More details on new PerformancePoint features in SharePoint 2013

Additional details are coming out on the new features that will be available in PerformancePoint 2013. Here is a list of new stuff:

• Themes – SharePoint has traditionally been somewhat of a challenge with respect to look and feel configuration and PerformancePoint Services was an even bigger challenge yet. Microsoft has simplified the CSS challenges and these simplifications are spilling over into the PerformancePoint
• Filter enhancements
  • look and feel of the filter control – bolding and sizing, performance improvements, measure based filtering
  • search – searching works similar to the way search is implemented in the pivot table filter in Excel

• EffectiveUserName – Kerberos is not something that many of us take lightly as it can be somewhat of a challenge to set up. Microsfot alleviates this pain by allowing to pass this property to SSAS so that only the permitted information is passed back to the user
• Custom Target Applications from Secure Store – ability to specify the Secure Store application ID for authentication
• BI Center improvements – seems to be purely cosmetic

  

• Dashboard Designer is added to the ribbon, that’s nice but again, seems to be purely cosmetic
• Server side migration – this is a good feature as it was a bit of a challenge before to move PPS content from one server to another, but does not really add any user facing functionality.

Microsoft seems to start feeling heat for not addressing concerns about the lack of investments into PerformancePoint by making statements that “PerformancePoint will continue to be Microsoft’s solution for creating interactive, context-driven dashboards with balanced scorecards, key performance indicators, analytic reports, and filters”. I think if one were compare how the product has changed from 2007 to 2010 and now to 2013 and contrast it how PowerView has change since V1 from this spring to V2 in Office 2013, I think it is pretty clear where the bulk of the $$$ is going, and frankly it may not be a bad thing.