SSW Performance Point Server Suggestions

Add annotation chart

Office Performance Point 2007 has a great new feature, annotate, which allows you to put comment on group of numbers or on top point.We suggest it to be able to have that number to show in a chart, or able to put annotate chart.

Unnecessary message box on deploy first time

When deploying a Scorecard to Reporting Services you receive a message box informing you that you need to refresh. We suggest that instead of displaying the message box that the deploy is actually done automatically. This is a confusing out of the box experience.

Figure: Error message of "Monitoring Server List is Empty"

Wrong Scorecard selected on deploy

When right clicking on a scorecard and deploying, by default it selects the first scorecard in the deploy list and will result in the wrong scorecard being deployed accidentally.

Figure: Incorrect scorecard selected by default

No Defaults on Deploy for Server

The settings screen does not show any defaults for Report Name (this could be taken from the scorecard name), or Reporting Server details. Suggestion to put in http://localhost/reportserver if unknown, or last deployed Reporting Server location.

Figure: No default values entered for servers

No Validation for Reporting Server

There is no Tick or Cross when a Reporting Server location is entered to indicate if this is correct or wrong. The user will not know until after attempting to deploy the scorecard.

Figure: No Validation for Report Server

Error message not that noticable, No back button

There is no Tick or Cross when a Reporting Server location is entered to indicate if this is correct or wrong. The user will not know until after attempting to deploy the scorecard.

See Rules to Better UI - Do you clearly show a pass, fail or warning?

Figure: Error message is not that visible

Scorecard DPE extension is not different

The following error lists that the ScorecardDPE extension is not registered successfully. This extension name is identical to another older product Business Scorecard Manager 2005. Subsequently searching the web for instructions on how to register bring up the wrong details. The version should have been 'ScorecardDPE2' or even better 'PerformancePointScorecardDPE'

Figure: ScorecardDPE extension is not registered correctly

Web Report missing extra column

After exporting a scorecard to Reporting Services the scorecard is rendered, however it is missing the Person Responsible on the web version

Figure: Missing Person Responsible field on the web version

Figure: Person Responsible field in Scorecard

Deploy a Performance Point dashboard without a folder

When deploying a dashboard to a document library from PerformancePoint 2007 Dashboard Designer, Dashboard Designer creates each dashboard page .aspx file in a folder named the same as the dashboard.

It would be nice to be able to deploy a dashboard without a folder in the SharePoint server.

Figure: I would like to be able to avoid this folder. You should be able to deploy a PerformancePoint report to a root folder in SharePoint.

Currently you need to follow the workaround on this blog post titled Dashboard Deployment Without Folders to remove this limitation.

Select a deployment folder in Reports Library on the SharePoint site

It would be nice to be able to choose a deployment folder on the SharePoint site in the reports library.

Figure: Choose a deployment folder in reports library is better.

Figure: The destination folder in SharePoint site.

Point the user to a KB

When PerformancePoint hasn't been configured and you try to create a new data connection you get the error:

This data source cannot be used because PerformancePoint Services is not configured correctly. Additional details have been logged for your administrator.

Instead it should point you to a KB on how to configure PerformancePoint Services.

Add a menu item to "Display Dashboard"

PPS 2010 gives the option of displaying scorecards and reports through the context menu but not for dashboards.

Figure 1 - Bad Example - Can't view a dashboard that has been saved via Dashboard Designer

Figure 2 - Good Example - A Display Scorecard option allows users to see PPS items

Tell me that this dashboard has not been deployed

Figure 1 - Bad Example – This dashboard hasn't been deployed so no one can view it – but it is unclear whether it is deployed or not

Figure 2 - Bad Example - Dashboard details doesn't show the deployment status either

It would be nice to have a status "Not Deployed" as a column or in the item properties.

Even better would be an option to "Deploy" just like how SharePoint allows you to publish content.