Up to speed with PerformancePoint Dashboards and Web PartsApplies to: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

The dashboard on a car or truck collects information from various sources inside the vehicle and displays it to you in a way that helps you make good decisions as you drive, or even before you get on the road.

At a glance, you can tell:

How fast you are going How much fuel you have If your oil is getting low If your battery is in trouble Whether or not your seat belt is fastened And more…

In the same way, a PerformancePoint dashboard gives you meaningful, up-to-date information about your organization. That information comes from various data sources and you can tell, at a glance, how your organization is performing. You can explore the data extensively so you can get a deep look at various aspects of your business and make well-informed decisions.

Why use a dashboard?

The goal of PerformancePoint dashboards is to provide you with data that is formatted in such a way that you can view it, explore it, analyze it, and readily understand it. By gaining insight into your organization this way, you will be in position to shape business strategies and make good business decisions.

Information on PerformancePoint dashboards is presented to you in a context that makes sense. Instead of just indicating that your sales of TVs last year totaled $500,000,000, the dashboard can show that information in connection with the sales target. If the target was $450,000,000, your TV sales are going well; if the target was $700,000,000, you have a problem!

To stretch this example a little further, you probably would want to know more than just the total sales amount. You would want to know which brands sold well, and which did not. You might also want to know which sales territories had the best and worst sales records, which stores performed the best and worst, if sales were better at certain times of the year, who your top sales people are, and where they are located. All this information can be served up to you on a dashboard in a way that you can search, filter, and explore the data to discover what is really going on in your organization..

After finding out that certain brands sold very well and others did not, you might decide to eliminate or reduce the poorly selling ones and stock up on more of your best sellers. Or, you might decide to feature different brands in different sales territories. You might also decide to pitch your advertising campaigns differently. You can make a whole range of strategic decisions when you are armed with precise information.

What is a Web Part?

A Web Part is a modular unit of information that appears on a SharePoint site. It has a title bar, a frame, and content. In a PerformancePoint dashboard, the Web Parts display reports of various types: analytic charts, analytic grids, scorecards, Web Page reports, and strategy maps. Nearly all PerformancePoint Web Parts are interactive, meaning that you can click in them to expand or explore the data you see in reports. Some dashboards have only a single Web Part on a page; others have three or four or more.

Each Web Part exists in a “zone,” which is a defined area on the dashboard. The person who designs the dashboard determines how many zones to use and how many pages to include in the dashboard.

What kinds of things can I do on a PerformancePoint dashboard?

From a SharePoint site in your organization, you can open a dashboard, view it, explore it, export it to Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel, and even print it. You can drill into data, display it in a decomposition tree, filter it to look at very specific information, isolate certain information, change report types, and even create your own views in some cases.

©2009 Microsoft Corporation.