Configuring user level security in Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 – Monitoring & Analysis Server (PPS-M&A) in a Standalone Machine

This post is the continuation of my previous post (Installing Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 – Monitoring & Analytics Server (PPS-M&A) in a Standalone Machine). There i have explained the clean installation procedure of PPS-M. Here i am going to explain the step-by-step procedure to achieve  user level security in Dashboard Designer.

Procedure

1. Open the IIS and check the application pool identity for the ‘PPSMonitoringCentral’. The application pool identity has to be ‘Network Service’.

2. Check the application pool identity for the ‘PPSMonitoringPreview’ and ‘PPSMonitoringWebService’. The application pool identity has to be ‘System Administrator’ account.

3. Goto ‘Preview’ (Web Sites>PPSMonitoring>Preview). Right click – Preview and click Explorer. We can see the ‘Web.config’ file as shown below.

4. Change the ‘BPM.ServerConnectionPerUser’ value from ‘False’ to ‘True’. Save and close the file.

5. Now Restart the IIS.

6. Click ‘OK’ to Restart IIS.

7. Goto ‘WebService’ (Web Sites>PPSMonitoring>WebService). Right click – WebService and click Explorer. We can see the ‘Web.config’ file as shown below.

8. Change the ‘BPM.ServerConnectionPerUser’ value from ‘False’ to ‘True’. Save and close the file.

9. Again, Restart the IIS.

10. Create two users (user1 & user2) to check the user level security in the Dashboard Designer.

11. Connect to the Analysis Services database to create roles for users.

12. Create a role called user.

13. Add user2 under ‘users and groups for this role’ in the Membership page.

User1 which is in the same domain as User2 doesn’t have any user role to access the above database.

14. Open PPS Monitoring Central Web Site by going to the following URL: http://localhost:40000/. Remember that I picked the port 40000 for PPS Monitoring Central Web Site. click ‘Run’ button to download and install Performance Point Dashboard Designer. Dashboard Designer is a .NET click once application. Once installation is done, Dashboard Designer client application will launch automatically.

15. Open and check the Dashboard Designer is connecting to the server. (Windows Icon>Option>Server)

16. Add the users in the Monitoring Server, in order to access the Dashboard Designer.

17. Now, Log Off from Administrator.

18. Login as ‘user2’

19. Install, open and check the Dashboard Designer whether it is connecting to the Monitoring server for this user.

20. Create an Analysis Service data source. Open the data source, give the server name and we can see the ‘Adventure Works DW 2008’ database for this user.

21. Click ‘Test Connection’ button. We will see the following image. This means this user2 can access the ‘Adventure Works DW 2008’ database based on the role specified.

22. Now, log Off from user2.

23. Login as ‘user1’

24. Install, open and check the Dashboard Designer whether it is connecting to the Monitoring server for this user.

25. Create an Analysis Service data source. Open the data source, give the server name. Now, we could not access the ‘Adventure Works DW 2008’ database for this user. We haven’t set any roles for this user to access the ‘Adventure Works DW 2008’ database.

This is the procedure to achieve the user level security in the Monitoring Server Dashboard Designer.

Installing Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 – Monitoring & Analytics Server (PPS-M&A) in a Standalone Machine

Introduction

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is an integrated performance management application that enables you to monitor and analyze your business.

By providing flexible, easy-to-use tools for building dashboards, Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help everyone across your organization make informed business decisions that align with companywide objectives.

The Monitoring and Analytics features, which include Dashboards, Scorecards, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), Reports, Filters, and Strategy Maps, are delivered via a Monitoring Server, which includes two client user interfaces: Dashboard Designer and SharePoint Web Parts. Dashboard Designer is downloaded from Monitoring Server, and enables business analysts or IT Administrators to:

• create data source connections
• create views that use those data connections
• assemble the views in a dashboard
• Deploy the dashboard to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services.

