Context-sensitive menus in PerformancePoint

James Serra's Blog

James is currently a Senior Business Intelligence Architect/Developer and has over 20 years of IT experience. James started his career as a software developer, then became a DBA 12 years ago, and for the last five years he has been working extensively with Business Intelligence using the SQL Server BI stack (SSAS, SSRS, and SSIS). James has been at times a permanent employee, consultant, contractor, and owner of his own business. All these experiences along with continuous learning has helped James to develop many successful data warehouse and BI projects. James has earned the MCITP Business Developer 2008, MCITP Database Administrator 2008, and MCITP Database Developer 2008, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering. His blog is at .

Context-sensitive menus in PerformancePoint

Posted on 21 September 2011
Comments
Briefcase
Print

Frequently I see a bit of confusion from business users when using an analytic grid on a dashboard in PerformancePoint. The confusion comes when you right-click on the analytic grid and see a context-sensitive menu. When you right-click on any of the numbers in the grid, in this case “73,149,028″, you will see the following menu:

When you right-click on any member in the hierarchy, in this case “Total Revenue”, you will see:

The difference is right-clicking on a number allows you to drill to detail. Clicking on a hierarchy allows you to drill down to other hierarchies. You can’t drill down to other hierarchies when right-clicking on a number, and you can’t drill to detail when right-clicking on a hierarchy.

Remembering this will allow you to quickly answer the confused questions from users when they claim they are not able to drill to detail or drill down to other hierarchies when using PerformancePoint. Note you will find a similar issue when using other tools such as ProClarity and Excel.