SharePoint 2010 Insights – PerformancePoint Review Part 2 of 2

Welcome to the second part of a two part blog series covering the functionality of PerformancePoint within SP2010. In the first part I covered the functionality of PerformancePoint specifically in regard to how it is integrated with SharePoint. In this part I will more specifically cover the enhancements to the PerformancePoint content such as Dashboards, Scorecards, Filters, etc. The topics for Part 2 are listed below.

Part 2:

1. General Enhancements – there have been improvements in how the Dashboards, Filters, Scorecards, and other content are developed and function
2. Conclusion – my overall conclusion around PerformancePoint within SP2010
3. Issues – issues that I have found with my installation of SP2010 and PerformancePoint
4. Open Questions – open thoughts that I have around PerformancePoint, SP2010, and Microsoft BI

General Enhancements:

1. The first big noticeable difference, and I mean BIG change is the addition of Pie Charts! That’s right, ProClarity is no longer needed for Pie Charts (or decomposition trees…shown later)

   

2. Charts and Reports now have the ability to show the Top or Bottom N records with a simple click. This allows users to easily perform analysis on what is performing the best and worst without having to write any MDX. The steps needed to utilize this functionality are shown below:

   

   

3. There is also a new Value Filter to only show values greater than X (or less than, between, etc). This once again gives users more power to drive which data is displayed in the Graphs and Reports. Check out the couple steps that are needed to set this up below:

   

   

4. Scorecard Enhancements
   1. The Filter by Status works a lot better. Users can select these values on the fly or a developer can set the default value for the scorecard within Dashboard Designer.

   

   1. Developers now have very tight control over the User Toolbar. All of the options that can be set within the options for a scorecard are shown below:

   

   1. Scorecards can now easily filter empty rows in Dashboard Designer. This can be done by right clicking on the scorecard and selecting "Filter Empty Rows" or within the scorecard settings. This use to be hard to do in the previous version of Dashboard Designer and empty rows were hard to deal with. The rows with the black "Target" cells will not be displayed in the scorecard when saved and rendered in SharePoint:

   

5. There is improved filter design on Dashboards. You may have noticed in the old version of SharePoint that the width of the filters could not easily be controlled once selections were made (especially in multi-select filters). The filters in the new version are formatted to not expand beyond an acceptable width unless told to do so.

6. There are tabular and compact layouts for Data Grids. This allows PerformancePoint to simply display all of the data in a tabular format similar to what is typically done now in SSRS. This will make PerformancePoint better at handling larger data sets within Data Grids all with a simple click of the mouse.

   

7. PerformancePoint now has the ability to Analyze. Once clicked, this opens a Decomposition Tree (using Silverlight). This once again is functionality that existed within ProClarity but not PerformancePoint. The Decomposition Tree is shown below:

   

   

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Conclusion:

Overall my impression of the new version of PerformancePoint is very positive. Along with my thoughts in Part 1 of this blog series, my brief conclusions include:

• PerformancePoint has very tight integration with SharePoint. This includes the Content Storage, the new PerformancePoint web parts, and the interaction between PerformancePoint and standard SharePoint web parts.
• PerformancePoint is a lot more user friendly. This includes the installation and setup, as well as the ability to use individual PerformancePoint web parts anywhere on a SharePoint site.
• PerformancePoint is better at handling large datasets. This is due to the ability to easily show the Top and Bottom 10, as well as the ability to show values only greater than "X".
• Most pain points seem to have been removed from the previous version. The changes to the way that Dashboards and Scorecards are developed and can handle data will make them easier to develop, configure, and display to end users.

Issues:

1. Server busy errors are thrown a lot when trying to navigate at the same time multiple PerformancePoint web parts are loading
2. Web parts error out, the easy fix is to reset the view for the web part that is not loading correctly
3. There are multiple "Connections…" options when editing PerformancePoint web parts, the real option is only available in Edit Mode
4. Passing multiple PerformancePoint Filter values to a SharePoint list does not seem to filter the list properly

Open Questions:

• Is ProClarity officially dead? With the addition of Pie Charts and Decomposition Trees is ProClarity still needed?
• Could user friendliness and ease of use lead to massive disorganization of data sources, web parts…lost data integrity?
• Will this new tightly integrated version of PerformancePoint drive business need?

Did you…enjoy this blog? Make sure to check out Part 1 of this series!

Do you…have any questions or comments? Leave questions or comments and I’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as I can!