About spreadsheet links in Management Reporter

A row definition contains links to fully-qualified accounts, segment values, or dimension values in the financial data. These links enable dynamic reporting. Microsoft Office PerformancePoint 2007 Management Reporter pulls the information from the specified links each time you generate a report. In this way, the report always uses the most current information available.

Rows can also link to cells in Excel spreadsheet files that are maintained separately from your Management Reporter reports. For example, you can create a report that compares actual expenses from the financial data source to the budget in an Excel spreadsheet.

When used in conjunction with a reporting tree, linking enables each unit in the reporting tree to use a different row definition. This means that each unit can pull in different structures or data sources.

You can summarize and display the report any way that you want.

You can access data in an Excel file by using either a combined worksheet link or a separate worksheet link.

• A combined worksheet link combines references to cells in an external worksheet file into the same link column as data from your financial data system. When you use this method to access data in an external worksheet file, some rows in a given column of the report will contain data from your financial data system, while other rows in that same column will contain data from the external worksheet file. We recommend that you use this method when you are importing limited amounts of data (such as work hours, head count, or units sold) that you do not need to associate with a specific unit in the reporting tree.

• A separate worksheet link enables you to access multiple rows and columns of data in an external worksheet file and to associate one or more external worksheet files with one or more reporting units in the reporting tree. You create a special column in the row definition that links to cells in the external worksheet file, and then add the names of the external worksheet files to the reporting tree.

Note:  If you link to spreadsheets that have identical worksheet layouts, you can reduce the number of link columns that are required in the row definition and the amount of time necessary to maintain your report.

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