About the Point of View Area

The point of view area of the "Scorecard editor" displays controls for the dimensions of KPIs that are used in the Scorecard to measure the progress and performance of initiatives and objectives. See "What Are Dimensions and Pinned Dimension Values?" for additional information on KPI dimensions.

Controls are displayed for each KPI dimension that is referenced in a scorecard with the exception of those that you explicitly prevent from being displayed. If the same dimension is referenced in more than one KPI, then a control can be shared by the KPIs. See "Setting Up the Point of View Controls" for additional information on how to set up the controls in the point of view area.

Figure 12-5 shows a point of view area that displays the Region Hierarchy, Customer Segments, Offices Hierarchy, Products Hierarchy, and 2010/Q3 dimensions.

Each control includes a label and a down-arrow button that displays a list of the dimension values from which you can select. The label is either the database name for the dimension (by default), a user-friendly label, if specified for the control, or a specific value, if the dimension is pinned to a value.

You use this area to temporarily pin or set values for the dimensions. When you pin a dimension, the data in the scorecard is filtered to give you a new point of view (that is, a new view of the data). This enables you to focus on specific data of interest to you, such as the area of business for which you are responsible.

The point of view area settings are temporary and are not persisted when the scorecard is saved. To persist pinnings, you can use the:

• "Settings dialog: Dimension Settings tab" to affect all KPI usages within a scorecard.

• Dimensionality area in the "Analytics pane" of the "Scorecard editor: KPI Details tab" to pin the values for a particular KPI usage.

• "Add KPI dialog" (also displayed as the Edit Watchlist Entry dialog) in the "KPI Watchlist editor" to pin values for individual KPIs.

• "Dimension Pinnings dialog" to pin values in a view that has been added to a dashboard.

• "KPI editor: Dimensionality page" (also displayed as the Scorecard editor: KPI tab) to pin values in a KPIs definition. This approach is less flexible than when you let a KPI's definition be reusable in different contexts and pin only within views that reference the KPI.

The Scorecard editor also contains the Back and Forward buttons that enable you to move forward or backward through your point of view history to select a previous point of view or the point of view with which you started.

To temporarily pin a dimension:

1. Click the down-arrow button to the right of the dimension and select a value. The data is filtered and a new point of view is displayed.