Filtering PerformancePoint Server (PPS) KPIs

There are a few ways that you can filter the KPIs and it all depends on how you are creating them and want to use them in your dashboards.  In this posting I will discuss filtering KPIs created from an Analysis Service database source. 

So the first option would be adding the filter to the Actual and Target within the data mapping section.  So if you create the KPIs from measures within your cube and map the Actual and Target to a measures then you can add in additional filters like the following picture demonstrates:

Most likely you will want to name this KPI something meaningful because now it is being filtered, so the KPI is more specific.  If you have created Analysis Services scorecards using the wizard and filtered the KPIs this way, the wizard will actually create these KPIs in the workspace and reference them.  These KPIs will include the same type of data mapping filters as the one above.  Now I have noticed that if you reference an existing KPI and try to filter it through the wizard that this will not actually work because it won’t modify the existing KPI and it doesn’t create a new one.

Step 1 – creating the scorecard	Step 2 – creating KPIs from measures
Step 3 – setting up the KPI and naming it	Step 4 – adding in the filters
Step 5 – new KPI created in workspace	Step 6 – filter has been added into the data mapping by the wizard

So what if you don’t want to filter the KPI and want it to be more generic.  Then you can filter the KPI once it is in a scorecard by using a filter on the dashboard that is linked to the scorecard.  This is really nice since the end-user can choose how they want to view the KPI (for a particular date period, geography area, sales team, store location, etc.) – empower the users.  So down below here I have created a Sales Country filter that we will link to the scorecard that can be used to filter the data.

 

If this doesn’t work and you need to filter the KPIs by a dimension member, but they don’t want to see the filter.  Then another option would be to include that member in your scorecard above the KPIs and then right-click the member in the scorecard and select ‘Hide’.  This will turn that member color to red and when you view the scorecard in the dashboard it will not be displayed.  You will probably want to make the name of the scorecard meaningful so that the users know what they are looking at.  So down below here I will filter the KPI on the scorecard with the Sales Territory Country France member, hide the dimension member in the scorecard, remove the filter on the dashboard, and then preview the results.

Step 1 – drag the dimension member from the available items list and place it to the left of the KPI	Step 2 – select the specific member that I want to filter the KPI on
Step 3 – hide the dimension member on the scorecard	Step 4 – shows that the member is now marked as hidden
Step 5 – preview the results which are the same as the previous dashboard (notice that France isn’t being displayed in the scorecard), but now there isn’t a nice drop down filter list

So what is the best way to filter a KPI?  Do you do it in the cube, in the data mappings of the KPI, on the dashboard page with a nice filter?  Well, it depends.  You need to know what the requirements are and then plan appropriately and build out the items to create the dashboard and present the results to the user.

For additional information on the different types of filters in PPS check out the online documentation – Creating filters in Dashboard Designer.

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