- Learn about Design Basics in PerformancePoint Server 2007
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From the abstract:
“This white paper provides guidance and best practices for the decision makers who are involved in designing and building a Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning application.
The authors of this white paper review the methodology and structure of the fundamentals but do not provide step-by-step guidance on implementing them.”
And please remember to leave feedback. We really do read it and it informs our publishing work.
- Microsoft Access 2007 earns GCN Lab Reviewer’s Choice
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Technorati Tags:
Access 2007,
GCNGovernment Computer News is a highly regarded source that covers IT news within the federal government. GCN Labs regularly test and review software, and came just published a very favorable review of Access 2007.
Congratulations to the Access team!
- Ask Maps Now Using Virtual Earth
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Information management often includes incorporating Geospatial data via a mapping platform. Ask.com has chosen Microsoft Virtual Earth as their new mapping platform, which makes everyone here in Redmond really happy!
Chris Pendleton explains more about how Virtual Earth is being utilized by Ask.com.
- A PerformancePoint Server 2007 Wordle word cloud
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Wordle is a lot of fun to use if you’re a data visualization geek like I am. I took Gartner’s October 2007 report on PerformancePoint Server 2007, selected the Key Points, and copied and pasted it into the Wordle Web page.
Wordle works by turning text into word clouds “giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.” Click on the image below to see the full size version.
- The New Microsoft Office Online page for PerformancePoint Server 2007 is looking GOOD!
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Kudos to everyone who had a hand in redesigning the Office Online portal page for all things PerformancePoint, including Service Pack 1, A list of Community Blogs, Tutorials, and How To pages for a variety of Monitoring and Planning topics.
Help for PerformancePoint Server 2007
- Use Microsoft Outlook 2007 to view your dashboard (and a few other tips)
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As most of us who are involved with organizing data know, Microsoft Outlook is a frequently used tool for many people across the enterprise. So why not use it to view your deployed Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 dashboard as well?
We’re now offering a short help page on that subject, as well as:
How to find the help you need in Dashboard Viewer for SharePoint Services
How to use Visio Viewer with a strategy map deployed in a dashboard
Filter your data in Dashboard Viewer for SharePoint Services
Annotate a scorecard in a deployed dashboard
These help and How to topics and more are available for viewing at our Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 Web page on Office Online.
- PerformancePoint’s Most Versatile Report Type: the Web page!
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Blogger friend Nick Barclay has written a great post about this topic at his blog. The ability to import a Web page into the dashboard to supplement other report types as well as the scorecard is a great way to express important metrics in ways that you might not be able to do in Dashboard Designer. If you can make that Web page dynamic, even better. Nick shows you how:
“As a follow up to my post on debugging filter links with web page reports I thought it would be worthwhile to put together a quick example to illustrate just what an unsung hero the web page report type is. Just think of the web page report as the catch-all report type. Basically, if you can't do it with one of the many pre-baked M&A report types then the web page report is what you want.
In the debugging filter links post we saw how dashboard items communicate with each other by embedding data in the Request.Params collection. In that example we simply displayed the contents of this collection. The next logical step is to actually do something with those contextual values we are passing to the report item at runtime. Remember that all the web page report does is send the user to a static URL, the dynamic part comes from two places:
- the incoming filter links configured on the report item embedded in the dashboard
- what is done with this filter link data by the code contained in the page we send the user to
Web page reports pretty much opens up the entire .NET framework to us, the possibilities are virtually limitless.
For example, let's imagine (in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances) that our users want a dashboard page that will allow them to select which search engine they wish to use. They wish to select their search engine of choice using a dropdown. the home page of the search engine name they select will appear in the dashboard and they can then search to their hearts content.”
Read the full blog post here.
- The vBusiness Expo in Second Life
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Will you be attending this free virtual event? I’ll be checking it out in a few minutes. In the meantime, here’s a video to give you a taste of what’s possible in terms of sharing information across a virtual 3D platform like Second Life, compliments of Clever Zebra.
