Getting Started: PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer

PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is a tool that you can use to create dashboards, scorecards, and reports and publish them to a SharePoint site. Dashboard Designer is part of PerformancePoint Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Dashboard Designer is available to organizations that deploy the enterprise version of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and choose to implement PerformancePoint Services as part of that deployment.

Dashboard Designer helps you build a dashboard that contains a single, consistent, and visible view of your business. You can use this tool to provide business intelligence (BI) to the people in your organization so that they can make informed business decisions. By using Dashboard Designer, you can create reports and scorecards that display important metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure and track performance in your organization.

Getting started with Dashboard Designer is not difficult. Follow the links in this article to find the basic information that you need to work with Dashboard Designer.

Dashboard Designer Basics

If you are already familiar with Dashboard Designer, you should begin by reading the What is new in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer article. If you have never worked with Dashboard Designer, begin by reading Getting acquainted with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer.

Before you create a dashboard, consider who will view and interact with its content and learn how to assign correct permissions to the people who need them. When you have completed your planning, you are ready to create a basic dashboard.

The following table contains links to articles that will help you create dashboards in Dashboard Designer.

Article	Description
What is new in PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer	Dashboard Designer is now much more tightly integrated with SharePoint Server and offers more robust key performance indicators, new and improved report types, and several other new features that make it easier for you to create and deploy PerformancePoint dashboards. Learn about the new and improved KPIs, scorecards, reports and filters and the enhancements to Time Intelligence functionality. You will see, too, how the ribbon and workspace have been streamlined.
Getting acquainted with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer	Learn how to open Dashboard Designer, how to work with the various commands that are available on the ribbon, how to find your way around the Workspace Browser pane and the center workspace pane, and how to work with the Details pane. Learn how to work with the various tabs that appear dynamically, depending on the items that you select in the Workspace Browser, or the items that you are creating in a dashboard.
Keyboard shortcuts for Dashboard Designer	Learn which keyboard shortcuts are available in Dashboard Designer and how to use them. Note: You must use a mouse to perform certain actions in Dashboard Designer.
About user permissions for PerformancePoint Services	Learn about the user permissions that are needed for Dashboard Designer and then learn how to assign or change those user permissions. Learn about additional permissions that dashboard authors might need, such as permissions in SQL Server Analysis Services or SQL Server Reporting Services, and permissions to data that is stored in servers.
Create a basic PerformancePoint dashboard	Learn how to create a very basic dashboard that contains an analytic grid, a scorecard, and a filter by using a single data source.

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