Dashboard Designer saves content and security information to a SQL Server 2005 database that is managed through Monitoring Server. Data source connections, such as OLAP cubes or relational tables, are also made through Monitoring Server. Reports based on these data source connections are run and updated through Monitoring Server, however some reports, such as PivotTables and Pivot Charts, have independent connections to their source data (queries for these reports are not processed by Monitoring Server.)

After a dashboard has been published to the Monitoring System Database, it can be deployed to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services. HTML pages that represent the dashboard content are stored in a document library and can be opened in a browser. When dashboards are opened in a browser, Monitoring Server updates the data in the views by connecting back to the original data source and retrieving the most current data.

PerformancePoint Monitoring Server comes with an API that allows developers to add extensions to the Dashboard Designer, such as custom reports, custom data source providers, custom wizards, and user interface extensions.

System Requirements for Monitoring Server

Hardware Requirement:

Minimum:

• 1 – Pentium 4 CPU
• 2.5 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• 1 GB Available Disk Space
• 100 Mb Network Interface

Recommended:

• 2 Dual-Core 64-bit CPUs (x64)
• 4 GB RAM
• 5 GB Available Disk Space
• 7200 RPM IDE Drive
• 1000 Mb Network Interface

Supported Operating Systems:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (SP2 and R2), 32-bit and 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008, 32-bit and 64-bit
• Windows XP (excluding XPe), SP2
• Microsoft Vista™ (Business, Business N, Enterprise) 32-bit and 64-bit

Additional requirements

• Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 (XP) 6.0, or IIS 7.0 with IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility, IIS 6.0 Isolation Mode
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Microsoft ASPNet 2.0
• Microsoft ASPNet AJAX 1.0
• SQL Server 2005 Analysis Management Objects 9.0 SP2
• SQL Server 2005 Native Client 9.0 SP2
• SQL ADOMD.NET 9.0
• msxml6.msi + updates
• SQL Server 2005 SP2 Analysis Server OLEDB 9.0 Provider
• SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Service Pack 4 – Build 2174 for Client Systems (to use SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services as a data source)

Supported browsers

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0

Installation Procedure

1. Select “Install Monitoring Server” via setup. Initial setup wizard screen will be like as below. Click ‘Next’ to proceed further.

2. Agree to license terms.

3. Select the install location of the files.

4. Click ‘Install’ button.

5. Once setup is completed uncheck the “Run the Monitoring Server Configuration Manager” wizard and click Finish. We need to install ‘Hotfix’ and ‘Service packs’.

6. First, we need to install service pack 1. Click ‘Next’ to proceed further.

7. Agree to license terms.

8. Click ‘Install’ button.

9. Click ‘Finish’ button to complete the process.

10. Repeat from the step 6 – 9, for installing Hotfix and SP2.

11. We have installed all the service packs and Hotfix. Now, we can configure the Monitoring server.

12. Click ‘Next’ to configure.

13. If we have all the prerequisites for Monitoring Server installed we will see the following.

14. In the Installation Options screen choose stand alone server and ensure that all components are selected.

15. In the Database provisioning screen select the default values. Note you can choose to supply your own database names. Here we are using the default name of PPSMonitoring.

16. Next choose the web site configuration for the monitoring web site. Uncheck SSL if we are not going in for Secured socket layer and leave the port 40000.

17. Set the application pool identity for the Monitoring Server web application. We are using system administrator account for “PPSWebApp”. In a real deployment make sure you plan your accounts or use a different account for each web application according to best practice guidelines.

18. Now we have to specify a Windows SharePoint Services site collection for the “Dashboard Viewer” web part to be deployed.

19. Next, we need to select the Reporting Server instance for the report views to be deployed.

20. Once the settings are done, we can validate our options. We should see a similar screen as below.

21. Once we review the options, we can commit our configuration by choosing “Configure”.

22. A visual progress will indicate the configuring process as shown below.

23. Monitoring server has successfully installed.