Converting from SAP BusinessObjects Crystal Reports 2013 to Power BI

[Mkerr]

Ok so I hope this has not been asked before but I have been researching and havent really found anyone doing the same conversions I am looking at doing so I apologize if it has been asked.

We are currently using Crystal Reports 2013 to create reports for users to run as needed with certain parameters that they input to generate a report and from of some of the tutorials I have seen it seems that paginated reports in BI will be a good replacement(I hope). We also have many reports that are made that generate csv files and place them on a shared drive on daily intervals at different times. So here are a few questions that I have.

1. Can I create a report in Power BI to auto generate a csv file and pass that file, on whatever schedule I choose, to a shared drive?

• If so what are the limitations to such a task? is there a limit to how many scheduled tasks that can exist or is that limit scaled by network and server ability and storage?
• If so is this a native supported task or do I need have all sorts of extensions or use programming languages to build the capability? (BusinessObjects this is a super simple process)
• If not what are my options for achieving such a task?

2. With existing Crystal reports does Power BI have the ability to host these files similar to Business Objects or will each and every report need to be remade by hand into Paginated Reports? 

3. Is there a conversion tool to convert from Crystal Reports to Power BI? (had to ask but I have seen very few conversion products ever work in other languages I have worked on)

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

Because you posted in the Report Server forum which deals with the on-prem report server my answers are in that context. If you are using the powerbi.com cloud service the first answer would be different

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@Mkerr wrote:

Ok so I hope this has not been asked before but I have been researching and havent really found anyone doing the same conversions I am looking at doing so I apologize if it has been asked.

We are currently using Crystal Reports 2013 to create reports for users to run as needed with certain parameters that they input to generate a report and from of some of the tutorials I have seen it seems that paginated reports in BI will be a good replacement(I hope). We also have many reports that are made that generate csv files and place them on a shared drive on daily intervals at different times. So here are a few questions that I have.

1. Can I create a report in Power BI to auto generate a csv file and pass that file, on whatever schedule I choose, to a shared drive?

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You can only schedule paginated reports to export on a scheduled basis. You can choose whatever schedule you like and it's simple to setup, you choose any parameters you need, specify when the report needs to run and choose an output (usually either email or shared drive) and a file format. I'm not aware of any hard limit on the number of schedules, as you suggest it would come down to the capacity on your server.

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@Mkerr wrote:

2. With existing Crystal reports does Power BI have the ability to host these files similar to Business Objects or will each and every report need to be remade by hand into Paginated Reports? 

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No it can only run paginated reports so you will have to remake them by hand.

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@Mkerr wrote:

3. Is there a conversion tool to convert from Crystal Reports to Power BI? (had to ask but I have seen very few conversion products ever work in other languages I have worked on)

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There are no tools that come "out of the box" for doing this. There are some third party tools you can find if you google for them, but I have no idea what they are like.

[Mkerr]

Thank you for the reply! I think I was expecting the last two answers but was unsure of the first so that helps a lot, I am not looking forward to rewriting all of these reports but a new skill can be obtained out of this I guess. Thank you very much!