CTP4 of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is now available!

The 32-bit version of PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP4 is available as of August 15.
The 64-bit version of PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP4 is available as of August 22.
Sample data for Monitoring Server is available with the CTP4 release.
Sample data for Planning Server, including the Alpine Ski House sample application, will be available at RTM. There is no sample data for Planning Server in the CTP4 release.

What's new for CTP4 Monitoring and Analytics

The following Monitoring and Analytics features have been added to Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (CTP4):

Dashboards
· OLAP View Sorting/Filtering. Users can now sort (by column) and filter empty rows/columns in Analytic Charts and Grids.
· OLAP View Types. Users can now switch between grids and charts and also change chart types (includes bar charts, stacked bar charts, stacked 100% bar charts, line charts and combined bar/line charts).
· OLAP Member Properties in Grid. Users can now add attributes of a member into the OLAP grid.
· Cell Level Actions. Users can now see the cell level actions behind a value in an OLAP grid or chart.
· Export to PowerPoint. SharePoint users can now export dashboard views to Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
· Multiple Filters. Users can now pass multiple dashboard filters to scorecards and report views.
· Dashboard Viewer for SharePoint Services Users can now add PerformancePoint Monitoring dashboard items to an existing SharePoint page through a new PerformancePoint Web Part.

Dashboard Designer
· Dashboard Designer Ribbon Changes. Usability improvements within the Dashboard Designer Ribbon, which is part of the Microsoft® Office Fluent™ User Interface.
· OLAP View Configuration. Enables light configuration options on charts and grid (fonts, formats, chart legend placement, grid layout).
· PAS Integration. Users can now add PAS report views into their dashboards.
· Time Intelligence KPI Filters. Users can now add Time Intelligence expressions to individual KPIs.
· Scorecard Filters. Users can now pass members from scorecards into report views. (Example: Passing the KPI Name to an SSRS report.)

Excel Services Support
· Excel Services as a Data Source. Users can now import tables or named ranges from Excel Services spreadsheets.

What's new for CTP4 Planning

The Planning component of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (CTP4) does not have significant changes from its previous release (CTP2). The following list contains the targeted improvements delivered by this latest release:

Business Modeler
· Business Rule Templates. Several additional rule templates have been added.
· PPSCmd. The command-line tool had some additions to provide ability for scripting of overall system processes. For example, the ability to deploy and reprocess models and data.
· Migration. Additional feature work was done to enable migration of an application between two server environments.
· Jobs. Improved user experience for executing and managing jobs.
· Data Types. Dimension member properties now support more data types

Excel Client
· Offline Cache. Improved management of locally cached objects.
· Templates. Additional report templates have been added.
· Review and Approval. Reviewers and Approvers can now manage submissions through a single dialog. Support has been added for bulk operations.
· Filters. Form and report filters now support dimension properties.

Server
· Performance. Several changes were made to improve overall server performance. Additionally, Financial Job and calculations have specific performance enhancements.
· System Information. Error message reporting and system logging has been improved from prior releases.
· Associations. Improved capabilities for working with complex associations. Better performance handling large associations and movement of large data set.
· Security. Public interfaces have improved resistance to any potentially malicious attacks.

For more details, click here.

The top-four worst BI practices

Excerpt from here:
1. Assuming the average business user has the know-how or the time to use BI tools
2. Allowing Excel to become the default BI “platform”
3. Assuming a data warehouse will solve all information access and delivery requirements
4. Selecting a BI tool without a specific business need