Installing PerformancePoint 2010 Dashboard Designer

Understanding PerformancePoint 2010 Dashboard Designer Prerequisites and Installation

PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is the design tool you will use to build key performance indicators (KPIs), indicators, scorecards, reports, filters, data sources, and dashboards. It also enables you to deploy your finished dashboards to SharePoint.

Dashboard Designer is a .NET Framework ClickOnce application that requires the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. It also has a few other optional components that enable additional functionality that users should be able to install on their own, including the following:

• Visio 2007 or 2010 Professional for creating or editing strategy map reports
• Report Viewer 2008 for creating or editing SQL Server Reporting Services reports

Note:
If you are deploying Dashboard Designer in a highly secure environment, it is important to ensure that the proper prerequisites are installed. If the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Service Pack 1) is not installed, you will see an error indicating that the System.Data.Entity assembly does not exist on the client machine. To resolve this, ensure that the .NET Framework 3.5 is installed and has been upgraded at least to SP 1.

You can determine which service pack of the .NET Framework is installed on a client machine by querying the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.5 Registry entry for the service pack value. The service pack value should be 1 or greater than 1.

Visio 2007 or 2010 Professional is required on the client machine for creating or editing strategy maps. Strategy maps are reports that allow you to connect KPI data to Visio shapes to visualize data. Due to interoperability requirements from the .NET Framework, it is important that the processor architecture for the operating system match the processor architecture for the version of Visio that is installed. If the processor architecture does not match, it will not be possible to edit strategy maps with that particular client machine. It is possible to work with strategy maps by adding them to dashboards and creating links between the strategy map and other PPS objects on the dashboard editor, but you will not be able to create new ones.

Dashboard Designer is a ClickOnce-deployed application. One advantage to ClickOnce technology is that the application is hosted and client deployment is lightweight. Therefore, you do not have to install the application from any type of installation media or files, and there is not an EXE file. Instead, you launch the Dashboard Designer installation by clicking a hyperlink located on the home page on a site created using the Business Intelligence template.

In addition, patches are applied automatically. If the SharePoint server has a patch or service pack applied, the next time a user launches Dashboard Designer, the ClickOnce framework checks the version number on the server and downloads an updated version before launching.

All first class objects created by Dashboard Designer are stored in one or more SharePoint document libraries and lists. A first class object is an item that you can manage in Dashboard Designer and reuse in different dashboards. Examples of an item include a KPI, an indicator, a scorecard, reports, filters, data sources, and dashboards.

To initiate the Dashboard Designer download and installation process, follow these steps:

1. Browse to a Business Intelligence Center site, such as http://localhost/BICenter.
2. Under the Create Scorecards with PerformancePoint Services section, click the Start Using PerformancePoint Services link.
3. Click the Run Dashboard Designer button.

Once Dashboard Designer is installed, you ready to start developing PerformancePoint Dashboards!

• Microsoft
• PerformancePoint
• PerformancePoint 2010
• PPS
• SharePoint 2010
• SPS 2010