SharePoint 2010 PerformancePoint Services : Working with the Monitoring API - Working with PPS Objects

You can create, read, update, and delete PPS objects through the SDK by calling into a web service, named the BIMonitoringAuthoringService, through a class available in the Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.dll named BIMonitoringAuthoringServiceProxy. This class contains static methods that can locate and instantiate an IBIMonitoringAuthoring object that enable interaction with the web service.

Caution

Technically you can call the web service directly without the help of the client-side assemblies, but the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) document that ships with PPS 2010 does not completely match the implementation. You need to either modify the WSDL or acquire an updated one from an alternative source.

To prepare your Visual Studio project, first add a reference to Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.dll. Then include the following using statement at the top of any file:

using Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards;

The web service calls are accomplished by creating an instance of a BIMonitoringAuthoringServiceProxy object and calling methods from the instance. In this code sample, we connect to the BIMonitoringAuthoringService from the root site collection. We then retrieve all the objects from a PPS Content list named PerformancePoint Content and print out their name and their content type designation:

string WebServiceUrl = "http://servername/_vti_bin/PPSAuthoringService.asmx";
string ListRelativeUrl = "/Lists/PerformancePoint Content";
IBIMonitoringAuthoring cService =
       BIMonitoringAuthoringServiceProxy.CreateInstance(WebServiceUrl);
FirstClassElementCollection allFCOs = cService.GetListItems(ListRelativeUrl);
foreach (FirstClassElement oneFCO in allFCOs)
    Console.WriteLine (oneFCO.Name + " of type " + oneFCO.ContentType);

					  

This technique is useful when creating PPS objects, too. Often, it is not clear exactly what properties need to be set for an object to be usable in a dashboard or in Dashboard Designer. You can discover this information by creating objects through Dashboard Designer and then querying the object for properties in Visual Studio.

Creating Indicator Example

In the following example, we create an indicator that extends the built-in Stoplight indicator to change the default text color to purple:

• A GUID will be automatically assigned to the object upon saving to the SharePoint content list.

• Some indicator functionality is contained in a different namespace, so it is necessary to add this using a statement to the top of your coding file.

     using Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Indicators;

• There is a special NoDataIndicatorBand that must be defined for each indicator created.

• In this example, we just copy the existing bands from a built-in indicator (the Stoplight pattern). You can create or customize your own indicator bands. The number of bands for an indicator is dynamically set by the number of bands added to the IndicatorBands collection of the Indicator object.

     Indicator indicator = new Indicator();
     indicator.Name.Text = "My Indicator";
     indicator.IndicatorType = IndicatorType.Standard;
     Indicator stoplightIndicator = Indicators.BuiltinIndicators.Indicators.
         First(s => s.Name.Text == "Stoplight");
     indicator.NoDataIndicatorBand = stoplightIndicator.NoDataIndicatorBand;
     foreach( IndicatorBand oneBand in stoplightIndicator.IndicatorBands )
     {
         oneBand.Color = "#800080";
         indicator.IndicatorBands.Add(oneBand);
     }
     indicator.Validate();
     IBIMonitoringAuthoring cService = BIMonitoringAuthoringService
     Proxy.CreateInstance(WebServiceUrl);
     cService.CreateIndicator(ListRelativeUrl, indicator);

Updating Custom Properties on KPIs

In the following example, we modify all KPIs in a specific content list to add a custom property that can then display on a scorecard. This code adds a single hyperlink property named Web Site Link to all KPIs and then saves the KPIs back to the server one by one:

IBIMonitoringAuthoring cService = BIMonitoringAuthoringService
Proxy.CreateInstance(WebServiceUrl);
FirstClassElementCollection allFCOs = cService.GetListItems(ListRelativeUrl);
foreach (Kpi kpi in allFCOs.Where(fco => fco.ContentType == FCOContentType.PpsKpi) )
{
    BpmPropertyHyperlink newHyperlinkProperty = new BpmPropertyHyperlink();
    newHyperlinkProperty.Hyperlink = "http://www.bing.com";
    newHyperlinkProperty.DisplayName = "Web site link";
    newHyperlinkProperty.UniqueName = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
    kpi.Properties.Add(newHyperlinkProperty);
    cService.UpdateKpi(kpi);
}