All About Annotations

Today I have decided to talk about the concept of Annotations.  Annotations are a nice feature of PerformancePoint, but there are some limitations to keep in mind: 

• Annotations can only be entered in at the leaf levels of dimensions (i.e., individual cell level) in the PPS matrix and nowhere else.  They are entered against a specific value and cannot be entered against a range of values.
• When opening a form or report the user must select “View -> Annotations” from the PeformancePoint Ribbon Bar in order to activate the showing of Annotations.  Annotations will then display as a “redish/pinkish” box if an Annotation is present.  To see the specific Annotation, the user must right mouse click on the cell and select “View Annotations” and a pop-up window will open to display the annotation.  As far as I know, there currently is no way to default having Annotations automatically highlight when you connect to PPS.
• As Assignments flow through the approval process, the Annotations will flow with them.
• When a user opens a form with a page filter on it, when you move between different Dimension Members (e.g., Department1, Department2, etc.) the matrix will change and the Annotations at the cell level will appear and disappear. Annotations do not roll-up!  This means if a user is looking at “All Departments” and there are Annotations in cells at individual Department levels (i.e., Department1 or Department2), the user will have to change the filter selection to Department1 or Department2 in order for the Annotation to become visible.  There is no out-of-the-box alert that an Annotation exists at a leaf level.
• All users who have PPS will be able to view Annotations within the input form in PPS.  There is no security on individual Annotations.
• Reports created and reviewed via the Excel Add-In will also display the Annotations.
• There is no out-of-the-box way to print Annotations if a user prints the Excel input form.
• Annotations are stored in the PerformancePoint relational database and not in the cubes.  Therefore any external reporting tool being used to display the data will have to access both the cubes and the relational databases.

I have also worked out the specifications to display a roll-up of Annotations within the body of an input form using SQL Queries and data connections to Excel.  When I get more time, I will detail how to do it.

BI Conference 2008 Review

So after being gone for a week at the BI Conference and then trying to get caught back up at work, I now have time to post my thoughts about the 2008 Microsoft BI Conference.

So overall how would I rate the event?  I would give it a 7 out of 10.   This is the second year for the BI Conference with the last one being 18 months ago.   I think the organization was great (especially considering 3000 attended), but I get the feeling that what Microsoft wants this conference to be is still evolving.  I do give them tons of credit for what they did accomplish, especially considering how difficult it is to come up with content that meets the needs of both Microsoft partners and end customers and has to cover both the technical and business/finance aspects of BI.   And that may be part of the problem and why I don’t rate it higher is that the conference is trying to be too many things to too many people.   Also the complete lack of any discussion relating to a Microsoft BI/PerformancePoint future directions roadmap really bothered me.   But all that being said, I do firmly believe we got great value for the money it cost us to attend this event.

I know a lot of people are talking about “Gemini” but for me the coolest thing I saw was when they showed

Unexpected Windfall

In one of my first posts (way back in March) I discussed passing the PerformancePoint Certification Exam.  In that post I linked to Amazon and discussed the two books I used as my reference guides.  They were The Rational Guide to Planning With Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and The Rational Guide to Monitoring and Analyzing with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.  In fact, I keep the Planning book in my computer bag with me and still use it as reference from time to time.

Well behind the scenes, those links to Amazon linked to my Amazon Associates account.  Which meant that every time one of you clicked on that link and bought the book, I got a little something.  Well thanks to all of you out there I am proud to announce that due to those purchases I have made a whopping…  Get ready….  Wait for it…  

          ***  $8.69  ***

Yes, you read that correctly.  I have made a grand total of $8.69.  

Now if all of you don’t start doing a better job at this type of thing, I am going to have to continue to actually work and there go my dreams of retiring early.  Plus how will my two adorable children be able to pay for college?   So if you won’t do it for me, then do it for them.  Think about the children.

My big debate now is what to do with all this extra cash.  I mean really, $8.69 gives a man a whole lot of options.  I could buy a single beer.  I could get a Big Mac combo meal and upsize it.  The world really is my oyster.  However, Amazon won’t pay out anything until I hit $10, so I need a few more of you to get with the program and do the right thing and buy that book after clicking on the link.

Have a great day and hope to see some of you at the Microsoft BI Conference next week.