PerformancePoint
Services is relatively new even to veteran SharePoint users and
administrators. The 2010 version of SharePoint is the first to include
PerformancePoint Services as a base part of the installation. The
product was born from a merger of Microsoft’s Business Scorecard Manager
and products acquired from ProClarity. The first version of
PerformancePoint was launched in 2007 and was initially sold under a
separate license.
In early 2009,
Microsoft announced plans to roll it into the SharePoint product.
Effective in 2009, owners of the SharePoint Enterprise CAL became
licensed for PerformancePoint; however, it remained a separate
installation. With SharePoint 2010, PerformancePoint Services is now
rolled into the SharePoint installation.
Despite being the “new kid” on
the SharePoint block, the product is one of the more heavily anticipated
components of SharePoint 2010. This is due primarily to its capacity to
place rich report creation capabilities into the hands of power users.
Users who are interested in seeing real-time analytical metrics can
create reports that they can see updated whenever the data changes. No
longer will they have to wait on a reporting tool or another department
to generate a monthly or quarterly report. Additionally, some reports
provide interaction for report consumers, which will enable them to more
deeply analyze specific metrics of greater interest. Thus, they are no
longer limited to the information they can glean from predefined report
formats. Following are three example scenarios:
A company’s
advertising department is trying to target its advertising based on a
number of factors. One objective is to help the company achieve its
regional and product sales goals. At the same time, a limited
advertising budget requires it to make appropriate decisions on where to
place advertisements. Every month, advertising dollars are designated
to specific television spots with all the major networks. To make the
right decisions, the brand managers need to be able to determine which
product lines are on track to sell above the target levels, and which
ones are falling short. By having sales data available immediately, they
can make more rapid decisions about where to and how often to place
advertisements. A
sales executive is reviewing sales data for the last quarter. In
reviewing a graph of sales, he notices that one product line had lower
sales during the period. With one click of the mouse, he can reform the
chart by drilling down into that one product line to view individual
products within the product line. He then notices that sales of
most products within the product line remained steady during the
quarter; however, one specific SKU underperformed. He could also see how
the same data looks on a regional basis. With no individual region
standing out as a problem area, he can return to the previous graph.
From there, he can once again drill down to see sales for the one
product, broken down by monthly or weekly timely periods. Having this
power to regenerate graphs on demand enables people to isolate a problem
area, which in turn enables them to make the decisions necessary to
correct the problem. A
product manufacturing company has several plants that have been
producing below target levels. Several factors could help drive this,
including frequency of safety incidents, capacity utilization,
availability of just-in-time materials, and several other components. At
the same time, other plants may be producing above their target levels.
By having the appropriate metrics available to them, executives can
strategically shift resources as appropriate to help the plants that are
underachieving.
Getting Started with a PerformancePoint Service Application
To configure a
PerformancePoint Service application, you must have SharePoint Server
2010 Enterprise installed and configured. Neither SharePoint Foundation
2010 nor SharePoint Server 2010 Standard offers the PerformancePoint
Service application.
Before getting started with a
PerformancePoint Services site, you need to have a service application
established for PerformancePoint Services. It is recommended that a new
service application be created for testing purposes, which is done by
following these steps:
1. | Open
SharePoint Central Administration by clicking the SharePoint 2010
Central Administration link from All Programs, Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Products menu.
| 2. | Under Application Management, click Manage Service Applications.
| 3. | In
the Service Applications Ribbon, select New and then PerformancePoint
Service Application from the list. The New PerformancePoint Service
Application Wizard opens.
| 4. | Enter
a name for the service application, which is the name of the PPS
service application and needs to be unique. It is helpful to start the
name with PerformancePoint so that it appears at a logical place in the
list of other service applications on the ServiceApplications.aspx page,
and it is immediately clear what the purpose of this service
application is in the future. A unique GUID, assigned at creation time,
can distinguish this service application from any other service
application. Figure 1 shows a sample of the wizard.
You can optionally choose to make this service application part of the
Default settings for all future web applications. If you later create
additional SharePoint web applications on your SharePoint farm—that is,
for additional URLs, such as http://external.mycompany.com and http://projects.mycompany.com—the default set of service applications can be shared among those web applications.
| 5. | Next
choose to use an existing application pool, or create a new one. A
general best practice is to create a new application pool, keeping in
mind that server performance can degrade if too many application pools
run at one time. Then determine whether to use a predefined security
account for the application pool or to use a configurable account, or
click the Register new managed account if wanted.
| 6. | Click Create to create the new service application.
|
The next step in the process is to create a new custom web application by following these steps:
1. | Return to the home screen of Central Administration. Under the Application Management section, click Manage Web Applications.
| 2. | In
the Web Applications Ribbon, click New. When the New Web Application
dialog opens, leave Classic Mode Authentication selected, and enter an
IIS Web Site name and Port Number, such as PerformancePoint1, and enter 25000 in the field under Port.
| 3. | In
the Security Configuration section, leave NTLM selected, and No for
Allow Anonymous, and No for Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), unless your
test environment is configured differently. For example, Kerberos is
often used for business intelligence configurations because it enables
impersonation to take place, and SSL is often implemented to ensure that
all data is encrypted.
| 4. | In
the Public URL section, leave the default
(http://servername:portnumber) unless a different Public URL is wanted,
or if SSL is used.
| 5. | In
the Application Pool section, select Create New Application Pool if not
already selected, and create an application pool that matches the web
application name (for example, PerformancePoint1 – 25000) and select a security account or register a new managed account.
| 6. | Validate
the database server and database name to meet your requirements. A best
practice is to make the database name simpler, readily identifiable,
and still include the term Content. So instead of the randomly generated
name, something such as PerformancePoint1_Content could be used.
| 7. | Enter a failover server if there is a failover database server in the farm.
| 8. | In
the Service Application Connections section, ensure that the correct
service application is selected by choosing [custom] from the drop-down
list, and then selecting the service application just created (in this
example, PerformancePointServiceApp1), as shown in Figure 2.
| 9. | Review your settings to make sure they meet your requirements, and click OK.
|
The next step is to create a
new site collection using the Business Intelligence Center site
template. To do so, complete the following steps:
1. | On the SharePoint 2010 server, select Start and SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.
| 2. | Under the Application Management section, click Create Site Collections.
| 3. | In
the upper-right corner of the Create Site Collection page, verify that
the Web Application setting is the same name and port number that you
used. If
not, click the down arrow in the Web Application box, and select Change
Web Application. Then change the web application to the one created
earlier.
| 4. | In the Title box of the Create Site Collection page, type PPS Sample Site.
| 5. | In the URL section, select the /sites/ option in the drop-down box, and type PPSSample in the text box.
| 6. | Enter one or two login accounts to serve as the site collection administrator(s).
| 7. | In the Template Selection section, click the Enterprise tab, and choose the Business Intelligence Center site template.
|
When this site is created, you can begin building a PerformancePoint Services dashboard.
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