Business intelligence with Power BI

Business intelligence

Power BI: know exactly what you have — every file found, what was migrated, when, and where it lives in Nextcloud now.

One report for before, during and after

Before you move

Scope and budget the work on what is actually there: how much, how old, how deep, and how much of it nobody has opened in years — including the content that does not need moving at all.

While it runs

Progress a steering group can read, rather than a console only the person running the migration understands: which waves have gone, what volume has moved, and what needs a decision before the next one.

When it closes

The handover document: what was migrated, from where, when, and what was left behind on purpose — and years later, the answer to where a file came from.

For a standing copy kept by a recurring job, the report is also the evidence of when each protected set was last refreshed. See Digital Resilience Operation (DORA)

What the report shows

Planning: sites and document libraries, OneDrives and file shares; file volumes, age and activity, file types, version history and storage.
Metadata: retention and sensitivity labels, content types, dates, authors — and every metadata column of every SharePoint library, collected in one place. All of it can be filtered on.
Monitoring: job status, migration progress, the status of every file, throughput, errors and exceptions, and the corrective actions they call for.
Documentation: a complete inventory of the files, their source and destination, the migration result, metadata and version information, the successful and the failed migrations, and a file lookup — where did this file go?

The report is version-aware: it counts the full version volume of SharePoint files, not only the current file size, which makes it a sounder basis for sizing the migration, estimating its duration and planning the destination's storage.

Every file once, with its status

The report is not only a view of what Discovery found: it is the status of every file. A file found by Discovery is listed as Discovery Report; a Test Migration turns the same row to Test Migration, and a migration that moves it to Migration, with where it went. Each file is in the report once — from SharePoint, OneDrive and file shares alike — so it shows how far the migration has come, which files are still to go, and where each migrated file landed. A migrated file that a later Discovery finds changed goes back to Discovery Report.

Every file's row links to the run that handled it: clicking its Job link opens the SMART Migration app on that run.

From the report to a job

The report is also where a selection of files is made: filter it down to the files you want, then hand them to a job.

Way	How the files reach the job	Kept current
File List CSV	Exported from the report to a CSV file in Nextcloud Files; the job migrates the files on the list	No: the list is fixed when it is exported, at most 30,000 files per export
Dynamic BI data query — under development	A DAX query recorded from the report, or a SQL WHERE clause, that SMART Migration applies to the BI data at every run	Yes: each run takes the files that match then

An incremental Discovery keeps the BI data — and so the report and the query — in step with the documents every night: see Incremental runs: only the files changed since the last run

Run History decides what the report holds

The report holds the runs that are in Run History. Every run's results are kept in the reporting database; deleting a Run History row purges that run's data from the reporting database too, before the row is removed for good. A file belongs to the run that last reported it, so a later run that found the file changed keeps it in the report: deleting the earlier run purges only the files no later run has taken over — see Run History. Each run carries its job's group, so the report can show the migration wave by wave. A run's title, description, tags and group, changed in Run History, are written into the reporting database too, on SMART Migration's next check.

A change reaches the report only when SMART BI.pbix is refreshed: data added by new runs and data removed by deleted rows alike. See Refresh, upload and share SMART BI.pbix

Keep the data set tight and relevant

Because Run History is the report's data foundation, keeping the report relevant is a matter of keeping Run History relevant. To take something out of the reports, delete the Run History rows that hold it:

a trial run on a library you were only testing with,
a Discovery of a library that turned out to be out of scope,
an older run of the same job that a newer one replaces, or that adds nothing,
duplicate runs — the Duplicates filter on the Run History tab finds them.

Not for an incremental job — one with Incremental (only files changed since the last successful run) on: each of its runs holds only the changes since the one before, so no newer run replaces an older one. Keep them all. See Incremental runs: only the files changed since the last run

Archiving a run is not the same: an archived run is only put away out of everyday work, and its data stays in the report. Pin the runs that must stay, such as the record of a signed-off wave, so they are not deleted by mistake.

Important

The Dashboard shows the state of the BI data: while SMART Migration still has deleted runs to purge, the mark on the Dashboard's Power BI heading turns red and says how many, and an amber mark beside it says how many changed runs it has still to update; once both have cleared, it is green Up to date — refresh the report then.

See Run History

The reporting database

The reporting database is PostgreSQL 18.3 or newer: free and open source, with no storage limit and no licence cost on any number of cores, and about twice as fast as SQL Server for the queries Power BI runs. The SMART Migration installer sets it up by default.

SMART Migration writes the BI data into it in real time, while each Discovery and Migration run is under way. A refresh of SMART BI.pbix runs on the PC that holds the report and takes what the database holds at that moment: anyone whose PC has a connection to the database can refresh it — see Refresh, upload and share SMART BI.pbix

Microsoft SQL Server is not supported for the app's report

With the Nextcloud app and its Power BI report, the reporting data is kept in PostgreSQL only; Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL included, is not supported for it. SQL Server can hold the BI data only in setups of your own, without the app's report. See How SMART Migration installs: the repository and the BI database

The database can run on the SMART Migration server itself, on another machine the server can reach, or as a hosted service. For tens of millions of files it is a server of its own, sized for it — and so is the computer that refreshes the report: see Size the servers for a large migration

Its tables are ordinary tables, modelled for reporting, so any BI tool can read them directly — Tableau, Qlik, Looker or Excel among them. The supplied report is a head start, not a requirement.

Power BI: a free program, and an optional paid portal

SMART BI.pbix is a Power BI file, and it opens in either form of Power BI:

Power BI Desktop — free for everyone

A Windows program Microsoft gives away: no licence to buy and no subscription needed to open and refresh the report. What the report is built for, and all most projects need.

The Power BI service — optional, with a licence fee

Microsoft's online portal, for publishing reports within an organisation. Publish the report there from Power BI Desktop only if you want it read in the browser and refreshed on a schedule — under paid Power BI licences of your own. Nothing in SMART Migration needs it.

Free for everyone

Power BI Desktop is free, for everyone. Anyone can download it from Microsoft and open SMART BI.pbix at no cost — the project team, managers, auditors, the owners of each library, a partner or a customer. The report can therefore be shared as a file, by mail or in a Team Folder, and opened by whoever receives it, with no licence to buy.

Only the Power BI service — Microsoft's portal for publishing reports within an organisation — carries a licence fee. Publishing there is optional.

Nextcloud has no Power BI viewer, so the report is downloaded from the Dashboard and opened in Power BI Desktop, or published to the Power BI service by your organisation. The Dashboard's Business Intelligence section, which explains the report, is hidden until asked for: Architecture beside Power BI shows it. Never used Power BI? "Power BI for first-time users" explains it from the start.

A self-contained file: the project's documentation

A refresh copies the data from the reporting database into the file, and from then on the file carries it: it opens anywhere, without the database, the server or the app — as the Getting Started tab shows. Every copy keeps the data of the moment it was refreshed, which makes the saved file the project's documentation at that date: keep a copy at every milestone, with its refresh date in its name, and the last one is the handover record when the project closes.

Yours to adapt

The report is open: remove the visuals you do not need, add your own visuals, pages and measures, and give it your own look.

See also