On the properties tab of every object in PPS Monitoring you will find a permissions section that allows you to assign either reader or editor rights. These permissions actually relate to two quite different areas:
For the latter you'll also need be in a suitable dashboard designer security role which I've posted about previously but otherwise the concepts are fairly clear; Reader will allow you to use the objects in your dashboard and Editor will allow you to edit the objects as well.
For the viewing of dashboards things are a little less straight forward:
Dashboards
To view a dashboard you'll need to be at least a member of the reader role otherwise you'll get a "dashboard is unavailable" message. Being in the editor group adds no additional permissions when viewing the dashboard (that i can see)
Data sources
Dashboard viewers need to have at least reader permissions on a data source if it used in a kpi or report or you will get an error message
Scorecards
You must be at least a reader on a scorecard to be able to view it in a dasboard otherwise it is just not displayed. This, as with reports also, can obviously cause an issue with the layout of your dashboard as things will get moved depending on your permissions.
To be able to add comments to KPI's you need to be a member of the editor role but only be a reader to view them
KPIs
If a KPI is used on a dashboard that you have access to, the kpi will be displayed but you must have at least reader access on that particular KPI to see any values otherwise they will be blank. Strangely, if you have editor permissions on the scorecard you will be able to add a comment to the KPI whether you have permission to see it or not
Reports
To view a report on a dashboard you need to be at least a reader. If not the report will not appear at all (no message). No additional permissions seem to be available in the editor role.
Indicators
From a display point of view Indicators inherit permission from the kpi they are displayed in, so there is no need to set any specific user permissions. This seems to be the only area where any form of permission inheritance is used.
Note that all roles can either use Groups or specific users.
Note also that you only need to publish dashboards to PPSM server to update security permissions - there is no need to re-deploy to Sharepoint unless you have changed the layout of the dashboard.
Users love pretty things! Especially upper management who have minions to actually make sense of the numbers behind the reports for them ;) Out of the box Reporting Services reports look anything but pretty! Here's few tips to make your bosses happy :)
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Use a background image as a border for charts. The
image behind the chart below is a simple png file of only 8kb in size. To make this work you need to use a rectangle object with the background image set to your image and the chart dropped in the rectangle
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Use custom palettes for your chart series. To do this set up a new table with two columns, one that relates to the key's in your data source and one with the hex codes of the colours you want to use. Then in your recordset join the id to your data. Once you are returning the hex value for each row to your RS dataset you can use this to define the series colour:
1) Right click on chart -> Properties
2) Select the data tab then edit the value
3) Select the appearance tab then the series style button
4) Select the fill tab then use an expression to
5) Set the color property to your dataset field
6) Click OK, OK, OK, OK (phew!)
I've uploaded a sample project to show how this is done.
So I was going to do a post on displaying a reporting services report in a PPSM Dashboard but then realised then that the PPS team had already done that:
http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2007/07/20/how-do-i-integrate-ssrs-reports-with-dashboard-filters.aspx
And then I was halfway through a post on how a Proclarity view works in PPSM when the PPS Team posted one on just that!
http://blogs.msdn.com/performancepoint/archive/2008/02/22/using-pas-views-in-performancepoint-monitoring-dashboards.aspx
Hey guys - leave some for us!! ;) Just so you haven't completely wasted your time reading this, here's a couple of additional points:
- Multi-select filters don't work with multi-value parameters in RS. It only passes the first item selected through to RS.
- There is no concept of cascading filters in PPSM v1 - The dev team know this is much requested feature. So far we've got around this by using a multi-select tree filter and the promise of a fix in the next version!!
- Your don't need to define anything particularly in your Proclarity to be able to connect a PPSM filter. Just connect a filter that contains valid members from any dimension in your cube. I know Alyson has mentioned this in her post but quite a neat feature I reckon
- If you have a slicer on the background - this will still display within your PAS view as shown below:
Using these two report types lets you get around a few of the "still to come" features of the built-in analytic chart and grids such as:
- Customise chart colors - (PC/RS)
- Use a secondary Y axis on a chart (PC)
- Use SQL stored procedures as a datasource (RS)
Lastly Nick B has just done a great post on how parameters work with a web page report. This opens up pretty much endless possibilities...
Thanks to all those who have requested a copy of our Planning web part and extra thanks to those who've provided feedback. Hopefully we'll get a chance to implement some of your great suggestions in the next release. We've released a V1.1 with a couple of minor fixes - in particular the ability to handle applications with spaces in the name.
We've also posted it on the downloads section of our community site (where you can also find Sacha's Account Type Crib sheet).
NB. You'll need to create a login to access the files.
Keep that feedback coming :)