New MS BI Burger - Delivering BI to everyone in the organization

After Microsoft announced that Office PPS 2007 would be folded into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 14 - which was officially death of PerfomancePoint Server - there's been slight changes on the famous "Microsoft BI Burger".

The new burger was designed to deliver Business Intelligence to the masses via SharePoint based under idea of "Delivering BI to everyone in the organization".

Farewell PPS!

"There will be no future version of PerformancePoint Server."

Microsoft will consolidate PerformancePoint Server (PPS) with its scorecards, dashboards, and analytic capabilities into SharePoint as "PerformancePoint Services" with the release of SharePoint 14 in late 2009.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-bi-strategy-update.aspx

Not a good news at all for MS BI world! I'm not surprised about "Planning" module as I believe it was NOT successful, but embedding "Monitoring & Analytics" into SharePoint, mmmmmmm?!

Other links:

http://performancepointinsider.com/blogs/bsm/archive/2009/01/22/just-call-me-performancepoint-services.aspx

http://nickbarclay.blogspot.com/2009/01/rip-performancepoint-server.html

PPS 2007 MCTS Exam 70-556 Now Available

Prometric already listed the exam on its site.

The official preparation guide for the exam:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-556.mspx

What is "Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007"?

Well, Microsoft says:

"Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 is an integrated performance management application that provides robust monitoring, analytics, and planning capabilities. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 helps businesses to articulate goals; monitor business activity; identify and analyze issues; and collaborate and take action."

PPS is very feature rich. It has all the functionality customers can expect if they need to plan, budget, forecast, scorecard, dashboard their business activities and use management reporting and consolidation. In addition, all users work with a single data model whether they are monitoring, analyzing and planning.

We can’t talk about PPS and don’t mention two names: Adrian Downes and Nick Barclay my ex-colleagues at SDM and PPS gurus. Their books about PPS 2007 have just been published a couple of days ago:

Here are their blogs:

• http://adriandownes.blogspot.com/
• http://nickbarclay.blogspot.com/

Here are some more useful links about PPS 2007:

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/ha102422371033.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/business/performancepoint/resources/training.aspx

Microsoft Office PPS 2007 - beta exam

A few weeks ago, I sat for a Microsoft beta exam 71-556 "TS: Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Application Development".

Some exam topics from our memory (myself and my colleague Lisset):

• Refresh rate Interval - (PPSAddInforExcel.chm)
• Assignment rule, allocation rules - PEL Syntax
• Rule set types and rule types - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• PSSAddinforExcel.dll
• Review all the help - (PPSAddInforExcel.chm) - is small and there are different questions about it. (e.g. parameters)
• Business Roles – administrative Roles. Very clear what to do which each one. Security and roles - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Update member property - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Current Time period - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Association- (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Member set- (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Installing the PPS (Clean Installation)
• Building the Reports, defining filters, show the leaf members, link the reports in worksheet (PPSAddInforExcel.chm)
• Generic models, sub sites, Associations - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Workflow, setup roles, modify the existing workflow - (PPSAddInforExcel.chm, PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Creating Data Sources, DSN
• Create an association to move data between models PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Assumption models - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Defining a SCOPE statement - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)
• Data Integration: Sync the staging DB, Loading data from staging to application database - (PPSPlanningBusinessModelerHelp.chm)