PerformancePoint Services troubleshooting
I am Norm Warren, an IT Pro writer for business intelligence tools in SharePoint 2010 Products. I want to share common troubleshooting tips for PerformancePoint Services. TechNet articles and trusted blog posts are valuable sources of information on these subjects, for example:
- Set up and configure PerformancePoint Services (step-by-step), which will also point you to other TechNet articles.
- Deploying PerformancePoint 2010 Soup to Nuts is a post made by the product team and includes screen captures.
In addition to reading applicable articles, I use to the following tools to troubleshoot, particularly when I review data connection errors:
- SharePoint ULS Log Viewer. The Unified Logging Service (ULS) writes SharePoint events to trace logs, which are stored in the file system at …14LOGS. ULSViewer allows users to open a ULS log file and display its contents in a user friendly format.
- SQL Server Profiler is a graphical user interface to SQL Trace for monitoring an instance of the Database Engine or Analysis Services. you can learn more about the tool here and here.
- I start out using the Windows Event Viewer, and specifically look at the security log when I am troubleshooting authentication issues. See also Event Logs on TechNet.
An example of a possible PerformancePoint Services error
Here is a common error that occurs when you try to connect to a data source by using the Unattended Service Account for authentication. In this case, I opened PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer on my front-end web server, typed the correct database server name, and made a selection from the Database drop-down list. That’s when I got the following error.
I opened the ULSViewer, which is on my application server because the PerformancePoint service is running there. I could then view more details about the Unattended Services Account issue.
I then reviewed the PerformancePoint Services setup and configure article, which reads:
To initialize the Secure Store Service application, refer to the following sections of Configure the Secure Store Service (SharePoint Server 2010).
I checked that the Unattended Service Account was configured correctly. While in the Secure Store Service management page, I selected Refresh Key and entered the pass phrase to regenerate the key. I then tested my data connection and was able to view my Analysis Services OLAP cubes. Success!