Dashboard Designer is a ClickOnce-deployed
application. One advantage to ClickOnce technology is that the
application is hosted and client deployment is lightweight. Therefore,
you do not have to install the application from any type of installation
media or files, and there is not an EXE file. Instead, you launch the
Dashboard Designer installation by clicking a hyperlink located on the
home page on a site created using the Business Intelligence template.
In addition,
patches are applied automatically. If the SharePoint server has a patch
or service pack applied, the next time a user launches Dashboard
Designer, the ClickOnce framework checks the version number on the
server and downloads an updated version before launching.
Caution
Patching, which refers to deploying a new version of
Dashboard Designer on the server, works fine as long as the build
version is moving forward. If the new build number is lower than the
last run version on the client machine, the application will not be
updated automatically. Patching breaks down in cases where the patch
applied to the server has been rolled back or in a multiple server
scenario where there are two environments at different patch levels.
All first class objects
created by Dashboard Designer are stored in one or more SharePoint
document libraries and lists. A first class
object is an item that you can manage in
Dashboard Designer and reuse in different dashboards. Examples of an
item include a KPI, an indicator, a scorecard, reports, filters, data
sources, and dashboards.
To initiate the Dashboard
Designer download and installation process, follow these steps:
1. | Browse to
a Business Intelligence Center site, such as http://localhost/BICenter
(see Figure 1).
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2. | Under the
Create Scorecards with PerformancePoint Services section, click the
Start Using PerformancePoint Services link.
|
3. | Click the Run Dashboard Designer button.
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After you download and
start Dashboard Designer the first time from the website, you can start
it from your computer’s Start and Programs menu. Dashboard Designer does
not operate in offline mode. This means you must be connected to a
SharePoint instance running PPS to run Dashboard Designer.
It is also possible to
start Dashboard Designer when viewing a SharePoint list that supports
PPS content types. You can create a new item by clicking the Add New
Item button at the bottom of the web page, or you can use the New Item
button on the Item tab located in the page ribbon.
You
can edit an existing item by accessing the item’s drop-down and
selecting the Edit in Dashboard Designer option. In both cases, when
Dashboard Designer launches, add the current list to the workspace, and
any dependent items, and then open the item for editing in Dashboard
Designer.
Tip
It is possible to launch
Dashboard Designer from Firefox. To do this, you must have the Microsoft
.NET Framework Assistant 1.1 add-on for Firefox installed. This add-on
ships with Windows Vista and Windows 7. You can find the add-on for
Firefox by searching for add-ons on the client computer.
If the add-on is not
installed on your computer, you can download it from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9449?collection_uuid=55afefb5-620d-ae0c-d5d1-b602b44e6428.
Although Safari is
supported for viewing dashboards and PPS Web Parts, it is not possible
to install a ClickOnce application using Safari.
