To configure the secure store for PPS, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Central Admin home page
2. Under "Application Management" click "Manage Service Applications"
3. Click on the Secure Store Service Proxy
4. Click "Manage" in the ribbon
5. You should get a message to generate a new key. Click "Edit" on the ribbon, then click "Generate New Key". You will be required to enter a pass phrase.
6. When this completes, click "Edit" on the ribbon, then click "Refresh Key". Enter the same pass phrase you used in the previous step.

Configure the Unattended Service Account (necessary for using "Unattended Service Account" option on Data Sources)

1. Go to the Central Admin home page
2. Under "Application Management" click "Manage Service Applications"
3. Click on the PerformancePoint Service Application
4. Click the "Manage" button in the ribbon
5. Click the first link: PerformancePoint Service Settings
6. In the "Unattended Service Account" section, enter the user name and password to be used for querying data sources.

This should then store the new credentials in the target application of the secure store. The username is stored in the SharePoint configuration database. If an error occurs, or if you missed one of the above steps, check the Windows event log. It’s likely that the secure store service key wasn’t properly generated or that you forgot to refresh the key after generating it. If everything worked correctly, when you re-enter the PPS settings page, you will see the secure store service name and the user representing the unattended service account.

Successful Secure Store Setup

 

PerformancePoint will always try to use the secure store service in the default proxy group, even if you have multiple secure store service instances. If, for example, you have custom proxy groups on ports 80 and 81 with no secure store service running, and you have port 82 using the default proxy group with a secure store service running, each PerformancePoint service application running under the web applications on ports 80 and 81, will attempt to use the secure store service associated with the default proxy group.

The same steps can also be run from PowerShell. As with the UI, the first step in the process requires the administrator to create a new secure store service application and set the secure store key. Before running the cmdlet to create a new secure store service application, make sure that the secure itself is running. Go to Central Administration --> System Settings --> Manage Services on Server. You should see that it’s in a started state:

Secure Store Service Started

 

You can then launch the SharePoint 2010 Management Console (as an Administrator) and create a new secure store service application.

new-spsecurestoreserviceapplication -Name $serviceApplicationName -partitionmode:$false -sharing:$false -databaseserver $DbServerAddress -databasename $dbName -applicationpool $pool -administrators $commaseparatedadmins -auditingEnabled:$true -auditlogmaxsize 30

Open and Test a PerformancePoint BI Center Site

Creating a new service application enables the Publishing and PerformancePoint site collection features. If you have successfully created a PerformancePoint site collection, you should be able to browse to the BI Center, launch Dashboard Designer, and connect to a data source using the unattended service account. The page below can be accessed by navigating to the URL that was specified when the site collection (or child site) was created.

Starting Dashboard Designer

The Easy Way?

For the most part, I’ve taken you through the manual way of setting up PerformancePoint 2010. If you go back to the section titled, Installation Crossroad, you’ll notice that you can select the first bullet. That selection launches a wizard that will create new service applications for each service in the farm (you are provided the option to create only those that you want). You can assign a single application pool account to run all of the service apps. And each of those service applications will use the default proxy group to connect to the application server. If you want to run different service applications on different application servers, I recommend that you avoid the wizard, making it a lot easier to select just the service applications that you want running on specific application servers. Of course, even by using the wizard, you will still have to configure the secure store and define an unattended service account if you want to use application-based security. But for a quick setup experience on a 3-machine (or smaller farm), the wizard presents a terrific option.

Posted 24 November 09 08:00 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under Deployment

Decomposition Tree: Contribution Analysis & Presentation

PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010 introduces the decomposition tree, an interactive arrangement of bar charts that makes it easy to explore contribution relationships. It provides an effective alternative to the “Drill Down To” feature in analytic charts.

Flight delay: a simple analysis and presentation scenario

I’ve built a model using US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data on flight delays and a dashboard that identifies aircraft by tail number. (I used only a slice from 2004, not all the data.)

In the dashboard below, we see that N37352 has the highest amount of arrival-time delay, expressed in total minutes:

 

So, which cities cause delays for most delays for this aircraft? Drilling down several times in this grid would give us the answer, but from a presentation standpoint it’s more effective if we see origin city and destination city side by side. We’ll use Decomposition Tree, which is available from the right-click menu:

 

With two drilldowns - the first on Origin City Name and the second on Destination City Name - I see that N37352 did exclusively Hawaii-regional flights during this time period, and the Hololulu-to-Kahului route had the largest sum of delay minutes:

 

I wonder, then: does this one aircraft fully account for the overall delays, or is it just a drop in the bucket, so to speak? I can’t really tell from here.

So I drill up in the analytic grid (to All), then I use Decomposition Tree again. Now I see that N37342’s delay, when compared to all 4695 aircraft, is almost irrelevant (insignificant.)

