Power BI

• What Power BI is
• How SMART Migration uses it
• Prebuilt reports
• What you need
• Read more

What Power BI is

Power BI is Microsoft's tool for turning a large amount of data into charts, tables, figures and filter boxes that answer to each other: pick something in one, and every other visual on the page shows only what matches. A report is one file (.pbix) with one or more pages.

Free for everyone: Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is free. Anyone can download it from Microsoft and open and refresh the SMART Migration reports at no cost — no licence, no subscription and no Microsoft account. The project team, managers, auditors, a partner or a customer can all open the report file.

The reports are included in the SMART Migration licence for the Nextcloud app and the Teams app; there is nothing extra to buy from SMART Migration.

Only the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com), Microsoft's portal for publishing reports within an organisation, carries a licence fee from Microsoft. It is optional, and neither app needs it. Power BI Desktop runs on Windows only.

Download Power BI Desktop (free): Microsoft's Power BI Desktop page · direct download of the 64-bit installer

How SMART Migration uses it

This applies to the Nextcloud app and the Teams app only. The IDE has no prebuilt report; it records its migration data in a database that you can read with Power BI or any other reporting tool.

1. Every run is recorded

   Every Discovery and Migration run records each file it handled — where it is, its size, versions, dates, labels, metadata and what happened to it — in the PostgreSQL reporting database.

2. A refresh copies the data into the report

   Someone who can reach the database through the SMARTBI ODBC data source opens the report in Power BI Desktop and clicks Refresh. The data is copied into the file, so the report shows the migration as it was at its last refresh.

3. The report stands on its own

   The saved .pbix file carries its own data: anyone can open it without the database, credentials or SMART Migration, and it stays usable after the project is over — for sign-off, audit and the question where did this file go?

The report serves three moments of a migration: before (scope and budget on what is there: volume including versions, age, activity, what can stay behind), during (progress, status of every file, errors) and after (the handover document and the file lookup).

Prebuilt reports

Prebuilt reports for the Nextcloud app and the Teams app

Ready-made Power BI reports are available for the Nextcloud app and for the Microsoft Teams app: SMARTBI_Files.pbix for both, and SMARTBI_Job.pbix for job monitoring in the Teams app. You do not build a report: open it, refresh it and filter it. Power BI reporting is included in the Nextcloud app and Teams app licences.

Two reports are prebuilt:

Report	What it is for	Nextcloud app	Teams app
SMARTBI_Files.pbix	The Files page: a filter for nearly everything known about a file, and the status of every file from Discovery to Migration. See A tour of the SMART BI report.	Yes	Yes
SMARTBI_Job.pbix	Job monitoring.	No — the Nextcloud app has its Dashboard for this	Yes

The reports are yours to change in Power BI Desktop; your SMART Migration partner can help adapt them.

What you need

• Power BI Desktop — free from Microsoft, for Windows. It opens and refreshes the report with no licence and no Microsoft account. The SMART Migration installer can set it up (optional).
• The Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) is optional and the only part of Power BI with a licence fee; it is for publishing a report within an organisation. Neither app talks to it.
• An ODBC data source to the PostgreSQL database. The prebuilt reports read the reporting database over ODBC, so a data source (a 64-bit ODBC DSN) named SMARTBI, pointing at the PostgreSQL database, must exist on the computer that refreshes the report. It needs the PostgreSQL ODBC driver (x64), an optional install. Without it the report still opens and shows the data of its last refresh, but it cannot refresh. See Hardware/VM requirements.
• Memory: the report is held in the computer's memory while open, and a refresh needs up to twice that. To analyse many millions of rows — a migration of tens of millions of files — you need powerful hardware with a lot of memory, sometimes 96 GB. See Power BI tips.

Read more

Power BI tips · Power BI for first-time users · Business intelligence with Power BI · Refresh, upload and share SMART BI.pbix · Licence matrix · Hardware/VM requirements · Microsoft Teams App