The new Business Intelligence Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2010 is a TechNet site for information about business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010. The following is some of what is is included in the TechNet resource center.

IT professionals

• Excel Services overview
• What's new for Excel Services
• What's new for PerformancePoint Services
• Visio Services overview

Developers

• What's new: Excel Services (MSDN)
• Creating custom solutions with Excel Services (MSDN)
• What's new: PerformancePoint Services (MSDN)
• Creating custom BI solutions with PerformancePoint Services (MSDN)

The site also links to the diagram, Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010, described here.

Thee are also links to Blogs, the Microsoft Business Intelligence center on TechNet, and more !

Microsoft released PerformancePoint Service Pack 3 on November 15, 2009. You can read more about PerformancePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 3 here on Microsoft Office Online.  Go to the Microsoft download site to get Service Pack 3:

·        64-bit version (x64):  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3ad75ae5-d2cd-4953-87cf-5f74d79804c6&displaylang=en

·        32-bit version (x86):  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=90C596A5-ACA4-4DED-9072-FACF834BC0C6&displaylang=en

Improved performance and formatting are just some of the new features that PerformancePoint Server SP3 addresses. SP3 introduces improvements in both PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics and Planning.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 is integrated into SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta), to add business intelligence features such as dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, and more. The poster, "Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010" is a review of all the business intelligence (BI) services in SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta) and includes the following information. The poster can be downloaded in Visio, PDF, and XPS file formats.

• An overview of each business intelligence service and when you might use each service to surface reports, scorecards, KPIs, Excel files, and other features of BI.
• Architecture to show how the business intelligence services work together.
• A list of possible data sources for each business intelligence service.

Note that the term "Insights" in the poster refers to business intelligence.

From the poster:

The BI tools you use depend on the specific problems you are trying to solve. Your daily business activities have associated information and insights that emerge in three main areas of business intelligence: personal (and self-service), team or community, and organizational.

There will be overlap across these areas as seen in the diagram below. For example, in SharePoint Server 2010, a company’s employees may use Excel Services and Visio Services  to make relevant business decisions at the corporate level.

By design, all Microsoft BI products inter-operate so that teams and individuals within an organization can move across the continuum of personal, team, and organizational BI and have all products work together. For example, SQL Server Reporting Services reports, Excel Services reports, or Visio diagrams can be published in a PerformancePoint Dashboard.

The following is a sample of the poster. It is small and can be better viewed in the download (Visio, PDF, and XPS).

Find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a6364ca9-5a95-44b8-9b87-1bb24ef07760&displaylang=en

 What is it?

It's a straight forward guide to installing and using PerformancePoint Planning and Monitoring Servers. It lists a number of easy to follow procedures along with links to the next steps in the process after the servers are installed and configured. This is not designed to replace our existing PerformancePoint Server documentation found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb794633.aspx. It is designed to augment it and put all the basics right at your fingertips in an easy to read and follow format.

 Thanks for checking in and enjoy!

 - Hal

Sometimes we like to see a picture or diagram to help plan and even simplify deployment tasks. Here are some visual steps for installing PerformancePoint Monitoring Server prerequisites and Service Pack 2. The image does not replace our documentation and covers only one scenario.

It is an experiment to see if the diagram is useful for seeing the process and keeping steps in order. Please tell me if this helps you see what must happen to install PerformancePoint Monitoring Server and Service Pack 2. Similar steps might be documented for Service Pack 3.

One of the most useful features of Excel Services is report building. Reports can include business intelligence data or any type of data you are working with in Excel Services. Generating and publishing Excel Services reports is one of the basic parts of a dashboard.

Excel Services reports function very much like Excel workbooks and can appear similarly when you view them, whether you view an Excel workbook on your computer or in a SharePoint document library. Excel Services reports can include a variety of standard Excel features and functionality, such as conditional formatting, formulas, and charts. When you publish an Excel workbook to Excel Services, your workbook becomes the data source for an Excel Services report type in the Dashboard Designer. Creating any type of Excel Services report is a two step process. You begin by using the wizard to create the basic report structure. Then you can select the data to display in the report.

There are several white papers available for creating various types of reports within Excel Services:

·         Building a Report Based on Cube Functions for Excel Web Access

·         Building an OLAP PivotTable Report with Excel Services

·         Building a Relational PivotTable Report with Excel Services

·         Building a Report with a Chart for Excel Web Access Based on Cube Functions

The Planning Server Administration Console provides a number of useful controls and settings that administrators can use to setup and maintain their organization’s applications, model sites, system settings and data connections. However there are a number of settings that are not accessible via the Administration Console. In some cases the only way for an admin to access these settings is via the Web.config file. By default the Web.config file is installed on the PerformancePoint Planning Server at C:\PerformancePointTemp\3.0\WebService.

The Web.config file contains runtime settings for ASP.NET and determines how application requests are processed – in this case, Planning Server application requests. You can manage the Planning Process service and also the session settings in the Administration Console using the Web.config file. The Session settings topic in the Microsoft TechNet library illustrates a specific workaround solution using the Web.config file. And the httpRuntime Element (ASP.NET Settings Schema) topic in the Microsoft MSDN library contains all of the attributes and elements within the Web.config file.

Check out the download center for a great package that facilitates data import for PerformancePoint Planning.  It includes step by step directions on the recommended data import package steps in a typical PerformancePoint Planning Server application, a starter Visual Studio 2005 Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) 2005 solution,  plus a SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) project with two files which can be used as the starting point for Dimension and Fact data load packages.