 

With a single click, I can quickly flip between other aircraft.In the process, I notice that the second-ranked aircraft is also Hawaii-origin:

 

With a couple more clicks, I proceed down a different analysis path:

 

Having derived some useful presentation elements, I use PowerPoint 2010’s Insert Screenshot and Crop commands, and dress it up:

    

Enjoy!

Wade Dorrell
Program Manager, PerformancePoint Services

Decomposition Tree FAQ

Do I need ProClarity for this?

No. The decomposition tree shown above is built into the PerformancePoint Services web parts and the PerformancePoint Services service application for SharePoint 2010.

The “Decomposition Tree” option does not appear (or is disabled) in the right-click menu.What’s going on?

Microsoft Silverlight 3 enables the option. If Silverlight 3 is not installed, or disabled, the menu command will be hidden (analytic reports) or visible, but disabled (scorecards.) The “Drill Down” commands will be available in any case.

If you have Silverlight installed, enabled, and Decomposition Tree is still unavailable, please verify the following:

• The analytic grid or chart must be designed using the Design tab, not the Query (arbitrary MDX) tab.
• The calculation type of the underlying KPI metric must be “Data Source.”

If you’d like to know more about Silverlight deployment (PerformancePoint Services web parts are not the only SharePoint features that get better when Silverlight’s installed) we recommend taking a look at the Silverlight Enterprise Deployment guide.

Can I include these on my dashboards alongside a scorecard or chart (as opposed to via right-click?)

Not without some elbow grease. We’ll provide guidance soon on how to use the Silverlight web part for SharePoint 2010 to do this.

Posted 19 November 09 02:21 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under Decomposition Tree

Upgrading PerformancePoint Server 2007 to PerformancePoint 2010

Most of the customers who have been using PerformancePoint Server 2007 have accumulated several months, if not years, worth of dashboards and data. Their KPIs, grids, charts, scorecards, and custom objects have gone to good use, providing a great deal of corporate discussion about how to handle business decisions and to help plan for the future. And while the 2007 version of PerformancePoint helped to do this very well, the SharePoint BI 2010 version does it even better. Understandably, most companies want to build on top of their old dashboards in 2010. And the idea of starting from scratch is unthinkable. Fortunately, Microsoft has a nice migration path so that you can migrate all of your existing objects to the new version. The migration process is straightforward, but to help ensure that things go smoothly, we’ve created a set of steps to follow.

Microsoft supports two upgrade paths. The first is a version to version, in-place upgrade that involves launching an install of SharePoint 2010 right over the top of SharePoint 2007. The install detects the prior version instance and proceeds through the upgrade process. The second involves a version to version database attach scenario that allows you to attach a 2007 database to a new install of SharePoint 2010. Both methods work equally well. The latter method is ideal if you have new hardware for SharePoint 2010 and don’t need to re-use existing servers hosting 2007 versions of PerformancePoint/SharePoint.

Version 1 to Version 2 Database Attach

The steps involved with this scenario include the basic steps necessary to upgrade/prepare your MOSS environment by first backing up and then attaching your 2007 SharePoint content database to your 2010 environment. Then, for PerformancePoint, rather than attaching an existing database, you will use the 2010 migration tool to copy objects from the 2007 PerformancePoint database to SharePoint lists and document libraries, which house dashboards, KPIs, grids, charts, etc. in 2010. To get started with the database attach scenario, start with the following steps.

• If your scenario involves a new install of MOSS and you need to attach your 2007 MOSS content database before importing your PerformancePoint 2007 content, follow the steps in Backup, Restore, and Attach the MOSS Database.
• Continue with the steps in Importing PerformancePoint 2007 Content Using the Import Wizard.

Since the import utility migrates all PerformancePoint 2007 objects into flat lists, once the import is complete, you should arrange these objects amongst different lists within the SharePoint site collection before adding the lists to Dashboard Designer. This greatly enhances performance in Dashboard Designer and eliminates the need to parse through potentially thousands of objects in the same list. Additionally, you may want to use Dashboard Designer to organize them into manageable sections.

Version-to-Version In-Place Upgrade

The O12 to O14 in-place upgrade entails installing a new 2010 installation over the top of an existing 2007 installation. For the purposes of this guide, a 3m farm will serve as the example. The upgrade steps for a 1m farm are the same in that you only upgrade one machine and not several machines as you would in a multi-machine farm. The steps to perform this type of upgrade are as follows:

• There is an STSADM pre-upgrade command that evaluates the state of the farm to ensure that it can be upgraded. Run this command from the directory containing the STSADM tool (to %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\bin), and address any issues that it finds:

