Using PowerPivot with PerformancePoint Services (PPS) 2010

Analysis Services was one of the primary data sources with the previous version of PerformancePoint to get the most functionality out of the product.  Now with the release of the 2010 product we have some new options and one of them is PowerPivot.  PowerPivot is also a multi-dimensional data source and in this post I will talk about what this source provides for functionality and what it does not compared to Analysis Services.

First of all you will need to have an environment that has PerformancePoint Services configured.  If you are not familiar with how to do that you can take a look at this great posting on the product team’s web site – Deploying PerformancePoint 2010 Soup to Nuts.  Once you have that setup then the other thing that you are going to need to do is have PowerPivot setup with SharePoint so that we will be able to utilize the files as data sources.  There are plenty of articles and material available in regards to this configuration, here is one of them – How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on a New SharePoint Server.

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