Planning Server overview
Updated: 2009-04-30
Planning Server is an enterprise-class application for supporting management processes. PerformancePoint Planning is the part of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 that supports the processes that relate to business planning and management reporting.
With Planning, business users can define, modify, and maintain logical business models integrated with business rules, workflows, and enterprise data. Business workers can interact with and continuously contribute to the business processes of planning, budgeting, and forecasting in the familiar Microsoft Office Excel environment. They can build, customize, and share production-quality reports from Excel while being connected to a secure and centrally managed server.
Planning also supports the management and financial Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) consolidation process with multiple currency conversions, inter-company eliminations and reconciliations, and multi-tier allocations. It enables business users to publish live reports from Excel to SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, providing consistency of experience for report consumers.
Planning is built on Microsoft SQL Server 2005-based databases and SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. It uses Excel for line-of-business reporting and analysis. This makes learning faster and easier for both information technology (IT) professionals and end users.
The following diagram shows the Microsoft Business Intelligence stacks and where PerformancePoint Server 2007 is located in the stack.
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The main purposes of Planning are to:
Provide a consistent and timely view into a business by using data from existing systems, without changing those systems.
Centrally manage data, business metadata, business rules, business logic, views, forms, report definitions, process control, and security that you must have to support the business.
With Planning Business Modeler, allow business analysts access to Planning Server data views and create model sites, data mappings, and applications. End users can access all of these through PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel.
Provide a run-time environment, scripts, configuration files, administrative functions, and a management console user interface (Planning Administration Console) for both the business analyst and the IT professional in the data center.
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See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for PerformancePoint Planning Server.