In this sample, the Dimension data is set up to source from an Excel file, and the fact data package sources from a SQL Server database called CustomerDataScrubbed.  BizCorp is a sample Performance Point Planning application used as the destination. 

Make sure to read the starter instructions first, as it will explain how to use the templates,  including how and where to change your database connections, package variables and configuration file settings to make it work in your environment.

It's important to know that the BI capabilities outlined in the topic PerformancePoint Server and other BI products, are not going away and in fact will be even more accessible in Office SharePoint Server. Microsoft has several business intelligence tools and the type of problem you are trying to solve will help determine the right tool for you.

Objects and symbols

We work in a world of objects, shapes, and symbols and we don't know a lot without these. The marks we put onto paper to write something or the shapes we put in a diagram are not very useful until the meaning of the marks or shapes is brought to our minds by experience and learning. I like to see shapes put together in such a way that I can understand difficult concepts or have an larger picture or view of an otherwise tangled mess -kind of like getting above the trees to see where I am going. The following diagram shows the BI stack -sometimes called the BI burger. Because there are several BI tools to choose from, I decided to create a “50,000 feet view” diagram.

Callouts:

1. Gemini is an extension or an upgrade to Excel BI. Gemini adds support for very large scale data but without user requirements. It has an in-memory data store as an option for Analysis Services. Once the data is loaded into the Microsoft in-memory data engine it can be published to a SharePoint Server. Discussed here.

2. The announcement to incorporate Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise edition as “PerformancePoint Services.” allows you to take advantage of the PerformancePoint Server features.

3. PerformancePoint Server is related to the data warehouse, discussed on TechNet here.

4. It will be easier to maintain a “single source of the truth” with a Master Data Management system. Since the purchase of Stratature, mentioned here, Microsoft will have a technology and process to maintain consistent and accurate lists of master data.

5. Various source data can include flat files, excel spreadsheets, and others.

Deploying PerformancePoint as a service within Office SharePoint Server is an idea that may not be understood by all customers.  In its initial announcement for PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint Microsoft explained the philosophy of its strategy, citing challenging economic conditions, the need to cut costs, and thus the drive to support many additional services and technologies. The biggest and best understood advantage of reinventing PerformancePoint Server as a SharePoint service is the consequent lowering of TCO for existing and potential customers. Other advantages are more subtle and more comprehensive explanations of these are forthcoming.

In this blog post we’re reaching out to our existing PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 customers as well as any and all potential new customers for concerns or feedback on the recent changes.  Do you have any concerns or questions that you would like answered either by the PerformancePoint or SharePoint teams? If so please hit reply and post below so that we can provide the answers you’re seeking.

Possible questions or concerns may include the following:

·         My organization is currently using PerformancePoint 2007 (either the Monitoring or Planning server). Does Microsoft plan to continue using this version after the Office 14 release of PerformancePoint Services?

·         My organization (or IT team) is concerned about losing a server-based product in lieu of a service on another product that we perhaps don’t own.

·         My organization already uses Office SharePoint Server 2007 or an earlier version.

·         My organization currently does not deploy Office SharePoint Server. Can we purchase it so that we can continue deploying PerformancePoint Services once it’s released?

What does Microsoft’s recent announcement of its desire to bring “BI to the masses” mean to your organization? Our BI offering will now include Office SharePoint Server and several new services. PerformancePoint Services is perhaps the largest offering and Excel Services, Access Services and Visio Services add power and abilities to the new SharePoint Server BI offerings.

A hidden but significant advantage is the multiple services offered with Office SharePoint Server will reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for organizations working with business intelligence. Organizations need and want to store data that represents their key business processes so they can organize this data and then share it and leverage it. Office SharePoint Server offers these capabilities and many more, with the addition of the new services

PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint is becoming easier to use and maintain as a service for SharePoint Server.  Many of the PerformancePoint Monitoring Server capabilities and functions will be expanded and improved, including scorecards, dashboards, and analytical capacity.

Microsoft plans to incorporate the SQL Server Gemini analysis capability into Excel and Excel Services to facilitate analyzing data and creating reports.  This is a low-cost way of expand Excel business intelligence functions. Organizations will be able to save money on TCO in BI. Excel is already one of the most commonly used software packages in the world. Many of the BI products have an “export to Excel” function that users can apply to get the complex data into a user-friendly application.

Many large and mid-size organizations have IT teams that install and maintain the network servers. Typically, administrator privileges are reserved for members of the IT team and are not granted to end users. Consequently, if a member of say, the Finance team needed to install PerformancePoint Server, the lack of Admin privileges would prevent them from accomplishing this.

Other Microsoft IT products require explicit and sometimes special Administrator accounts to permit installation.  For instance the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 installation recommends that a special Administrator account be created to install this IT product. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 also requires exclusive Administrator roles for installing and accessing the databases.

A user that wants to install PerformancePoint Server must be a member of the Administrators group or have the requisite permissions granted explicitly by an Administrator of the server computer.

PerformancePoint Server setup and configuration interacts with the registry, files within the system drive, the Program Files area, as well as with supported versions and editions of SQL Server. An end user lacking the requisite permissions cannot make changes to any of these areas. Administrator privileges can be decreased or revoked from the PerformancePoint Server installer when the installation is complete.

If you need details of the various Microsoft server installation and maintenance roles and privileges check the following sites:

·         PerformancePoint Server Planning Server, “Using Planning Server roles”

·         PerformancePoint Server Monitoring Server, “Monitoring Server roles and security”

·         Office SharePoint Server, “Plan for administrative and service accounts”