Building Dashboards SharePoint and Business Intelligence

Dashboards  Easy way to see data through reports, charts and graphical displays  SharePoint allows end users to build them without programming skills  Can use SharePoint Lists for filtering data  List view allows sorting, grouping, calculations  Considerations for planning Dashboards  Where is data  What types of information needs to be rendered  Who will use it

Content Types  Collection of columns, that represent an informational view (ie Leave Form)  Office document template  Identify re-useable columns for MetaData  Can be standardized and used across many sites, lists and libraries  Allows different types of content in in one List or Library  Word, Excel, and PowerPoint  Available from the New Items Tab on the ribbon

Excel Services  Service of SharePoint 2010/2013 Enterprise  Site Collection Feature of SharePoint 2010/2013 Enterprise  Must be activated by Site Collection Administrator  Allows use of parameters to provide view only of Excel data in browser  Requires SharePoint to work

Excel  Excel Web Access Web part  Embeds and Displays excel workbook in a SharePoint Page  Filtering of data configurable via Browser View Options  Does not allow editing of Spreadsheet  Excel Workbooks  Supports Named Regions to filter or select specific elements to show  Supports creation of PivotTables  Summarization tool to sort and/or manipulate data

Business Intelligence  A collection of tools and techniques to interpret data  Decisions can be made by studying the data  Implemented in SharePoint with BI Site Template data in cubes  Design based on data in cubes or Data Warehouses

Performance Point  Flexible, easy-to-use tools for building dashboards, scorecards, analytical reports, and key performance indicators (KPIs).  Includes Dashboard Designer  Desktop application that creates and manages dashboards and their elements  Including scorecards, parameters, and strategy maps.  Help organizations measure, monitor, and manage business performance with live data from a variety of business data sources.  Can track key performance indicators (KPIs) that consolidate data from multiple data sources into a scorecard or strategy map that is visual, intuitive, and interactive.

SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS)  Site Collection Feature of SharePoint 2010/2013 Enterprise  Must be activated by Site Collection Administrator  Activating Feature adds  SQL Server Reporting Services Report Viewer Web part  Can change appearance of reports via Web part properties  Report Builder Model, Report Builder Report, and Report Data Sources  Report Builder  Click once Windows Application  Allows users to quickly generate reports from SQL databases

BI Terms  Reports  Displays data information in charts and tables  KPI (Key Performance Indicator)  Business Metrics displayed in a scorecard  Indicators used to reflect status (Red, Yellow, Green)  Scorecard  Report designed to show performance targets  Contains one or more KPI’s  Dashboard  Containers that display Scorecards and Reports

BI Terms  Facts Tables  customer data, products, materials  Dimensions  Contains details of each instance of an object  Measures  Additive numerical data that represents business metric  Datacubes  a three-dimensional (3D) (or higher) range of values that are generally used to explain the time sequence of an image's data.  Allows user to create dynamic reports without assistance from IT

BI Terms  Database  Used for Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) but can be used for other purposes such as Data Warehousing. This records the data from the user for history.  The tables and joins are complex since they are normalized (for RDMS). This is done to reduce redundant data and to save storage space.  Entity – Relational modeling techniques are used for RDMS database design.  Optimized for write operation.  Performance is low for analysis queries.

BI Terms  Data Warehouse  Used for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). This reads the historical data for the Users for business decisions.  The Tables and joins are simple since they are de-normalized. This is done to reduce the response time for analytical queries.  Data – Modeling techniques are used for the Data Warehouse design.  Optimized for read operations.  High performance for analytical queries.  Is usually a Database.

Dashboard Designer  Click once Windows Application  Used to create Dashboards, Scorecards and Reports  Cannot create Web parts!  Can be used by ANY user with permissions  Content created is stored in BI Center site

Dashboard Designer  Can connect to data from:  Relational Databases  SQL Server Analysis Services  SharePoint lists and Excel  Common cause of Unexpected Error is not saving connection  Requires PerformancePoint Services activated to operate