STSADM -o preupgradecheck

• Install the SharePoint 2010 pre-requisites on each of the servers in the farm that you plan to upgrade. From your existing 2007 WFE, open the installation directory for SharePoint 2010, and run the pre-requisite installer, called PreRequisiteInstaller.exe. This file is located in the same directory as setup.exe.
• When the pre-requisites have been installed, launch setup.exe.
  • On the EULA page, click “continue.”
  • In the Server Type tab, select the radio button for the appropriate server type. This dialogue does not pick your server type by default. The server type should match the purpose of this machine in the 2007 farm.
  • Select the radio button to perform an automated in-place upgrade, and click the Upgrade button.
  • After the progress bar completes, close the dialog box.
• Run all of the preceding steps for each SharePoint server in the farm. It is not necessary to run these steps on the database server.
• Once the install has completed, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard, and proceed through the steps.
  • Click OK on the popup dialog box stating that you have to run the configuration wizard on each server in the farm, and wait for the upgrade to finish.
  • If you have more than one server in your farm, run the configuration wizard on the remaining servers in the farm. Do not run the configuration on more than one machine at the same time.
• Verify the upgrade. If the upgrade succeeded, you will not have seen any errors during the upgrade process, and the upgrade log file will not contain errors. The upgrade log file is here:

%Commonpgrogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\14\logs\upgrade-*.log

• Browse to a new SharePoint site collection, and either create a PerformancePoint subsite, or create a new PerformancePoint site collection in Central Administration.
• Import your PerformancePoint 2007 objects using the import utility. See Importing PerformancePoint 2007 Content Using the Import Wizard for specific steps.
• Once the import utility has completed, it is recommended that you arrange the migrated content into the meaningful lists and document libraries before using Dashboard Designer to re-deploy your dashboards.
• Touch up your imported dashboards in Dashboard Designer and re-deploy them to your new PerformancePoint site(s).

Importing PerformancePoint 2007 Content Using the Import Wizard

PerformancePoint 2010 comes with a migration tool that allows you to import your 2007 dashboard elements to your 2010 farm. The user running the import/migration wizard must be a SharePoint administrator on the PerformancePoint 2010 target site so that the user context running the wizard has the ability to create SharePoint security groups.

• Browse to the Manage Service Applications in Central Administration.
• Click on the PerformancePoint service application, associated with the web application, to which you want to migrate your 2007 dashboard elements. The default service app is typically called PerformancePoint Service Application.
• Use the Import PerformancePoint Server 2007 Content tool to migrate 2007 content. It will ask you for the location of your 2007 PerformancePoint database.

• Follow the instructions presented in the wizard. Note the contents of the initial splash page. Because of the architectural changes made to PerformancePoint in 2010, not all of the objects that existed in PerformancePoint 2007 will migrate seamlessly. There are a few manual steps involved. Most of those steps pertain to re-structuring the layout of objects in Dashboard Designer since the import wizard places all of them into a single list or document library. The other significant change pertains to the change in the security model. PerformancePoint 2007 secured dashboard elements using custom security groups managed in SQL Server. PerformancePoint 2010, on the other hand, uses standard SharePoint groups. To maintain the security experience, the wizard will create new SharePoint security groups based on those in PerformancePoint 2007.

• The next step will ask about PerformancePoint 2007 security. Select the most appropriate authentication type based on your PerformancePoint 2007 installation.

• The next step will ask for a login to the SQL Server name/instance where the PerformancePoint 2007 content was stored. Enter the credentials for a user who can read from the target server. The default PerformancePoint 2007 content database name should be some flavor of “PPSMonitoring.”

• Proceed through the next steps and select from the appropriate site collection, site, and list into which you’d like to migrate PerformancePoint 2007 data.
• Begin the migration. You will be unable to stop it once it has begun. The progress bar shows you how many objects have been migrated.
• Review and clean up security as needed. Security for migrated items will be set at the individual item level. Additionally, two new security roles will be created in the 2010 environment that match what existed in 2007: PerformancePoint Editors and PerformancePoint Readers. Users who were in these roles in 2007 will be placed in them in 2010. You may wish to arrange security to meet the architecture that already exists in 2010.

Backup, Restore, and Attach the MOSS Database

The following steps take you through the process of backing up, restoring, and attaching a MOSS database. It’s used primarily for version to version database attach upgrades.

• Back up the SharePoint content database from the 2007 farm.
  • Open SQL Server Management Studio, and connect to the SQL Server storing the content database that you plan to back up.
  • Expand the databases node, and right-click on the SharePoint 2007 content database. Click on the Tasks submenu, and select Backup.

  

  Supply a name for the backup file and a .bak extension (e.g. WSSContentBackup.bak).
• Restore the content database (from Step 1) to the new 2010 farm.
  • Copy the content database (that you backed up in Step 1) to the 2010 farm’s SQL Server.
  • Open SQL Server Management Studio, and connect to the 2010 environment’s SQL server. Under Object Explorer, right-click on the Database node, and select Restore Database.

    This will restore the .bak file to the Databases node.

