Create a dashboard in Sharepoint 2010

In continuation with my earlier Post about performance point and the prerequisites for creating a dashboard. In this post we will look at the steps to create a new dashboard and a scorecard.

First lets look a quick summary about KPI,Scorecard and Dashboards.

Summary -

KPI's are indicators to measure certain goals in the company. You can create KPI's from different back-end sources using Performance point.

ScoreCard - This is collection of KPIs. You drag-drop your KPI's to a scorecard.

Reports - Lastly, you create reports to be added to your dashboard.

All the above components will create a dashboard for you. Now lets look at them in Detail.

To Create a Dashboard Open the Dashboard Designer. To do this follow the Steps below
1. In Internet Explorer, navigate to the Business Intelligence Center site that you must have created.
2. Click the Create Dashboards link, and then click Start using PerformancePoint Service link.
3. From the PerformancePoint Services page, click the big button that says Run Dashboard Designer. This will download and install the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer to your workstation.
Once the executable fi le is downloaded and installed on your computer, the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer appears. Once the Dashboard Designer is installed, you have an empty workspace. A workspace is a primary container for all of the elements that you can use to build your dashboard, and it keeps its content synched with the site from which it was launched.

Creating Your Dashboard -

Before we get started with building a dashboad lets just create a Dashboard Datasource first.

To create a Dashboard Datasource follow the below steps :

1. Right – click the Data Connections folder in the Workspace Browser, and then select New ➪ Data Source.
2. From the Select a Data Source Template menu, choose the Analysis Services template to create a datasource that connects to Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, and click OK. Next Configure the Connection Settings.
3. Watch for Cache Lifetime setting. The value of this textbox (in minutes) indicates the interval of refreshing the dashboard information from the backend datasource.
4. Click Test Data Source to make sure that your connection settings are correct.
5. Switch to the Properties tab and change the Name of your datasource.
6. Save the new datasource by right – clicking it in the Workspace Browser, and then selecting Save.

Creating KPI –

Now that we have our connection ready lets create our key performance indicator (KPI). In order to create a new KPI to track what ever you wanna track for your company, you need to follow these steps:

1. Right – click the PerformancePoint Content folder and select New ➪ KPI.
2. In the Select a KPI Template dialog, select Blank KPI, and then click OK.
3. And once you have your KPI created, you can define your actual and Target values. Also, select the data source and the measure.
4. Click OK to close the dialog.
5. Select the Target row, and click the Set Scoring Pattern and Indicator button in the Thresholds area.
6. Next, In the Edit Binding Settings dialog, select the fi rst option (Band by normalized value of Actual/Target) from the Banding method drop – down, and then click Next.
7. In the Select an Indicator step, select an indicator to use for the target that clearly shows whether the goal is met. You can choose from a collection of indicator templates available in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer. Once you are done, click Next.
8. In the last step of the wizard, leave the value intact and click Finish.
9. Save the KPI by right – clicking it in the Workspace Browser, and then selecting Save.