• Article

Installing Dashboard Designer using an MSI Installer file

Updated: 2009-04-16

It may be necessary to install Dashboard Designer using an installation technology other than ClickOnce. This article covers the steps necessary to take the ClickOnce installation files and encapsulate them inside a custom Microsoft Installer File (MSI). These steps are presented as guidelines and should be used only as an example of one possible way to accomplish this task.

Important

The following procedures are presented to aid you in this process and are not guaranteed to work in every environment. They should be implemented and used as-is and without warranty. These procedures are recommended only with the exact tools and software listed below and to be used only by trained professionals familiar with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and manual code editing.

Create a new MSI Project in Visual Studio 2008

Use this process to create a new MSI project. This procedure must be done first.

MSI Installer Setup

  1. Open Visual Studio 2008.

  2. From the File menu, click New, and then select Project.

  3. In the New Project dialog box, expand Other Project Types and then select Setup and Deployment.

  4. Select Setup Project, and then click OK.

    The project opens and the File System tab is shown. If the File System tab is now shown, it can be activated from the Solution Explorer toolbar.

  5. Right-click the project you have created, and then select Properties.

  6. Change your project's configuration to All Configurations, and then click OK.

Building the MSI project into a new MSI file

Use this process to create and build a new MSI file that can be used to install Dashboard Designer.

Add source files and build the MSI

  1. Using Windows Explorer, open the \Dashboard Designer directory. The default location is: %Program Files%\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\DesignerInstall\3.0.

  2. Edit the configuration file to set the correct URL to the default instance of PerformancePoint Monitoring Server.

  3. Using Notepad.exe, open the PSCBuilder.exe.config file, which is found in the \3.0 directory listed in step 1.

  4. Locate the xml tag <Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ModelerWorkspace.Properties.Settings>.

  5. Within that tag, change the value of PmService to the value of the desired default server's PmService.

    Example: <value>http://production-server:40000/WebService/PmService.asmx</value>

  6. Save the configuration file.

  7. Drag all files in the \3.0 directory into Visual Studio and drop them on the Application Folder.

    Note

    You are ready to build; a generic MSI file will be created, with generic dialog boxes and no prerequisite checking. Optionally, you can add shortcuts to the desktop and program files from the File System tab. Optionally, if you want to add custom UI, you can do so by using the UI Editor (launched from the Solution Explorer toolbar).

  8. You can now deploy Dashboard Designer using the *.msi files found in your build folder.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for PerformancePoint Monitoring Server.

See Also