  

  • The To Database box will ask you for a name. Enter a name for your restored database. If you are restoring a database to a location that already contains a SharePoint content database, you can select this name from the dropdown menu to overwrite that database. However, before doing that, be sure you remove that database’s association from the SharePoint web application (if you are unsure how to do this, see Take Offline a WSS Content Database). Otherwise, specify a new name for the database that you will restore. Here you have the option to give the database a name that identifies this content database with a particular web application. For example, you may name the restored database WSS_Content80 if the web application was created on port 80.
  • Select From Device, and use the elipsis box to select the location to which you copied the .bak file.

  

  • You will be asked to specify a backup location. From there, choose the location to which you copied the .bak file.
  • Begin the restore process.
• Create a new web application on the target farm (the 2010 farm) if you haven’t already done so. But DO NOT create a new top level site collection. As a best practice, remove the new content database that was created when you created the web application.
• Attach the restored content database to the 2010 environment’s web application. This can be done using the STSADM tool.
• By default, STSADM is located in %root%\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN. To attach the restored database to the web application, run the following command from the directory in which STSADM is located:

STSADM.exe -o addcontentdb -url <URL> -databasename <contentdb>

where <URL> is the base URL to the SharePoint site (e.g. http://sharepoint/). If your web application contains a port number, include that in the URL.

• Verify that there are no errors in the log file. The path to the log file that would contain errors is, %Commonpgrogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\14\logs\upgrade*.log.

Take Offline a WSS Content Database

The following process explains how to take offline a WSS content database. This is a necessary step before backing up a database that you plan to attach to an existing farm.

• Take offline the content database from the source environment (or remove the content database from the farm – this is a more permanent action because it suggests that you no longer plan to use it, or instead, plan to archive it).
  • Launch SharePoint Central Administration.
  • Click on Application Management and then under the Databases heading, click Manage Content Databases. Once on the Manage Content Databases page, use the Web Application drop-down menu, on the upper-right section of the page, to ensure that the proper web application is selected. This will typically be SharePoint – 80.

• Click on the database name.

When SharePoint creates the database, the default name used is WSS_Content, but the administrator may have renamed it when setting up the environment. If there is more than one content database, choose the one that you want to detach. This opens the settings page for that database. Here, you may change either the database status to “Offline”, or you can scroll to the bottom of the page, and select the checkbox, Remove content database. The former option prevents new site collections from being created in that content database, and the latter option completely removes the database from the farm. In most cases, you will simply take the database offline.

• Check this box, confirm the removal, and click the page’s OK button.
• Back up both the detached content database as well as the beta 1 PerformancePoint database.
  • Open SQL Server Management Studio, and connect to the SQL Server storing the content database that you detached in Step 1.
  • Expand the databases node, and right-click on the content database. Click on the Tasks submenu, and select Backup.

Kevin Donovan, Program Manager
SharePoint BI

Posted 16 November 09 01:38 by philoking | 0 Comments   

PerformancePoint Services and SharePoint Web Parts Play Well Together

One thing that I think is so powerful about PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010 you might not find on the feature card. You might catch a reference to it in a demo or read it in a an article and not even notice it. The feature in question is web part connectivity.

When you see a nice PerformancePoint Dashboard, the thing you might not be aware of is that it’s not a PerformancePoint Dashboard. It’s a SharePoint Dashboard consisting of only PerformancePoint Web Parts. The obvious conclusion to draw from that statement is that you don’t have to use PerformancePoint Web Parts. More importantly is that you don’t have to use only PerformancePoint Web Parts.

Playing Well Together

One of the important focus points when we started moving PerformancePoint Server into a service of SharePoint was to be sure to leverage the infrastructure that was now available to us. One of these infrastructure pieces was the Web Part Connections that allow SharePoint developers to connect and pass data between parts on the same page.

Overview of Web Part Connections

Web Part Connections are a core technology to enhance your SharePoint pages. When you connect Web Parts, actions that you perform in Web Part A can change the contents of Web Part B. Look at the Diagram below:

1. A Web Part connection is a way to pass data from one Web Part to another Web Part and synchronize their behavior.
2. One Web Part provides the data.
3. Data can be lists, rows, cells, or parameter values.
4. The other Web Part gets the data.

It’s Not Just for Dashboard Designer

Previously you would have built your Dashboards in Dashboard Designer. On the Dashboard edit page, you would create all of your connections and publish your Dashboard.

Although that workflow still exists, now you can simply add a PerformancePoint Web Part to a SharePoint page in SharePoint Designer or even connect them by using the thin editing experience right in Internet Explorer (or your favorite browser!)

So What Does It All Mean?

What it means is you can create mash ups until you can’t see straight. If you were at the SharePoint Conference or SQL Pass Conference you saw our own Program Manager Scott Heimendinger create a web part that displayed SharePoint List Data, and allowed List Data Editing. The interesting part though, was that the SharePoint List Data to be edited was selected using Microsoft Analysis Services Cube Measures that were displayed as a Hierarchy on a PerformancePoint Scorecard. Now that’s putting your data to work for you.

