I am Norm Warren, an IT Pro writer for business intelligence tools in SharePoint 2010 Products. I want to share common troubleshooting tips for PerformancePoint Services. TechNet articles and trusted blog posts are valuable sources of information on these subjects, for example:

• Set up and configure PerformancePoint Services (step-by-step), which will also point you to other TechNet articles.
• Deploying PerformancePoint 2010 Soup to Nuts is a post made by the product team and includes screen captures.

In addition to reading applicable articles, I use to the following tools to troubleshoot, particularly when I review data connection errors:

• SharePoint ULS Log Viewer. The Unified Logging Service (ULS) writes SharePoint events to trace logs, which are stored in the file system at …\14\LOGS. ULSViewer allows users to open a ULS log file and display its contents in a user friendly format.
• SQL Server Profiler is a graphical user interface to SQL Trace for monitoring an instance of the Database Engine or Analysis Services. you can learn more about the tool here and here.
• I start out using the Windows Event Viewer, and specifically look at the security log when I am troubleshooting authentication issues. See also Event Logs on TechNet.

An example of a possible PerformancePoint Services error

Here is a common error that occurs when you try to connect to a data source by using the Unattended Service Account for authentication. In this case, I opened PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer on my front-end web server, typed the correct database server name, and made a selection from the Database drop-down list. That’s when I got the following error.

I opened the ULSViewer, which is on my application server because the PerformancePoint service is running there. I could then view more details about the Unattended Services Account issue.

I then reviewed the PerformancePoint Services setup and configure article, which reads:

To initialize the Secure Store Service application, refer to the following sections of Configure the Secure Store Service (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Initialize an instance of a Secure Store Service application
• Refresh the encryption key

I checked that the Unattended Service Account was configured correctly.  While in the Secure Store Service management page, I selected Refresh Key and entered the pass phrase to regenerate the key.  I then tested my data connection and was able to view my Analysis Services OLAP cubes. Success!