- Two new PerformancePoint blogs that I'm excited to tell you about
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Alan Whitehouse's Ramblings
Alan works for TGO Consulting and is Microsoft-certified in PerformancePoint Server 2007. I was pointed to his blog by Microsoft MVP Adrian Downes, who co-wrote two excellent books on the subject, and to whom I STILL owe a book review (soon, I promise!).
Peter Eb
Peter is a Microsoft developer who's working on the Excel Add-in for our product, and his blog provides helpful tips for customers who are using the Planning side of PPS. Thanks to Microsoft MVP Nick Barclay, Adrian's co-author, for posting about Peter's blog at BI-Lingual..
I'll be adding both of these blogs to the Data Puzzle list of recommended BI blogs shortly. Congratulations to Alan and Peter for doing some fine work to date.
- Using Visualization to aid analysis
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I love this approach to mapping and visualizing data to enhance analysis created by IntellectSpace. Click on the picture to see how IntellectSpace works.
Hat tip to the excellent Sources and Methods for pointing me to it.
- Data visualization using Virtual Earth
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Watch the full presentation here. Hat tip to The BI Blog.
- First Business Intelligence sizer for SQL Server 2005 by HP
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From the HP website:
“The HP Business Intelligence Sizer for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is an automated tool that helps determine the appropriate hardware configuration for a database server used in a data warehousing ROLAP (Relational Online Analytical Processing) environment. In addition this tool will also size the ETL (Extract, Transformation, and Load) layer using SQL Server 2005 Integration Services.”
You can get more information about this product here (registration required).
- New White Paper on Performance Tuning with PerformancePoint Server 2007
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"PerformancePoint Planning Server Performance Tuning"
Executive Summary:
"Planning Server is part of Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007. This white paper is for analysts and IT professionals who want guidance about Planning Server scalability capabilities and the number of users that can be served. Considerations for hardware planning and software tuning are also covered."
Introduction:
"Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 was designed as an infrastructure that includes everything between the server client tier and the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases and SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services cubes. It includes a run-time environment, APIs, scripts, configuration files, administrative functions, and a management console interface.
"This document describes the results of tests to measure scalability of Planning Server. The results of the tests confirm the following:
· Planning Server supports large numbers of business users, even when deployed on a conventional configuration consisting of four physical servers.
· Planning server performs well when additional server resources are added.
· Planning Server asynchronous implementation enhances performance and scalability.
"The test scenario described a typical corporate planning budgeting cycle with one data entry model. It had a large data set and was designed to provide unique security for a large number of users to ensure each component’s caching engine was working effectively."
- BI research tool suite that focuses on Natural Language Processing
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While I'm happy to see NLP put to such good use in this search tool for financial research professionals, I'm not as floored by it as Marshall Kirkpatrick is. The fact that they're collecting subscription fees of $10K per year per user tells me that there's a real opportunity for semantic analytics software in this market niche, but I predict that FirstRain will be outgunned by more advanced applications in less than 12 months from now.
- Arrington describes Twitter as an Early Stage Warning System for Brands and Companies
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Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) lost his Comcast Internet service a couple of days ago. After 36 hours of exasperation with Comcast customer service runarounds, he vented his frustration about it on Twitter. Since Michael is one of the highest profile techies in the world, his tweets got a lot of attention and other high profile people began blogging and tweeting about it. Within 20 minutes, Michael received a call from a Comcast executive who monitors Twitter and other social media for Comcast-related discussions. Needless to say, a Comcast repair team was dispatched and Michael was back in business post-haste. Here's how Michael under-scored the point of this experience at his post about it on TechCrunch:
"But wow, (Comcast is) doing at least one thing right. Well before most people they have identified blogs, and particularly Twitter, as an excellent early warning system to flag possible brand implosions. This may help them avoid situations like what Dell went through
with Jeff Jarvis in 2005.
It’s trivially easy to do a brand search on Tweetscan and create a feed for any new postings. Whether you join in the conversation directly or reach out to aggrieved customers is up to you. But Twitter is the place where conversations are exploding well before they even make it to mainstream blogs. With the information just sitting there, it’s surprising that more brands aren’t watching the tweetosphere.
And a piece of advice to anyone with a Comcast service problem. Skip the hold time on their customer service line and go on the attack at Twitter instead. You may find your problem fixed in a hurry."