The possibilities are endless. Connect to Reporting Services or Excel Services and pass parameters. Create custom web parts that act as filters. The big picture is you can start building full fledged Business Intelligence applications in SharePoint using PerformancePoint Web Parts in a truly dynamic way.

Jason Burns, Program Manager
PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint

Posted 12 November 09 09:22 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under SharePoint

New Features in PerformancePoint Services 2010

Now that SharePoint 2010 is on the horizon, there have been a lot of questions about what the differences are between PerformancePoint Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Services 2010. While most of the feature upgrades surround architectural changes, several changes have been made to enhance the user experience. Below are some of the upgrades that you will see in 2010.

Enterprise Deployment Scenarios

The following list highlights the greater attention to enterprise scalability of PerformancePoint Services 2010 over PerformancePoint Server 2007.

• Scale Up
• Scale Out
• Common Dashboard Framework and Infrastructure
• MOSS Installer Framework
• Enterprise Management Scenarios
• Familiar Administration Environment
• Fail Over
• Logging
• Ease of Deployment
• PowerShell Management Scripting

SharePoint Repository

Objects created in PerformancePoint 2010 are now stored in SharePoint lists and libraries, not in a separate database. Because of this new location, these other features come along too.

• Single Security Model
• Single Security Administration Environment
• Enterprise Management Scenarios
• Backup and Restore
• Disaster Recovery
• The PPS administrator’s user experience is the SharePoint user experience

• PerformancePoint is a SharePoint site

Filters compatible with SharePoint filters (WSS Connection Framework)

You can now use SharePoint’s standard connection framework to hook up PerformancePoint filters to standard SharePoint web parts.

Foundation for more seamless integration

The SharePoint architecture provides the foundation to make these things possible.

• Search, Indexing, Workflows
• Excel Services, Visio Server, Project Server
• Custom security implementations

Supported environments

New supported environments make it possible for PerformancePoint to run on the latest hardware, making the most out of the latest and greatest in speed and reliability.

• PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint
• Windows Server 2008 64-bit
• SharePoint Server O14 Enterprise CAL

PerformancePoint 2010 Clients

These are the client browsers and operating systems that are now supported.

• Windows XP or greater
• Internet Explorer 7.0 or greater
• FireFox 3.5
• Safari 3.5 (Mac only)

Scorecards

Scorecards have undergone significant changes. The following list should contribute to some fantastic performance indications.

• Dynamic hierarchies with navigation
• Drill Down and Drill Up
• Dynamic Selections, such as Children and Descendants

• KPIs on Columns
• Multiple Actual Values
• New Time Intelligence Formula Support
• Variance
• Calculated Metrics

• Scorecard hierarchies available for filters

• Cube formatting applied to KPIs
• Time intelligence formula editing
• Improved filtering
• Sort and filter on non-numeric values
  • Improved value filtering
  • Improved status filters
  • Filter empty rows or columns

New report (KPI details)

Find out the fine details for each KPI.

• Displays information about KPIs
  • Applied filters
  • KPI name, description, properties
  • Metrics with trend
  • Actual and target values
  • Created and modified date
  • Indicator and thresholds
  • Calculation
  • Variance
  • Scoring method and distribution graph
  • Comments
  • Person Responsible

Pie charts

A pie chart, a highly-requested chart type, has been added for PerformancePoint 2010.

Analytic reports

• Value filtering in grids and charts
• Change measure on published reports

• Navigation on bottom axis
• Improved numeric formatting
  • Per-measure or per-column

• Analysis Services conditional formatting

Analytic view designer

Notice the UDM organized cube layout inside the Details pane.

Filters

Filters have come a long way in this version. Here are some of the enhancements

• Reusable between dashboards
• Compatible with SharePoint filters (WSS Connection Framework)
• Time Intelligence filters for multiple data sources

Dashboard deploy

PerformancePoint now has on-click deployment to SharePoint

Accessibility and Globalization

• Accessibility meets SharePoint standard
• Scorecard Analysis Services KPIs honor client locale
• Dashboard accessibility now meets SharePoint's standard (WCAG 2.0 AA)

New Visualization

Much like the decomposition tree from ProClarity, the one in PerformancePoint 2010 also helps customers follow a line of data to its logical conclusion.

And that about wraps up most of the new features in PerformancePoint Services 2010. If others come to mind, I’ll be sure to add them!

Kevin Donovan, Program Manager
PerformancePoint Services

Posted 05 November 09 01:03 by philoking | 3 Comments   

New Business Intelligence Services in SharePoint Server 2010

The poster, Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010, is a review of all the business intelligence (BI) services in SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta) and can be downloaded in Visio, PDF, and XPS file formats. You will notice that PerformancePoint Server 2007 is integrated into SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta), to add business intelligence features such as dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, and more. The poster includes the following information.  

• An overview of each business intelligence service and when you might use each service to surface reports, scorecards, KPIs, Excel files, and other features of BI.
• Architecture to show how the business intelligence services work together.
• A list of possible data sources for each business intelligence service.

