Dan English's BI Blog

Occasionally as I run into something odd with PerformancePoint Server or Dashboard Designer I will take a peek out on the Microsoft Support site to see if there are any new hotfixes available.  I had to admit that this is not a fun task by any means because of how the KB article titles are named and the results that are displayed in the search, plus there is no sorting capabilities (at least none that I am aware of).  What I end up doing is running a PerformancePoint Server 2007 Hotfix search on the support site.  Then once I have the results I review the KB article numbers to look for any results that are higher than the previous hotfix or SP that I am aware of.  Not a fun task, but at least it is something.  Once I find these I then review the fixes to determine if there is anything important that might be worth implementing or if it possibly resolves an issue that I am currently experiencing.

What I have found out is that since SP3 there have been four hotfixes released, the first one was for Planning and the last three were for Monitoring & Analytics.  The only reason that I found out about the last one (which is currently not publically available yet, but should be very soon) was because I contacted some people on the PPS team directly.  I am trying to get this content to be more publically facing, easier to access and get updates on, and also to possibly look into creating a setup similar to what SQL Server has with their Connect site (so that we can submit bugs, suggestions, and review the status) like this example – OLAP Browser.

Here is the complete list of build numbers for PPS 2007 since RTM along with the links to the KB articles.  Just a reminder, the hotfixes are cumulative, so if you install the latest one it will include all prior fixes and service packs as well.

You can also check out the build information on the TechNet site, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc298347(office.12).aspx, but this is not a complete list.  If you are using PerformancePoint I would highly recommend installing the current latest public available hotfix to get to build 3.0.4504 because that resolves an issue of unnecessary MDX being issued, so it will reduce overhead and improve load performance.  The latest hotfix (for 3.0.4506) that will be coming out shortly (and I guess another one will be coming out next month in June – not sure what that one will fix) resolves the following issues:

• Character limit for MDX queries is too low
• SP3 regression causes multiple font sizes to display in scorecard

I am hoping that this list will possibly be made available on the PPS Team Blog and hopefully at some point some sort of mechanism will be made available so that we can post bugs and suggestions so that we can have a more direct link to the product team to work on not only improving the product but also getting more direct input as to the direction that it is heading.

A couple of items that I have on my list, and these are just a couple, would be

• cascading parameters (filters) like Reporting Services – I believe we will actually see this for PPS 2010 later this year
• improvement in Tree filter support that have more than 500 members – way to slow and the list view is not pretty when dealing with hierarchies (apparently improvements have been made in PPS 2010, but that does not help for PPS 2007 users)
• please get the PerformanceMap incorporated in PPS 2007 (and 2010).  This is an extremely powerful visualization that is in ProClarity and in my opinion more important than the eye candy Decomposition Tree.  The ability to analyze two metrics simultaneously and interact with them provides a ton of insight and analytical power to the end-users.  I don’t think this will happen for 2007 just like Decomposition Tree was not and displaying the ProClarity views is just not the same.

Well that is all I have for now.  Apparently there should be a posting in the near future on the PPS Team Blog to provide the steps needed to display a Decomposition Tree report as a default report view in a PPS 2010 dashboard, so keep monitoring their blog.  If you have any other comments or suggestions make sure you leave comments on their blog postings.  The more we make our voices heard the sooner we should see results.  We need to do our part to help shape the product as well.

Updated (7/7/2010): Link for the most recent hotfix has been officially published now for KB 982016.  Included the link in the list.  A new searching mechanism is now available, at least I believe this is new – TechNet Support.  Just in, new June 2010 hotfix has been released that includes a couple of new fixes – KB 983228.

Updated (12/24/2010): A new hotfix was released for Planning when opening a form in Business Modeler – KB 2401959.