New Features in Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 Monitoring

NOTE: This article was written with PerformancePoint Server 2007 (CTP3). UI and features subject to change.

PerformancePoint Server Monitoring is the next version of Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005. This article will give an overview of the new features that Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005 users can expect to see in PerformancePoint Server 2007, as well as some features that have been removed. Due to extensive UI changes, some features are implemented differently or appear in different parts of the product. Cosmetic or procedural changes to existing features are out-of-scope for this article.

NOTE: This article does not include details about each new feature. Some blog articles dive deeper into these new features and links to those articles that existed at the time this article was written have been included. Please re-visit https://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint for future articles on new features.

New Features

· Dashboard Designer – The build experience (formerly known as Scorecard Builder) has been completely re-implemented in PerformancePoint Server 2007, with an emphasis on enhanced usability and productivity for scorecard and dashboard builders.

o Enhanced Usability

§ New UI with Office 2007 ribbon bar

§ See “PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer Ribbon” for more information

§ Right-click menus, drag-and-drop throughout

o Streamlined Building Processes

§ Wizards and templates that help accelerate the building process

§ Scorecard / Dashboard preview in the Dashboard Designer – see results before exporting to SharePoint

o Smart client technology (or “click-once”) – safe and secure install-on-demand, maintenance-free patching

· Dashboards

o Organize scorecards and report views into dashboards

o Extensible dashboard layout templates

o Drag-and-drop placement of objects onto dashboards

o Dashboard filters

§ Apply to one of more dashboard components

§ Flat or hierarchical (tree view) filter lists

§ Single or multi-select filter lists

§ Filter substitution – create different target values for a given filter. For example, select a filter value of “July 2007” and send the previous 12 months to an line report

§ Time intelligence filters – make filter selections based on current date/time for KPIs that are based on virtually any data source

o Analytic View Designer (see “Analytics” below)

· Scorecard features

o Preview scorecard in Dashboard Designer (see “Dashboard Designer” above for more usability enhancements in the scorecard building process)

o Named sets in scorecard

o Aggregate rows/columns – add rows or columns to a scorecard that aggregate metric values

o Pivot

o Drill-through actions (for KPIs sourced from Analysis Services data)

o Pre-aggregate tabular data on-the-fly – arrange tabular data (Excel, SharePoint lists, SQL table) into dimensions and facts, allowing tabular data to be used in dimensional scorecards

o New roll-up formulas – mean, counts, other aggregations (in addition to normalized average weighted roll-ups and raw scoring)

o KPI data output – use the actual and/or target value for a KPI as an input value to a KPI

o Import Analysis Services 2005 KPIs into scorecards

§ See “Importing SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 KPIs into Scorecards” for more information

o Strategy Maps – see “Report Views” below

o Export data to Excel 2007

· Analytics

o Analytic Charts

§ Interactive, web-based charts for Analysis Services 2005 data

§ Optimized for navigation and presentation in dashboards (effective use of limited screen real-estate)

§ Navigations include: Drill-down/up, cross-drill, drill-to-detail, drill-through actions, pivot, sort and filter, show/hide member

§ Chart types include: bar, stacked bar, line, mixed bar/line

§ Export data to Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007

§ Open in new window for ad-hoc data exploration

§ See “Analytic Chart and Grid Design” for more information

o Analytic Grids

§ Interactive, web-based grids for Analysis Services 2005 data

§ Optimized for navigation and presentation in dashboards (effective use of limited screen real-estate)

§ Navigations include: Drill-down/up, cross-drill, drill-to-detail, drill-through actions, pivot, sort and filter, show/hide member

§ “Smart” header labeling

§ Data paging – returns “viewable” results quickly, user can easily page through off-screen results

§ Compact (hierarchical) or tabular layouts

§ Analytic View Designer (in Dashboard Designer) – graphical, drag-and-drop interface for creating Analytic Charts & Grids

§ Export data to Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007

§ Open in new windows for ad-hoc data exploration

§ See “Analytic Chart and Grid Design” for more information

· Data Sources

o Excel Services

§ See “How to Use Excel Services as a Data Source” for more information

o Excel 2007

o SharePoint Lists

o See “Working with Tabular Data Sources in M&A” for more information

· Report Views

o Analytic Charts & Grids (see “Analytics” above)

o Excel Services

o ProClarity 6.3 – create report views from ProClarity Analytics Server 6.3, including advanced visualizations such as Decomposition Tree and Performance Map

§ See “How Do I Use a ProClarity Analytics Server View In My PerformancePoint Dashboard?” for more information

o Trend Charts – predictive trend lines for KPIs, using SQL Server Analysis Services Data Mining algorithms

§ See “Creating Trend Charts In M&A” for more information

o Strategy Maps – link KPIs to data-driven shapes in Visio 2007 for dynamic visual representation of performance in strategy maps or cause-and-effect diagrams

· See “Strategy Maps In PerformancePoint Server 2007” for more information

· Office 2007 integration

o Export dashboard components to Excel 2007 including:

§ Scorecards

§ Analytic Charts and Grids

§ Pivot Chart

§ Strategy Map

§ Trend Chart

§ Reporting Services

o Export dashboard components to PowerPoint 2007 including:

§ Scorecards

§ Analytic Charts and Grids

§ Pivot Chart

§ Trend Chart

§ Strategy Map

o Excel 2007 workbooks as data source

o Excel Services as data source

o Excel Services report views

o Strategy Maps – see “Report Views” above for more detail

Removed Features

· Alerts

o Alerts in Business Scorecard Manager 2005 were dependant on the notification framework in SQL Server 2000, which has been superseded by SQL Server 2005 Notification Services. An updated alerting mechanism is currently a candidate feature for a future version or service pack release of PerformancePoint Server.

· Third-party add-ons to Business Scorecard Manager 2005 will not be migrated to PerformancePoint 2007

o Some functionality that was previously delivered by third-party add-ons are now native to PerformancePoint, including:

§ Import KPIs from Analysis Services 2005 (See “Scorecard Features” above) – this functionality was previously available in the KPIUtil add-on

§ Strategy Maps (See “Report Views” above) – this functionality was previously available in the KPIDraw add-on

o An SDK for PerformancePoint Monitoring will be available in version 1.0 for extending the product, and potentially porting existing add-ons

This article assembled by Rex Parker, Program Manager, PerformancePoint Analytics. Questions, comments, feedback? Please email me at rexpark@microsoft.com