Note that the term "Insights" in the poster refers to business intelligence.

From the poster:

The BI tools you use depend on the specific problems you are trying to solve. Your daily business activities have associated information and insights that emerge in three main areas of business intelligence: personal (and self-service), team or community, and organizational.

There will be overlap across these areas as seen in the diagram below. For example, in SharePoint Server 2010, a company’s employees may use Excel Services and Visio Services  to make relevant business decisions at the corporate level.

By design, all Microsoft BI products inter-operate so that teams and individuals within an organization can move across the continuum of personal, team, and organizational BI and have all products work together. For example, SQL Server Reporting Services reports, Excel Services reports, or Visio diagrams can be published in a PerformancePoint Dashboard.

The following is a sample of the poster. It is small and can be better viewed in the download (Visio, PDF, and XPS).

Posted 30 October 09 08:26 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under SharePoint

Creating Complex KPIs with Calculated Metrics

Many times, the metrics that make up your key performance indicators are not simple values from a data source. In PerformancePoint Server 2007 you could create two kinds of KPI metrics: Simple single value metrics from any supported data source or Complex multiple value metrics from a single Analysis Services data source using MDX.

When a user needed a calculation as simple as ‘Sales per Square Foot,’ both the sales value and the square footage values had to be available in an Analysis Services cube, and the calculation had to be written in complex MDX statements.

Luckily this is no longer the case in PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010. This release we have introduced a new feature called “Calculated Metrics.” Calculated Metrics are powerful for several reasons:

• Can use multiple data sources in the same formula.
• Can use different data source types in the same formula.
• Is expressed in simple Excel-like formulas.
• Supports logic flow.

The possibilities are endless.

I quick view at the Calculated Metric dialog shows how simple the process really is. The grid at the top maps data sources to common names you can use in your formula. The Formula box contains the formula you have written and even uses simple code highlighting techniques to help you quickly understand what’s being calculated.

The formulas support all simple math operations as well as functions like MIN, MAX, SUM, AVG and ABS. You can create IF statements in your formulas to create logical operations and you can even use NULL to test for data or intentionally return a null result.

This topic gets much deeper and we will post examples of complex usage in the coming weeks. Until then, when you get your hands on the beta in November, use this feature and provide feedback. Enjoy!

Jason Burns, Program Manager
PerformancePoint Services

Posted 30 October 09 08:10 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under Calculated Metrics

Introduction to Time Intelligence

Welcome to the world of Time Intelligence for Microsoft Performance Point Services! Dynamically analyzing your data with respect to time has never been easier. From dissecting historic performance, to calculating Year over Year metrics, to analyzing Year to Date performance, Time intelligence puts time dependent data analysis at your fingertips.

Flexible Formulas

Specify almost any time period desired with a rich syntax and flexible formula language. Powerful “To Date” functions enable users to observe performance thus far. With these, creating seasonal adjusted metrics such as year over year (YoY) year to date sales have never been easier.

Compelling Analysis

Use time intelligence to study historic performance and detect persistent problem areas. Analyze historic snapshots to understand the effects of events and decisions.

Potent Filters

Link together your dashboard with potent Time Intelligence filters to dynamically change, explore, and analyze your data with respect to time. Drive change through trends discovered in time adjusted scorecards and analytic charts.

Stay Tuned over the next few weeks as we dive deeper into Flexible Formulas, Compelling Analysis and Potent Filters in detailed blogs on each topic.

Posted 29 October 09 11:16 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under Scorecards

What is PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010?

The PerformancePoint Blog’s design refresh is not a coincidence. A lot has been going on with PerformancePoint as we gear up to release Office 2010, specifically SharePoint 2010. Before we go into what is exciting about PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010, let’s level set by taking a quick tour of what PerformancePoint is and why it’s important to you.

In Definition

The definition would be that it 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.

The quick elevator pitch would be that PerformancePoint Services is the easiest way to create and publish Business Intelligence Dashboards in SharePoint 2010.

The concept of a dashboard takes root where you might assume. It’s the pilot’s cockpit display, the driver’s car dashboard…basically how you gauge and monitor the success of any activity from driving a Formula 1 race car to running a Fortune 500 company.

In any business enterprise, monitoring that success means access to data. SharePoint 2010 is able to use many technologies to view data, but PerformancePoint lives and breathes data. We replace the fuel gauge and speedometer with KPIs, Scorecards and Data Visualizations that are connected to the data in a that allows you to dive in and answer questions.

In Practice

Now that you have heard the marketing lingo, what is PerformancePoint Services made of, and how can you get value out of it? PerformancePoint Services is part of SharePoint 2010 and surfaces itself in a web part page like a SharePoint savvy user might expect. The unique part is two fold.

PerformancePoint Services starts with it’s authoring experience. The Dashboard Designer application is your toolbox to create from the bottom up: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Scorecards, Analytic Charts and Grids, Reports, Filters and Dashboards. Each of these components are unique to PerformancePoint Services and provide functionality that interacts with a server component that handles the hard parts like data connectivity and security.

