Configuring PerformancePoint Services
PerformancePoint Services (PPS) is a
SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise feature that is used for building
dashboards. It is particularly useful for integration with SQL Server
Analysis Services. This section describes how to get the Service
application going. This service application is optional.
Note that in order to properly connect this
service application to SQL Server Analysis Services, you must also
install ADOMD.NET v11 (which is interesting because the SharePoint
prerequisite installer already installed v9 for you, and some
situations require v10). In any case, install v11 before continuing. No
reboot is required:
2. Run the download MSI.
3. At the Welcome screen, click Next.
4. Read the license, select “I accept the terms in the license agreement,” and click Next.
5. At the Ready to Install screen, click Install.
6. At the Completing screen, click Finish.
Now that v11 is installed, create the service application. This part should be very familiar at this point:
1. From the Manage service applications screen, click the New button in the Ribbon.
2. From the menu, select PerformancePoint Service Application.
3. For Name, enter PerformancePoint Service.
4. Check the box for “Add this service application’s proxy to the farm’s default proxy list.”
5. For Database Name, enter PerformancePoint_Service_DB. This time you are getting rid of the GUID and the spaces in the name. Spaces are even worse than GUIDs.
6. Scroll down to Application Pool and select Use existing application pool.
7. From the drop-down, select Default SharePoint Service App Pool.
8. At the bottom of the page, click Create.
9. After a
minute a screen will pop up indicating that the service application was
created successfully and specifying the additional steps you need to
perform. Click OK.
Now start the service:
1. Switch to the IE tab for Services on Server.
2. Find PerformancePoint Service and then click Start to the right of it.
The service application is up and running. The
last step you need to perform is to set up the unattended service
account. To do that, however, you have to create the Secure Store
service application first. Therefore, jump ahead to “Configuring the
Secure Store” and do that. When you are done, come back here. Don’t
worry; this page will wait.
You’re back? Great. To set up the unattended service account, follow these steps:
1. From the
Manage service applications page, scroll down and click
PerformancePoint Service from the list of service applications you have
created. Note you must click the top one in the list.
2. From the Manage PerformancePoint Services: PerformancePoint Service page, click PerformancePoint Service Application Settings.
3. For
Unattended Service Account:, enter the User Name for the account you
want to use for data connections. Typically you would create a regular
domain user account dedicated to this role. In this example, use Contoso\SP_PPS. As you build out PerformancePoint applications, you will give this account permissions to your data sources as appropriate.
4. Enter your account’s password for Password:.
5. Click OK.
That takes care of everything. If you want to
confirm that the new application has been created, you can navigate
back over to the secure store service. When you are done poking around,
navigate back to the Manage service applications page.
Configuring the Search Service Application
Search is still the most awesome
feature SharePoint provides , is devoted to all things Search,
before you can have fun with those things you need to create the
service application. However, before creating Search, which is a
required service application, you should be aware that there is an easy
way and a right way. The easy way is to use Central Administration. If
you go that route, you just specify a name and some application pools
and it will provision it. The downside is you are left with databases
with some nasty names, which are not readily fixable. It does work,
however, so if you don’t care about awful names go for it.
We disdain databases with bad names, however, so
to create Search the “right” way you have to do everything with
PowerShell. The following code example represents the mother of all
scripts to perform the necessary magic. It should be run as
administrator from the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell. The version
shown here has been modified slightly from the script that Todd Klindt
has made available at www.toddklindt.com/createsearch2013, which is based on work done by Spence Harbar, whose blog is at www.harbar.net.
You can either download this script from Todd’s SharePoint blog or type
it all in. If you prefer to type it, note the following tips:
- You can skip any line that starts with a #, which is the PowerShell symbol for a comment.
- Make sure the second line of the following script contains your
service application pool name.
- Run this script on the server you want to be your primary search server. This script uses a variable to set the server name.
# Get App Pool - Make sure that is what your farm uses.
$saAppPoolName = "Default SharePoint Service App Pool"
# Search Specifics, we are single server farm
$searchServerName = (Get-ChildItem env:computername).value
$serviceAppName = "Search Service Application"
$searchDBName = "SearchService_DB"
# Grab the Appplication Pool for Service Application Endpoint
$saAppPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool $saAppPoolName
# Start Search Service Instances
Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance $searchServerName
Start-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceInstance $searchServerName
# Create the Search Service Application and Proxy
$searchServiceApp = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Name $serviceAppName
-ApplicationPool $saAppPoolName -DatabaseName $searchDBName
$searchProxy = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -Name "$serviceAppName
Proxy" -SearchApplication $searchServiceApp
# Clone the default Topology (which is empty) and create a new one and then
activate it
$clone = $searchServiceApp.ActiveTopology.Clone()
$searchServiceInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAdminComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance
$searchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchContentProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -
SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAnalyticsProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -
SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance
$searchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance
$searchServiceInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -
SearchServiceInstance $searchServiceInstance
$clone.Activate()
The script takes several minutes to run, but when
it is done Search is set up and ready to rock. Note that you should
make two changes now that the service application is created: change
the default content access account to a dedicated account and define a
Global Search Center.
Configuring the Secure Store Service
The Secure Store Service is used for
storing credentials for service applications such as PerformancePoint
and by developers who need to make external data connections and need a
location to map user credentials to other accounts. As an administrator
you don’t do much here, but this service application is required, so
this section demonstrates how to create the service application and
then generate an encryption key so it is ready to be used by service
applications and developers.
Follow these steps to create the service application:
1. From the Manage service applications screen, click the New button in the Ribbon.
2. From the menu, select Secure Store Service.
3. For Name, enter Secure Store Service.
4. For Database Name, enter Secure_Store_Service_DB (again knocking that GUID off the end of the name).
5. Scroll down to Application Pool and select Use existing application pool.
6. From the drop-down, select Default SharePoint Service App Pool.
7. Leave the check box for Audit log enabled selected.
8. At the bottom of the page click OK.
9. After a minute a dialog will pop up indicating that the service application was created successfully. Click OK.
To start the service:
1. Switch to the IE tab for Services on Server.
2. Find Secure Store Service and then click Start to the right of it.
With everything up and running there is still a
final task: you need to generate a key. Ensure that you keep track of
this key, because if you ever restore the database you will need it.
1. Switch back over to the Manage service applications tab in IE.
2. In the list
of service applications, click Secure Store Service. You should get in
the habit of clicking the top one when two are listed, but in this case
it actually doesn’t matter which one you click.
3. You can
ignore the red warning on the page, which is normal. From the Ribbon,
click the Generate New Key button in the Key Management section.
4. Here you
will be prompted for a new key. Enter the key twice and then click OK.
In this example, pass@word1 works well. Like the farm passphrase, the
key must meet certain requirements:
- It must contain at least eight characters.
- It must contain at least three of the following four character groups:
- English uppercase characters (A through Z)
- English lowercase characters (a through z)
- Numerals (0 through 9)
- Non-alphabetic characters: “! “ # $ % & ‘ ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~
5. After a
moment the screen will refresh and the New button will be an option.
Success! Switch back to the Manage service applications screen by
clicking Application Management ⇒ Manage service applications.
That does it. Your Secure Store is up and
running. If you created the PerformancePoint service application
earlier, now is the time to complete its configuration.
