I have summarized by thoughts on the GC Dashboard below. Keep in mind the end goal was to expose CRM to SharePoint. Bear with me as I am early on in my research and some of my assumptions below could be refuted by my research by end of the day, training, someoen else or a simply Google Query. There is a lot behind creating dashboards depending on how (resources, tools, Time) but I think this defines the high level and low level solution.

Risks:

1. Dashboards - $$$

2. Groups of tools will require knowledge of several tools, some workarounds, time and research

BUT FIRST HERE IS HOW I AM DEFINING THINGS:

(HIGH LEVEL) Dashboards vs. (LOW LEVEL) Group of Tools –

Yes, Dashboards are essentially one-screen, customizable snapshots comprising charts and tables of your company’s key indicators: sales reports (daily, monthly, year-to-date), cash on hand, profitability, back orders, inventory levels, payroll, accounts receivable and payable, etc. I have been considering a dashboard to be a 1 stop solution.

Solver Dashboard – Complete Solution – Stand Alone

I have not considered Groups of tools to technically be a “Dashboard” but rather a group of tools such as several SRS, excel or web parts on a page.

Groups of Tools (Web Parts, Excel Charts, Office Web Parts, SRS Reports, CRM Analytics)

NOTE: IN the end, regardless of the path the end product will be marketed as “a Dashboard.”

IMPLEMENTATION: NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE BELOW IMAGE: (See image below)

Data Layer – The Data layer is obviously where we source or data resides, I have started tinkering with how to create a UDM, that is if I will one and not be able to use

Application Layer – Here is where things get tricky, we have a few options for the application layer.

· Business Scorecard Manager 2005, from pre-research appears to require knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and (optional) Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. It is a licensed product and not an add-in. It falls under the Performance Point Server umbrella but it is unclear to me if you need Performance Point Server for initial analysis. The system requirements for Business Scorecard Manager 2005 are the following: SharePoint Products and Technologies; Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (required for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Server); Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005; Microsoft Office 2003 (optional if you want to use charting and analysis).

· CRM Analytics (Proclarity Analytics Server) – CRM analytics provides the foundation for DEMO’s because the 2006 VPC image has examples built into it. This is a 100% solution for DEMO’s using the 2006 VPC image and adventureworks database (CRM 3.0 pre update, Office 2003, SharePoint 2003, IE 6 etc.), however, using CRM analytics on a 2007 image (CRM 3.0 Rollout #2,MOSS 2007, IE7, Office 2007) requires the creation of a new UDM 90% of the work remaining to the end user. In other words, If we were to use CRM Analytics for any other purpose than an adventureworks demo we would be starting from scratch at a clients site to create a UDM through the Presentation layer. This is because of the integration to the database.

· SRS Reports – SRS Reports are at the presentation layer but only exposed via reports, we don’t have a dashboard here. We could create a mocked up page in MOSS using RDP viewers and web parts but I consider this a tool, not to be confused with a dashboard. It could serve a cheaper solution but there is a cost associated with the creation of individual reports.

Presentation Layer -

· Excel 2007 – Excel is a tool I’d say for Ad-Hoc Analysis, no matter where it ends up being displayed. Yes we can create pivot tables and reports but Excel is no dashboard solution, however it could be considered a dashboard component. We can display and research office web parts to

· SRS Reports Exposed via MOSS 2007 – Tool, (See above)

· CRM Web Parts and BDC – CRM web pats are not available in MOSS 2007 (yet at least) but you can implement them in 2003 using work around, this is likely unsupported. I see these as tools as well, not a dashboard but a piece of the pie that could make a dashboard.

· Proclarity and Solver – These are essentially top notch presentation layer