Implementing KPIs Manually

KPIs entered manually are not very useful. These indicators are simply items for which you enter the value, goal, and warning; they are not connected to any other source of data. Updating manual KPIs means editing the KPI itself, and because they do not represent any body of data, the action that they drive is not clear. However, these KPIs can be useful for quickly prototyping the KPI concept so that you can enlist support for a full KPI project. Also, they can be used in conjunction with other KPIs such as SharePoint list KPIs to capture an item that isn’t data driven or is external to your organization. An example of this might be the number of people who participated in the last blood drive or the number of games the softball team won.

Ideally, manual KPIs would be items that do not change frequently so that you do not have to hire a whole crew of KPI-updaters to gather the data and enter the changes every day or every week. To create a manual KPI, follow these steps:

1.	Navigate to the KPI list to which you would like to add the manual indicator. If you do not already have a KPI list, follow these steps: a. Open the site that you want to host your KPI list and click View All Site Content in the left navigation. b. Click Create in the top navigation bar. c. Select KPI list from the Custom List section. d. Enter the title and description for your KPI list and click Create.
2.	Select Indicator using manually entered information from the New menu.
3.	Enter the name of the indicator in the Name field and the comments to help explain the value or status.
4.	Enter the KPI value of the indicator in the Value field. This is the field that will be manually updated when the value changes.
5.	Set the status icon rules. Choose whether better values are higher/lower. If you choose lower, your goal value will be lower than your warning value. Enter the goal (green) and warning (yellow) values as shown in Figure 16.24. Figure 16.24. Configuring an indicator from manually entered data [View full size image]
6.	Enter the details page in the Details Link section for drilling down on the indicator. If no page is entered, a default details page appears when the user clicks.
7.	Select OK.

A manual indicator appears just like the others that are created from SharePoint, Analysis Services, and Excel. Figure 16.25 shows the manual KPI, softball wins, in the list with our indicators from dynamic sources. Values, goals, and warnings that are configured in the indicator itself are shown in this view, whereas dynamic values are not retrieved.

Figure 16.25. A KPI that is created from a manual entry

[View full size image]