The Dashboard Designer is a WYSIWYG experience, the pieces you build will appear in the browser exactly how you created them. That brings us to the second part, the end-user experience. PerformancePoint Services is designed with sharing in mind. The pieces you build are bundled into a dashboard and presented in a SharePoint page that understands who is viewing it and what they are allowed to see. That means you design, you publish and they consume…no IT involvement, no complicated workflows.

Posted 20 October 09 11:26 by philoking | 1 Comments   
Filed under SharePoint

Business Intelligence is HOT at SharePoint Conference 2009

If this morning’s Dashboards as Easy as 1,2,3 is any indication, Business Intelligence and specifically PerformancePoint Services is high on the radar at the SharePoint Conference. After a quick poll, the audience indicated that very few of the over 1,000 in attendance were using PerformancePoint Server 2007. That means we had a huge crowd of new users interested in getting to know PerformancePoint Services.

After I went through a quick usage and build scenario, Wade Dorrell walked through a deeper dive of the end-user features of PerformancePoint Services. It was a great session but do not be fooled, Scott Heimendinger and Steve Handy have a ton more to show you at tomorrow’s Advanced Dashboard Design session. If you liked what you saw today, that’s a can’t miss.

If you were interested in providing these features to your end users, make sure to catch Josh Zimmerman’s Configuring PerformancePoint Services: An Administrator’s Guide to Delivering SharePoint Dashboards session.

Lastly, we had a lot of people asking about upgrading, check your session guide, we have a session dedicated to upgrading PerformancePoint Server 2007 content to PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010.

Thank you for the fantastic attendance, the product team and I will be here the rest of the week and hope to see you at the product booth! Don’t forget, the top three scores in BI Racer win Windows 7 copies each day.

Jason Burns
Program Manager, PerformancePoint Services

Posted 20 October 09 11:15 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under SharePoint Conference

Welcome To SharePoint Conference 2009!

That's a wrap, the keynote is in the books. Hopefully you were in attendance and enjoyed Steve Ballmer and Jeff Teper's remarks as well as the special guests and demos. If you weren't able to attend in person, it should be available on the conference site very soon to stream.

There were quite a few things to take away from today's keynote, some highlights are:

• PowerPivot, the official name of project Gemini is out of the bag. Today's keynote showed instant sorting and filtering of more than 100 million rows! Look for more to come throughout the week.
• Visual Studio plays very well with SharePoint 2010. The developers will appreciate the end-to-end creation and deployment of SharePoint solutions.
• SharePoint 2010 has the ribbon and it allows context-sensitive editing right on the page.
• PerformancePoint Server 2007 is now PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010 and it's in the box!
• SharePoint 2010 is more social than ever. Collaborative working in SharePoint gives you new power to communicate with the people you count on every day.

Of course that's just a small list of the things covered in the keynote, and there are hundreds of sessions planned this week to dive into each of these topics further. If you want to keep up with us and where we are, follow @sharepointbi on Twitter and of course stay tuned to this feed.

Lastly, there are many of the PerformancePoint Services product team on the ground here, come by the Microsoft Business Intelligence product kiosk, attend the sessions, check out the hands on labs, visit Ask The Experts and if you see us, don't be shy to stop us and say hi. It's only Monday and this has been a fantastic experience meeting with customers and partners. Thank you and I hope to see you on the floor.

Jason Burns, Program Manager
PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint
@philoking on Twitter

Posted 19 October 09 11:59 by philoking | 0 Comments   

PerformancePoint Services at the October SharePoint Conference in Vegas!

Hopefully you have already registered for the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas this month. In addition to a keynote by Steve Ballmer himself and tons of great SharePoint sessions, PerformancePoint Services will be there to show off what we have to add to the SharePoint Business Intelligence story.

What to Look For

We have several sessions scheduled from introducing dashboards and PerformancePoint services, to building advanced dashboards, security and infrastructure. There is something for everyone.

Sessions:

• Creating Dashboards as easy as One, Two, Three – An Introduction to PerformancePoint Services
• Advanced Dashboard Creation with PerformancePoint Services 2010
• Configuring PerformancePoint Services: An Administrator’s Guide to Delivering SharePoint Dashboards
• Upgrading PerformancePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010

We will have members from the product team in full force to show you what’s new in PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010and how to put it to use.

The Full Story

It’s important to remember that PerformancePoint Services is only one piece of the Business Intelligence story at Microsoft. Be sure to check out additional sessions from Excel Services, Reporting Services and SQL Server.

For those twitter nuts out there, we will all be updating regularly at http://twitter.com/sharepointbi

See you at the booth!

Jason Burns, Program Manager
PerformancePoint Services

Posted 15 October 09 01:06 by philoking | 0 Comments   

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 3 is released!

