What does an exported PerformancePoint scorecard look like in Reporting Services report designer?

I was curious what would happen when I opened an RDL file created by PerformancePoint in Report Designer, so I tried it.

Here is what I discovered:

1. For whatever reason, PPS exports RDL using the SSRS 2000 RDL spec (xmlns=https://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2003/10/reportdefinition). When you attempt to open the report up with BIDS, you’ll be prompted to upgrade it.

2. If you click the Data tab, you’ll hit the error: “The designer extension ScorecardDPE could not be loaded. Check the configuration file RSReportDesigner.config”

I found there were two ways to (sort of) solve the second problem.

The first workaround is rather old-fashioned. Just keep clicking OK 3-4 times and the error message eventually gives up. Then, switch the query designer into generic mode and dismiss the error message you get there 3-4 times. After that you can run the query with the “!” button, and things work.

If you want to be a little bit more creative, go ahead and edit (carefully, of course) RSReportDesigner.Config. You’ll find the file in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies, and you’ll want to place the following element in the <Designer> block of the file:

Extension Name="ScorecardDPE" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.QueryDesigners.VDTQueryDesigner,Microsoft.ReportingServices.QueryDesigners" />

If you go this route, you’ll STILL get an error (“Format of the initialization string does not confirm to the specification starting at index 0”), but you only have to dismiss it once at which point you can go into the generic query designer mode (without additional generic query designer errors to get rid of).

Both solutions aren’t perfect, but then we don’t live in a perfect world, eh?

In terms of modifying the report layout itself, you can change the header colors from “Office 2007 Blue” to whatever you’d like, remove any of the Value, Goal/Status, Trend columns, etc.