How Can I Use KPIs?

KPIs are created with the KPI Editor, which can be accessed as a standalone editor or within the "Scorecard editor." After you create and save KPIs, you can use them in the following ways:

• Building blocks of scorecards — You can create and assign KPIs to measure the progress and performance of your organization's strategies. Within a scorecard, you can define the objectives (goals such as "Decreased Operational Costs") and initiatives (processes or tasks such as "Form Cost Minimization Team") to which you assign KPIs to measure progress and performance. See "What Are Objectives?" for additional information about objectives. See "What Are Initiatives?" for additional information about initiatives.

• As an analysis — You can generate an analysis from a KPI. When you do so, Oracle BI EE saves the analysis to the catalog. You can include the analysis on a dashboard or as a related document in a scorecard, KPI watchlist, or KPI. Any dimension values that you pinned to the KPI before you output it as an analysis are included in the analysis. Pinning qualifies or filters the data that the user sees by assigning one or more values to the dimension. Drill-down is available on the analysis. Oracle BI EE refreshes the data for the analysis every time a user opens the analysis.

• Included in KPI watchlists — You can create a watchlist that contains a group of KPIs or to present one KPI several times with dimension values that are pinned to it. After you save the watchlist, it is available as a catalog object that you can add to dashboards or scorecards. When users access the watchlist, they can change the dimension values for the KPIs that are included in the watchlist. Note that scorecards can contain other types of watchlists, such as Initiatives & KPIs watchlist, Objectives & KPIs watchlist, and Breakdown watchlist. See"Understanding Watchlists" for additional information.

• Facilitate user interaction — If KPIs were added to a KPI watchlist or if they were added to objectives or initiatives inside a scorecard, then you can post comments to a KPI and read and reply to other users' comments. You can also contact the KPI's business owner with questions or comments about the KPI. And, if you are the business owner, you can override a KPI's status.

• Initiate actions — You can add an action link that when clicked in the KPI runs an associated action. For example, if the performance of a KPI for Internal Spending is too high, indicating excessive spending, then you could create an action link that when clicked, sends an email to the appropriate employees.

• Trigger agents — You can use a KPI's values, performance levels, and status to trigger a condition that initiates an agent alert. For example, you can define an agent that notifies you when the value of an Internal Costs KPI exceeds a certain dollar amount.