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 3 hits RTM on schedule and is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center.

· Download sites: PerformancePoint Server 2007 SP3 (x86), PerformancePoint Server 2007 SP3 (x64)

· Documentation:  Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, IW documentation is being published.

What’s New in SP3

Focused on the supportability of PerformancePoint Server 2007, Service Pack 3 offers not only a wide range of bug fixes but also a few new features and feature enhancements. For Planning customers, this release offers the following new features:

× Submitting line-item details with assignments. This new feature enables users to add, edit, view, and submit line item details. They can also view the submitted line-item details in reports.

× Adjusting security with the PPSCmd utility. This feature enables users to lower security changes within PPSCMD.  For example, it is now possible to move security from Read/Write to Read Only within the PPSCMD utility.

× Extending the application calendar beyond 25 years. This feature enables users to manually change the maximum limit of future years to a value greater than 25 and less than or equal to 200.

For Monitoring & Analytics customers, SP3 offers improved usability, with better handling of zone adjustments, scrolling, and filtering and improved messaging. SP3 also provides better integration with Excel Services, SharePoint Server, and ProClarity.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 SP3 is being released in 18 languages (including English). The localized versions of PPS SP3 will be released by tier beginning in December, 2009. All versions are being released to the following channels:

· Microsoft Download Center. Localized versions of SP3 will be available beginning in December 09.

· Volume licensing (VL). The English version will be available in early December; localized products will be available in early January.

· MSDN. All languages are expected to be available by mid-December.

· ProductsWeb. All languages are expected to available within 4 weeks of the respective release dates.

ProClarity 6.3 SP3 was released on October 9 and is available on the Microsoft Download Center.

· Download sites:  ProClarity Analytics Server 6.3 SP3 (ENU), ProClarity Desktop Professional 6.3 SP3 (ENU)

· ProClarity 6.3 SP3 documentation:  ProClarity SP3 Readme and ProClarity SP3 Hardware and Software Requirements

Many thanks to everyone who helped with these releases!

Posted 15 October 09 01:05 by philoking | 0 Comments   
Filed under Service Pack

Publishing PerformancePoint Server in an Extranet - White Paper Now Available

Now available is a white paper outlining the technologies and steps required to publish PerformancePoint Monitoring Server dashboards in an Extranet.  You can download this white paper from:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151630

Posted 15 May 09 08:21 by alysonp | 1 Comments   

PPS Planning - How to display and launch assignments from SharePoint

SharePoint has rapidly become the preferred platform for team collaboration in the enterprise. It provides a central place for information, tasks, documents and much more of the business related content that users need to access every day.

One of the common requests we hear from customers is that they want to display PerformancePoint Planning assignments in SharePoint and allow users to launch the assignments from there. Assignments can be accessed via the Excel Add-in and email notification can be enabled for users to get notified, but there is no out of the box support for the SharePoint scenario.

We have released a code sample that demonstrates how you can display PerformancePoint assignments in SharePoint via SharePoint lists.

The sample uses the SharePoint list infrastructure to display PerformancePoint assignments in SharePoint and enable users to launch them in the Excel Add-in from there. The sample includes the source code and documentation on how to use and deploy the solution.

You can access the sample from here:  http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/PPSP2007Assignments

The sample includes 2 projects:

• A standalone console application that connects to the PerformancePoint application database (AppDB) and reads the assignments out from open cycles. Then it connects to SharePoint and creates/updates/deletes list items from a SharePoint list, securing the list items with the same security enforced by PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel.
  
  
• A web project containing an ASP.NET page that is used to launch PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel for a specific assignment. This page is used by the SharePoint list items.

This is a different approach from other solutions that I've seen to achieve this. While most solutions focus on creating a web part to show the assignments, this sample uses a regular SharePoint list for that. The good thing about this is that all the list features (like sorting, grouping, filtering, creating views on top of the list, and so on) are available for both administrators and end users to customize the way assignments are displayed. Also, the interface that users see for working with the assignments is no different than other SharePoint lists. Trying to develop this functionality in a custom web part would be a huge task.

As with any sample, there are things that can be customized and extended. Some of the ones I can think of are:

• Expose more fields: Right now, the console application only copies some of the assignment fields to SharePoint. If more fields are needed, they can easily be added.
• Convert the launch link into a list Custom Action: Right now, the link to launch the assignment is created using a link column, but with some work it can be easily converted into a SharePoint list custom action. This will make the launch link more SharePoint-like. There are many samples online on how to create custom actions.
• Add a look and feel: The ASP.NET page used to launch the assignments can be customized to match the company's look and feel (or any other desired look and feel).
• Add/Modify views: Add your own customized list views and customize the default view. Add grouping, sorting, filtering and use as many list features as you need.

Give it a shot.... I'm sure you will like it!

Pablo Barvo - MSFT

Posted 24 March 09 05:24 by pabar | 1 Comments   
Filed under Workflow, SharePoint, Assignments

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