Sharepoint Content Deployment Using Performancepoint Import Items Wizad

Sharepoint content deployment can be done in different ways. Its very useful feature in sharepoint since devolopers would choose the most suitable deployment technique rather creating same thing again and again. This is a another major factor to commercialize sharepoint products among most of the companies and organizations. Some popular deployment techniques  are listed below.

• If two serverfarms are physically connected by intranet, Content deployment and path jobs is the preferable solution for content deployment.
• If two server farms are physically diconnected, you can use sharepoint backup and restore to deploy your content.
• If top level site to be deployed to a subsite or vise vasa, sharepoint import and export make your wish.

But today Iam going to introduce a new method to deploy performancepoint contet. This method can only be used to deploy performancepoint content rather. As BI engineers most of you have to deploy sharepoint content as performancepoint content. Therefore deployng performancepoint content between serverfarms is to be done quite frequently.

So should we have to recreate our performancepoint content from the scratch, no absolutely not. Or else should we get a backup and restore it to the new site in other server farm. No its not a wise thing to do, since when you wanted to get restore previously created performancepoint content, your new site has almost created. Then you cannot lose your data. Actually you don't want to restore a whole site to get few performancepoint content.

Therefore the preferable technique would be to use Performancepoint Import Items wizad.

To import items there should be a performancepoint workspace file (*.ddwx file). When you working with performancepoint designer you can save workspace to a .ddwx file. Please make sure that only edited items (Items in the left hand pane) can save to a file. If you are newly opened the performance point designer, you should double click on each item to get those items to the left hand pane.

Then go to the BI site where you want to restore the content. (If it is a totally isolated from the parent server farm, it doesn't matters) Open the performancepoint dashboard designer. Click on the Import items. A dialog box will pop up and ask you for a source file, then browse and locate a workspace file where you want to import.

Then you have to map source lists (Data connections and Perfomancepoint content) with destination lists. The important point to note here that is, you can directly import items to lists in the subsites as well.

Then click next to start the content deployment.

Performacepoint import items wizad is a useful piece of component inside the performancepoint dashboard designer. It reaveals you a new ere to content deployment and save your development time by easily reusing performancepoint content.

How to connect two or more Performancepoint Filters to Scorecards and Reports

In this post I am not going to introduce a new thing but I would like to demonstrate a few important steps, that might mess around you and could delay your developments. That is how to make connections among performancepoint filters, scorecards and reports.

Usually connecting one filter to a report and scorecard might not a difficult task to you. Therefore I am forcusing on how to connect two or more filters to both reports and scorecards.


The scenario I have taken here like this,

• I have two performance point filters for Month and Year.
• I have a Scorecard which displays few KPIs.
• I have a Report with some tables and charts.

You can do this in two different ways.

1. The most common method is create a dashboard in performancepoint designer and deploy it to a sharepoint site..
2. The next method is create dashboard layout in sharepoint itself, and insert performance point content as webparts.

Eventhough above two methods are seems to be two different approaches, the connection settings are almost same. But I hope to demonstrate above two methodologies. I'd like to guide you through images, since this not very much technical related thing.

To make connections between reports and filters, goto the connections in the report and create a connection to each of the report parameter.

To create connections inbetween scorecards and filters, do the same thing to the scorecards as shown below.

I am suggesting here to connect filters to the EndPoint_Page of the scorecards. If you are using sharepoint 2010, EndPoint_page cause for disabled decomposition tree. (To get decomposition tree right click on the scorecard and select decomposition tree.) To enable decomposition tree install the following hot fix to the sharepoint server.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2496951

If you have done correctly, your all connections would work well. Even this is not a technical article, I hope this might helpful to you when you are get stuck with selecting proper configurations in performancepoint.