Customer Challenge
Modernize a legacy reporting estate without losing operational control
The customer had a substantial SSRS estate with reports, shared and embedded data sources, scheduled subscriptions, and multiple migration readiness states. The team needed a reliable way to understand what each report actually used before moving workloads into Power BI and Microsoft Fabric.
A key discovery issue was that report names and connection names did not always reveal the underlying technology. A source could be named like an enterprise data warehouse while the RDL definition identified SQL Server, or a report could depend on a shared source that was invisible to a simple embedded-source review.
Solution Delivered
A governed assessment and migration playbook
AI Edge structured the work as a repeatable seven-stage process: assess the SSRS estate, capture migration inputs, run the RDL migration toolkit, verify publication, configure the migration notebook, map approved gateway connections, and validate the resulting Power BI report.
Ground-truth source discovery
SQL and XML-based discovery queries distinguished shared from embedded sources and read the actual RDL provider rather than relying on report naming.
Safe migration execution
Notebook controls supported simulation first, with explicit checks for workspace, report, provider, connection, and source replacement parameters before applying changes.
Subscription inventory
Inventory queries separated subscription definitions from execution history and identified standard versus data-driven subscriptions for redesign planning.
Reversible retirement
Preview, backup, guarded disablement, archive movement, validation, and rollback procedures reduced the risk of retiring legacy content.
Implementation Drivers
Evidence before scale
- Start with a reference report to demonstrate the full migration path before expanding to the wider estate.
- Keep source-data remediation, access provisioning, RDL business-logic changes, and subscription recreation as explicit planning boundaries.
- Use gateway mapping as a controlled operational step, with administrator access and approved connection details confirmed before production migration.
- Separate reports that are ready for owners from access issues and paused items so each wave has a clear next action.
Business Value Delivered
A clearer path from legacy reporting to governed analytics
Better migration decisions
Source technology and dependency evidence reduced guesswork during wave planning.
Repeatable execution
A reference process connected discovery, migration, gateway mapping, and validation.
Controlled retirement
Subscription disablement and archive procedures were designed to be previewable and reversible.
Clearer ownership
Readiness categories gave report owners and platform teams a shared action list.
Customer and delivery-partner names are not disclosed. The case study describes the documented migration approach and assessment status; production outcomes, commercial figures, and customer quotations are intentionally not inferred.