Case study: KPI roll-up in MOSS (Part I)

Eric Proshuto is a Sr. Application Engineer for Siemens PLM Software, where he manages the intranet/extranet MOSS farm. He has been supporting SharePoint since early 2000 using SharePoint Team Services.
A couple weeks ago, Eric posted a very useful tip on my blog. I have built a case study to show how to put it to work. I sincerely hope that Eric can share a more complete, real life case study after he implements this in his company.

Note that this case study relies on the Content Query Web Part, only available in MOSS.

The scenario

Let’s consider the case of a division in a large organization, with dozens of business units that report project status on a daily basis. The Management needs visibility across business units on certain critical projects.

The figure below shows the organization structure. The SharePoint sites structure replicates it, with “Division” as the top-level site in the site collection.

To make everyone go to a central list to report projects health would make that list unwieldy at best. Instead, we’ll keep the reporting at the team level, and use SharePoint’s aggregation capabilities to build the Executive dashboard.

Update [6/27/2009] For more details on this information architecture choice, see this timely article from Bob Mixon:
SharePoint IA: Store Information Close to the Point of Ownership

Team dashboard

We are going to build a list template that each program or project team will use to report their project’s health. We’ll do this in 3 steps:
1/ Create site columns, at the site collection level
2/ Create the SharePoint list that hosts the dashboard
3/ Save the list as a template for reuse across the organization

Note: in a real life scenario, I would definitely consider using content types for added flexibility.

Site columns

For my example, I have chosen to track two indicators for each project: progress and health. In addition, we’ll have a column that precises the level of visibility of the project.

To reach the Site Column Gallery, follow this path:
Site Actions | Site Settings | Galleries | Site Columns

The % Complete column is already present in the list. Let’s add two choice columns:
- Health, with three options: (1) Red, (2) Yellow, (3) Green.
- Visibility, with three options: Team, Business Unit, Division.

And two calculated columns for the indicators:
- Progress, based on the % Complete:
="<div style='position:relative; width:50px; border: 1px solid;'><div style='background-color:"&CHOOSE(INT([% Complete]*10)+1,"red","red","OrangeRed","OrangeRed","DarkOrange","Orange","Gold","yellow","GreenYellow","LawnGreen","Lime")&"; width:"&([% Complete]*100)&"%;'> </div><div style='position:absolute; top:0px;'> "&TEXT([% Complete],"0%")&"</div></div>"

- Indicator, based on the Health:
="<img style='float:left;' src='/_layouts/images/KPIDefault-"&(3-RIGHT(LEFT(Health,2),1))&".gif' />"

SharePoint list

We’ll use a Tasks List type:

Site Actions | Create | Tracking | Tasks

The % Complete column is already there. Let’s add the 4 other site columns we created:
Settings | List Settings | Columns | Add from existing site columns.

The final touch is to add the script for the HTML calculated column (the instructions were initially posted here, but make sure you grab the updated version of the script). Your tasks list should now look like the above screenshot.

The list is ready, we can now save it as a template that all teams will use for their project:
Settings | List Settings | Save list as template

Note: the “Text to HTML” script will also be saved in the template.

In Part II, we’ll see how to roll up projects with executive visibility to the top level, and how the HTML calculated column plays well with the Content Query Web Part.