PerformancePoint Reports and new Management Reporter
Somebody sent me an e-mail asking about differences between Business Manager Scorecard reports and PPS reports. I sent the following (from Nick Barclay's book -a nice, compact book dedicated to Monitoring).
Reports in PPS differ from BSM in that BSM reports were built into the definition of KPIs and scorecard elements. This meant that in order for report data to be available, a scorecard was a mandatory part of every solution. In PPS Monitoring, this changed such that you are not bound by the scorecard-centric rules. Almost all report types can stand on their own, you don’t have to create a single KPI or scorecard in order to build a useful dashboard. You can just use reports.
Since my response, I decided to make some distinctions between PPS reporting features and introduce the new Management Reporter. But first an overview of PPS Monitoring reports.
PPS Monitoring reporting options
PPS Monitoring reports can stand alone, but are primarily used to expose data to users in a dashboard. This data can come in a number of report types that offer a way of accessing published items for display in a PPS Monitoring dashboard such as the following.
- SQL Server Report
- Excel Services
- ProClarity Analytics Server Page which can used SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 as data sources.
In Dashboard Designer, you can expose data in a dashboard by creating supportive reports with any number templates. These templates provide a variety of methods for displaying data. Denise, author of several topics about PPS Monitoring reports, has provided the report templates in a grid so that you can see the methods for displaying data. Additionally, report elements offer analytic charts and grids with flexible and interactive features via the browser. Here is a list of report options in PPS Dashboard Designer.
- Strategy Map reports - is a report type that you can use to display various performance measures in an organization. The strategy map uses shapes in an Office Visio 2007 diagram to show the relationships between the objectives and KPIs, and uses color to communicate how each objective or KPI is performing.
- Trend Analysis reports - offer specialized functionality and use scorecards as data sources. Dashboard users can click an individual KPI and cause the linked reports to automatically refresh and display further information that is specific to the selected KPI.
- Web Page reports - is a fully functional internal or external Web site that you display in a SharePoint Web Part next to your other dashboard elements.
- ProClarity reports - include the Perspective View, Decomposition Tree, Performance Map, and analytic charts and grids.
- Reporting services reports - links to an existing Reporting Services report from within your dashboard.
Also see these other topics.
Understanding roles and permissions in Dashboard Designer
Create a filter by using the MDX Query template in Dashboard Designer New!
Select a report template
Link scorecard KPIs to analytic reports
Link filters to scorecards and reports
Management Reporter
The new, free add-on to PPS, Management Reporter, deserves more press. As Andrew Fryer said it, the reporting tool launched, "very quietly, in fact so quietly that you would only know about it by searching for it by name..."
Andrew provides some vision and purpose saying "one of the worst reporting headaches is producing output for the finance department. The reports need to meet strict standards, be penny perfect, and the end user always wants the report to be in excel." Here is a summary of what the tool can do.
Management Reporter is a report writer designed to help finance groups create and generate financial reports that can be distributed across the organization. In Gartner's review, the "...application can function as an independent financial report writer working against a general ledger application where data integration is available. It...will be capable of developing financial and management reports based on a special-purpose financial reporting PPS model. Customers that use Microsoft FRx will have access to a migration utility that will support migrating report 'building blocks' to Management Reporter."
Features:
- Integrates with Office Excel - from a centrally managed server.
- Easy to customize - templates and forms provided as a help to customize.
- Enterprise Statutory consolidation ready - can produce multi-currency conversions, reconciliation, inter company eliminations.
Benefits:
- Cross-enterprise views - integrates from many different sources and systems.
- Easy mass distribution - to decision makers that need dynamic and standard reports such as financial statements.
- Support for regulatory compliance - GAAP, international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. Centralized management.
- Multiple ways to access - filtering and formatting is preserved. Users can manage and access from SSRS and MOSS 2007 Report Center -by the way, here is Russel Christopher's Blog post on SSRS integrated reports using PPS SQL Server Report viewer -getting these to play nicely
Future reporting (SQL Server 2008)
Looking forward, we can expect even more advanced data visualizations from SQL Server 2008. Consider the possibilities as you review the Dundas Data Visualization Web site. All I can say is kewl.
