Creating DashBoards Using SharePoint 2010

Creating DashBoards Using SharePoint 2010.

To create a dashboards in SharePoint 2010, you would use the newly integrated part of the SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise called PerformancePoint. 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 are unique to PerformancePoint Services and provide 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 Service 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.

Prerequisites for creating dashboards –

1. Activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature. PerformancePoint Services uses this feature to perform dashboard publishing.

2. Activate PerformancePoint Services Site Collection Features feature. This feature adds PerformancePoint content types and a Business Intelligence Center site template.

3. Activate the SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection Features feature. This feature  enables Excel Services, Visio Services, and Access Services, included in the SharePoint Server Enterprise License.

4. Create a new Business Intelligence Center site by clicking Site Actions ➪ New Site, and then choose Business Intelligence template.

5. Create an Unattended Service Account.

In PerformancePoint Services, you create the unattended account directly in the PerformancePoint Services application settings. In this case, the password is stored in Secure Store Service and the actual username is stored in the PerformancePoint Services database.

An unattended account can be created using the following steps:
1. Browse to the Central Administration Site.
2. From the Application Management category, choose Manage service applications.
3. From the list of existing service applications, click PerformancePoint Service Application.
4. Click the PerformancePoint Service Application Settings link.
5. Specify the unattended service account for PerformancePoint and click OK.


To get started Open the Dashboard Designer. To do this follow the Steps below

1. In Internet Explorer, navigate to the Business Intelligence Center site that you must have created.
2. Click the Create Dashboards link, and then click Start using PerformancePoint Service link.
3. From the PerformancePoint Services page, click the big button that says Run Dashboard Designer. This will download and install the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer to your workstation.  Once the executable fi le is downloaded and installed on your computer, the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer appears. Once the Dashboard Designer is installed, you have an empty 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.

Creating Your Dashboard

Before we get started with building a dashboad lets just create a Dashboard Datasource first.

To create a Dashboard Datasource follow the below steps :

1. Right – click the Data Connections folder in the Workspace Browser, and then select New ➪
Data Source.
2. From the Select a Data Source Template menu, choose the Analysis Services template to create a datasource that connects to Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, and click OK. Next Configure the Connection Settings.
3. Watch for Cache Lifetime setting. The value of this textbox (in minutes) indicates the interval
of refreshing the dashboard information from the backend datasource.
4. Click Test Data Source to make sure that your connection settings are correct.
5. Switch to the Properties tab and change the Name of your datasource.

6. Save the new datasource by right – clicking it in the Workspace Browser, and then selecting
Save.

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 what ever you wanna track for your company, you need to follow these steps:

1. Right – click the PerformancePoint Content folder and select New ➪ KPI.
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.
4. Click OK to close the dialog.
5. Select the Target row, and click the Set Scoring Pattern and Indicator button in the Thresholds area.
6. Next, In the Edit Binding Settings dialog, select the fi rst option (Band by normalized value of Actual/Target) from the Banding method drop – down, and then click Next.
7. 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.
8. In the last step of the wizard, leave the value intact and click Finish.
9. Save the KPI by right – clicking it in the Workspace Browser, and then selecting Save.