If you want to become your boss’ best friend, you need to impress him with great graphics and meaningful diagrams :). One way to achieve this goal is using the Service Manager Dashboard. It is based on SharePoint and can be used to visualize Information from the Service Manager Data Warehouse.
First of all, you need to download WSS3.0 and the Service Manager Dashboard, both for free! For a detailed list of other requirements see the Guide.
I used to install the WSS3.0 directly on the Service Manager Management Server. Sure, that is not a best practice, but it’s OK for testing purposes. I chose “Basic” and installed everything using the default values.
The wizard to configure the WSS will automatically be started when the Installation finished successfully. It takes some minutes to configure WSS completely. Afterwards, the platform is ready and can be used to integrate the Service Manager Dashboard. Check if the new website works as expected by connecting to WSS.
Now it’s time to start the Installation of the Dashboard. First, some credentials are needed as well as the Servername (and maybe the Instance name) where the Data Warehouse is hosted. The correct Database we need for the Dashboard is the “DWDataMart”.
Next, we need to select the Site owner and the related mail address. To store information from the Dashboard, a new database needs to be created in an existing SQL Instance. In this example i chose the same Instance where the ServiceManager-Database is stored. As a last step, a URL/Port combination is needed to connect to the Dashboard later.
After the installation is successfully done, the Dashboard is accessible by using the configured URL. Different menus and webparts display information about Incidents, Change Requests and Activities. Everything is customizable the way you need it. Make sure to configure the date/time filter of the different webparts so that all needed information is displayed. Here are some impressions …
You can edit, arrange and remove the different webparts so that only the relevant pieces of information are displayed on the portal.
The presented Screenshots do not contain lots of information because they have been taken in a test environment with very few data, but the Dashboard will indeed provide very valuable information in your environment. Give it a try …
Regards
Marcel
marcelzehner.ch 
Hi Marcal,
I have successfully installed the Dashboard. However I canot view the web parts when I open the Console from a local PC. I can view it through a browser.
Is this a permision issue?
I have given read only access to a AD group through SharePoint Site settings.
Thanks in Advance.
ozge
Hey
To make the dashboard accessible from the Service Manager console, you must import a Management Pack Bundle into Service Manager. Check this –> http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dwreportingdashboards/thread/b0c2f148-ba41-4c91-b1f9-6c2cdf4cf273/.
regards
Marcel
I did import the MP. I think I didnt make myself clear.
I have no problem with displaying the dashboard on the console on the management server. However when I open the console on a client PC, I see the Dashboard views but not the content. It says “Navigation to the webpage was canceled”
Hi there. I am having problems installing the dashboard. I keep getting can not connect to SQL.
We have a 6 server setup.
server01 is where the data warehouse database is still. the instance for this is wsql1\scsm_instance1
server02 is where the service manager database is still. the instance for this is wsql2\scsm_instance2
server03 is the dataware house server
server04 is the server manager server
server05 is the reporting server
server06 is the portal server.
No worries, I have managed to install this.
Hey
Good to hear that!
Cheers
Marcel
Hi,
You can download Expit EnSight which is an advanced dashboard and analytics platform for SCSM 2012.
http://expit.com/expit-ensight-for-scsm-2012/m/60
Regards,
Subhan