For those who missed it, the launch date of SharePoint was announced. The launch will be done by President of the Microsoft Business Division Stephen Elop as he introduces Office and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 11 a.m. EST.
You can join him live at: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx#fbid=JadoeNy2pBe
I just can’t wait to get PowerPivot to production !
This screencast will show you how we create a dashboard on a SSAS cube in PerformancePoint 2010 using a filter with time intelligent functions:
A few important points:
Pretty though demo to do 10 minutes, please don’t hesitate to ask me questions here.
Big thanks to these blog posts:
http://consultingblogs.emc.com/davidfrancis/archive/2007/12/02/PerformancePoint-Time-Intelligence-_2D00_-BI-for-the-masses-Part-1.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2009/12/14/configuring-data-source-time-settings-for-time-intelligence.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2010/01/21/time-intelligence-formula-quick-reference.aspx
And Dan English to point out to me i have to use the Hierarchy to add multiple Time Member Associations at the Ms forum:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/5f7f3e9b-1648-48c7-8cdf-8e3fb211b0ae?prof=required&ppud=4
Now that SharePoint 2010 is on the horizon, there have been a lot of questions about what the differences are between PerformancePoint Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Services 2010. While most of the feature upgrades surround architectural changes, several changes have been made to enhance the user experience. The MS Performance Point services team has created a great blog post with some of the upgrades that you will see in 2010.
Looks very good, can’t wait to play around with PerformancePoint Services 2010!
The current Performance Point 2007 is pretty nice and has some nice out the box functions, but many request of customer can’t be easily solved by PerformancePoint 2007. But the new wave of PerformancePoint Services functions, that will be released in SharePoint 2010, offer a bright future for the product. One of these functions is Time Intelligence for Microsoft PerformancePoint Services:
Flexible Formulas: Specify almost any time period desired with a rich syntax and flexible formula language. Powerful “To Date” functions enable users to observe performance thus far. With these, creating seasonal adjusted metrics such as year over year (YoY) year to date sales have never been easier.
And link together your dashboard with potent Time Intelligence filters to dynamically change, explore, and analyze your data with respect to time.
Another great function is: Calculated Metrics
With calculated metrics you can create much more advanced metrics to use in your dashboards.
This release we have introduced a new feature called “Calculated Metrics.” Calculated Metrics are powerful for several reasons:
- Can use multiple data sources in the same formula.
- Can use different data source types in the same formula.
- Is expressed in simple Excel-like formulas.
- Supports logic flow.
What i really like is the cross datasource functionality and the ease the analysts can create their own dashboards.
The guys from the PerformancePoint services blog promise us even more function in the future! So keep posted
Found this post at Dan English’s BI Blog about SharePoint 2010, he found these intresting artikels at at the MSDN Downloads:
Discusses the business intelligence tools available in SharePoint Server 2010
This one is a poster, so feel free to blow it up and put it up on your wall;)
Interested in what the upgrade path to SharePoint 2010 will look like? Take a look at this Visio diagram – Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning.
With SharePoint 2010 on the horizon Microsoft released more information about SharePoint 2010 and the integration with BI at the SharePoint conference last week.
They are so serious about BI and SharePoint they even released a name for the subject calling it “SharePoint Insights”:
SharePoint Insights enables users to find the information they need across unstructured assets (blogs, wikis, presentations, documents) and structured assets (reports, spreadsheets, analytical systems). Empower users to discover the right people and expertise to make better informed and more agile business decisions.
They released a blog specific to the subject: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointbi where you can find more information about SharePoint Insights. You can also check out the official SharePoint Insights page and download the new datasheet and whitepaper to help you start thinking about what SharePoint 2010 can help your organizations use Business Intelligence.
The new SharePoint Insights will also incorporate PerformancePoint dashboards now called PerformancePoint Services:
and of course the new self service BI project formerly called Gemini, now named PowerPivot:
Something called Visio services (also from PPS) in which you can dynamicly show Visio documents:
In SP 2010 they have a successor for the SharePoint 2007 Business Data Catalog (BDC) called the Business Connectivity Services (BCS), It provides out-of-box features, services and tools that streamline development to deeply integrate external data and services. What the direct added value for us BI’er is i’m not sure, but surely these will be new sources to extract data from.
And there is even good news for your server admin: they made the installation a walk in the park (according to a Donald Farmer interview)
Also, we provide a really nice setup. You run a SQL Server 2008 R2 setup and if you don’t have a SharePoint farm we’ll say “Insert your SharePoint disc and we’ll go ahead and install the farm for you and configure it with all the defaults that you need for Gemini.” So it’s actually very cool. Even if you’re not a SharePoint administrator, the setup will walk you through the process of setting up the SharePoint farm and configuring it, which we know could be a challenge if you’re not familiar with it.
I really hope they can back this up, installing Reporting services with SharePoint 2007 is NOT easy.
Microsoft is really putting more and more into SharePoint and want a tighter integration with BI, whether you like it or not. I think as MS Partner it opens a lot of new doors so i suggest to keep an eye on SharePoint the following months.
