Most organisations that run SSRS estates have far more reports than they need. The instinct at migration time is to move everything across. The projects that go well take a different approach - they treat the migration as a chance to stop running reports nobody reads.
This playbook covers the audit-first approach that typically retires over 60 percent of an SSRS estate before a single report is migrated, the choice between paginated and interactive destinations for what remains, and how to use the migration to consolidate rather than replicate.
Audit-first migrations typically retire over 60 percent of the SSRS estate.
Why SSRS migrations go wrong - and what to do instead
Most migrations treat every report as worth keeping. The ones that succeed start with a usage audit that surfaces which reports are actually used, by whom, and for what decision. Everything else is a candidate for retirement.
Paginated or interactive: choosing the right destination
Not every SSRS report should become an interactive Power BI dashboard. Paginated reports in Power BI exist precisely because some outputs need to be printable, pixel-perfect, and data-dense. Getting the destination right is where migration quality is decided.
What the playbook covers
- The audit-first approach that identifies which reports are worth migrating
- How to retire over 60 percent of a typical SSRS estate before migration begins
- The criteria for choosing paginated versus interactive Power BI as the destination
- How to use the migration as a consolidation opportunity rather than a direct replacement
- The sequencing and change management that keeps users on side throughout
Who this is for
IT leads, BI teams, and data managers responsible for migrating a legacy SSRS estate to Power BI, particularly those looking to reduce report sprawl alongside the technical migration.