• Article

Workflow

Updated: 2009-04-30

Enabling e-mail notifications in Planning Server enables approvers, reviewers, and contributors to receive e-mail notifications when users are assigned to forms, which means they have an assignment to begin. Notifications are also sent when assignments are submitted, approved, reviewed, or rejected.

Note

Refer to Planning Business Modeler Help for more information about submitting, reviewing, approving, and rejecting assignments.

When setting preferences you must be aware that during the OLAP cube refresh interval the partitions for each fact table are checked. If any of these partitions are dirty then the cube reprocesses itself. Analysis Services will only reread the data from dirty partitions in the fact tables so this limits the amount of time that it takes to transfer updated data from the SQL tables to the Analysis Services cubes. Additionally, the cube requires calculation time before it can begin publishing the new data. During processing the old data is still available, so there is no down time. After these processes complete, the assignments that were waiting for processing are marked either Partial or Submitted, as required.

There are no simple guidelines for setting the OLAP cube refresh interval. Small data submission volumes typically require lower interval settings, either in minutes or seconds. Large or extremely large data volumes where immediate access is not required can use values set in hours. It depends mainly on how quickly the data is needed and whether or not the server hardware can handle the increased workload.

Set preferences

To set workflow preferences

  1. In the OLAP cube refresh interval box, type the number of seconds before cubes are reprocessed to include newly submitted data.

  2. To enable e-mail notifications, select the Enable notifications check box, and complete the remaining steps in this procedure. To disable notifications, clear the Enable notifications check box, and click Submit.

  3. In the SMTP server name box, type the name of the outgoing notification mail server. This server must be in the same domain as the computer that is running Planning Web Service, or it must be in a trusted domain.

    Example: smtphost.fabrikam.com

  4. In the Sender e-mail address box, type the e-mail address that you want to appear in the From line of notification messages. This account must be mail enabled.

  5. In the Web service computer URL box, type the URL for the computer that is running the Planning Web Service.

  6. Click Submit.

To reset workflow preferences to default settings

  1. To reset workflow preferences to the default settings, click Reset Defaults. The default settings are described in the following table.

    Field name Default setting

    OLAP cube refresh interval (seconds)

    60

    Enable notifications

    Disabled

  2. Click Submit.

Users can click a hyperlink within their assignment notification e-mail (or on a SharePoint Web page) to start PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel on their client computer and then open the appropriate assignment. However, administrators must enable this feature by running a command on client computers that installs the PerformancePointProtocolHandler.exe file. The command can be configured to install per user or per computer.

The Web links use the following syntax:

PerformancePoint:http:\\< server name >:< port number >&application=< application name >&assignment=< assignment number >

Follow this procedure on each client computer from which users will access assignments. PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel must be installed on the client computer.

  1. From a command prompt, locate <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Excel Client.

  2. To install PerformancePointProtocolHandler.exe, use one of the following options:

    • To install the feature per user, type PerformancePointProtocolHandler.exe –REGISTER:U, and then press Enter.

    • To install the feature per computer, type PerformancePointProtocolHandler.exe –REGISTER:M, and then press Enter.

  3. To uninstall the Web link feature, locate the same directory and type PerformancePointProtocolHandler.exe –UNREGISTER, and then press Enter.

    See "Create a Web link to an assignment" in Planning Business Modeler Help for information about how to create links in assignment e-mail notifications and on SharePoint Web parts.

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 Planning Server.