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1. Getting Started: Introduction to the Business Intelligence Center
Applies to: PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer, SharePoint Server 2010
Your organization has data, lots of data, and probably stores that data in a variety of formats, such as
databases, e-mail messages, and spreadsheet files. The Business intelligence Center site and its tools
help you organize that data in a useful way and present that data as meaningful information.
The Business Intelligence Center is a pre-built Web site, or site template, that is optimized to help you
manage the working elements of business intelligence (BI) reporting: scorecards, dashboards, data
connections, status lists, status indicators, and so on. You can customize a Business Intelligence Center site
as much as you like, or you can just start by using its built-in tools.
The Business Intelligence Center is a great place to start. You can see examples of key BI elements, such as
an Excel Services workbook for analysis, charts, and different kinds of dashboards. And, to learn more
about any example, you can click on conveniently located links that connect to articles with more
information. In addition, special-purpose libraries are ready for you to use to create data connections,
manage content for PerformancePoint Services or SharePoint BI, and store finished dashboards.
The Business Intelligence home page has two main panels: information resources in the center panel, and
links to pre-built libraries in the Quick Launch panel on the left side of the screen.
The center panel – examples and links to helpful information
The center panel of the Business Intelligence Center home page gives you a quick overview of its special
features. In general, the information panels provide examples of BI tools such as status indicators, analytic
tools and spreadsheets, and dashboards. You can find information on the simple but powerful tools that
are part of every SharePoint installation with an Enterprise license. In addition, these information panels

2. contain links to information about PerformancePoint Services, which offer extremely powerful and
sophisticated tools for performance monitoring and analysis.
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Monitor Key In the Monitor Key Performance panel, you can find links to information about
Performance different approaches to monitoring performance, SharePoint Status Lists and
scorecards in PerformancePoint Services.
SharePoint Status Lists are quick and easy to create
PerformancePoint scorecards offer sophisticated hierarchies and connection to
special analytic reports.
Build and Share In the Build and Share Reports panel, you can find links to information about Excel
Reports Services, and about the interactive visualization tools in PerformancePoint Services.
Excel Services enables you to design your problem solution in Excel, the most
popular BI tool in the world. You can build spreadsheets, PivotTables, and charts, and
then publish those reports to SharePoint.
Data visualization tools in PerformancePoint Services include charts and graphs that
are linked to designated Key Performance Indicators, Strategy Maps, linked
geographic maps, and many other options.
Create In the Create Dashboards panel, you can find links to information about how to
Dashboards create dashboards by using tools in SharePoint alone, or by using tools in
PerformancePoint Services.
The links in this panel include Start using PerformancePoint Services, which opens
a home page for PerformancePoint Services.
To start right away, you can click Run ‘Dashboard Designer or you can follow links
to Getting Started articles that can help you create scorecards, decomposition trees,
dashboards, and analytic charts and grids.
.
Dashboard library
At its most basic level, a dashboard is a just Web Part page that contains a collection of indicators, data,
or graphics. Thus, the Dashboards library is a library that is optimized to store and create Web Part pages.
This includes PerformancePoint dashboards and Web Part pages with Status Lists for SharePoint status
indicators.
When you create a dashboard by using Dashboard Designer, PerformancePoint Services automatically
stores the dashboard in the Dashboards library. You can import dashboards that were created previously
by using PerformancePoint Services, or use the Ribbon commands on the Dashboard list page to create a
new dashboard from a Web Part page.
©2009 Microsoft Corporation.

3. You can also use Ribbon commands on the Dashboard list page to create a Web Part page with Status
List to display SharePoint status indicators, and then add charts, filters, and other content web parts as
needed.
Data Connections library
The Data Connection library enables you to specify data source connections once, and then re-use them
in any Web Part on the site. The Data Connection library supports PerformancePoint Data Sources, Office
Data Connection (.odc) Files, and Universal Data Connection (UDC) files.
Documents library
The Documents library serves as a central library for spreadsheets, SharePoint lists, text documents, and so
on. To help make information easier to find, you can create folders within this library. For example, you
might want to create a folder for “Excel Reports - financial”, or “Status Lists for tracking”,
You can also create custom libraries.
PerformancePoint Content list
The PerformancePoint Content list is designed to store the PerformancePoint Services scorecard and
report elements that an analyst creates by using Dashboard Designer. For example, this illustration shows
a PerformancePoint Content library that contains Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), a scorecard, and a
report.
©2009 Microsoft Corporation.

4. Create a new Business Intelligence Site
SharePoint Site Owners can create a Business Intelligence Center at any time by selecting the Business
Intelligence Center site template in the New Site dialog box.
©2009 Microsoft Corporation.

5. To customize what data can be viewed by whom, you can connect a variety of Filter Web Parts to existing
Web Parts on a dashboard page to change the view of the data. For example, a sales manager for one
region can be presented with a view of sales figures different from the view for a sales manager for
another region.
©2009 Microsoft Corporation.