Migrate from Power BI to Holistics

This is the overview of the migration process from Power BI → Holistics:

1. Convert your .pbix file to a .pbip project

By converting to a pbip project, the semantic model is exposed in TMDL and measures are exposed in DAX

In Power BI, go to File > Save As > Power BI Project (*.pbip)

2. Connect Holistics to your data warehouse

3. Migrate the project one concept at a time:

• (Optional) Move heavy ETL out of Power Query (M) into upstream SQL or dbt
• Convert PBI tables to Holistics models (table or query type)
• Convert relationships to Holistics dataset relationships
• Convert DAX measures to AQL or SQL metrics
• Convert calculated columns to dimensions
• Rebuild reports as Holistics dashboards

4. Validation:

• Compare a sample of measure values between PBI and Holistics
• Re-create one report end-to-end and review with a stakeholder before scaling out

Items that need manual migration

A few Power BI features map to Holistics concepts that live outside the .pbip project, so they can't be lifted from TMDL or JSON. Plan to re-create them manually:

Power BI	Holistics equivalent	Notes
Data alerts	Alerts	Re-create thresholds and recipients in Holistics.
Scheduled refresh / subscription	Schedule & email reports	Holistics schedules send dashboard snapshots; no warehouse refresh job needed.
Embed in app / Publish to web	Embedded analytics	Embed tokens and iframe URLs must be reissued.
Share link / publish to web link	Shareable link	Generate fresh links in Holistics and update any docs / wikis that point to PBI.

Each of these has a Holistics REST API you can use to bulk-create them from a CSV or script, which is the fastest path when you have dozens of alerts or embeds to migrate.

Project structure

If you're used to a .pbip folder layout, here's how the same project looks in Holistics:

power-bi-project/                   holistics-project/
  project.pbip                        models/
  project.Dataset/                      tables/
    definition/                           orders.model.aml
      model.tmdl                          users.model.aml
      tables/orders.tmdl                queries/
      tables/users.tmdl                   active_users.model.aml
      expressions.tmdl  (M code)
  project.Report/                     datasets/
    definition.pbir                     ecommerce.dataset.aml
    report.json                         marketing.dataset.aml
                                      dashboards/
                                        sales.page.aml
                                        performance.page.aml

Agentic migration process

With the above conceptual mapping, a coding agent with the holistics-migrate-power-bi skill can handle migration smoothly.

Prerequisites

Before you run the skill:

• A .pbip export of Power BI
  • In Power BI Desktop, go to File > Save As > Power BI Project (*.pbip).
  • Turn off Auto date/time to keep LocalDateTable_* artifacts out of TMDL.
• A warehouse Holistics can connect to
• Holistics project set up for local development
• The holistics-migrate-power-bi skill installed

Run the migration

Open your Holistics project in the IDE, drop the .pbip folder alongside it, and send one prompt:

/holistics-migrate-power-bi migrate this power bi project into holistics

The workflow runs through the project in seven phases:

1. Inventory: read TMDL, DAX, relationships, report JSON; list warehouse schemas
2. Models: write one .model.aml per Power BI table, validate after each
3. Dataset: write .dataset.aml with models and relationships
4. Metrics: convert DAX to AQL
5. Dashboard: write .page.aml canvas dashboard with filters, visuals, and layout
6. Parity: run metrics across dimension combinations, compare totals against Power BI
7. Sync: holistics sync-code to push to Holistics

Validation checklist

After the migration finishes, sanity-check the result before handing it to stakeholders:

• Project compiles cleanly (holistics aml validate)
• Dataset diagram view shows the same star schema as Power BI
• Each DAX measure has a corresponding AQL metric, and totals match for a known date range
• Role-playing date relationships (active vs inactive) resolve the same joins Power BI used
• Dashboard pages mirror the Power BI report's layout and totals
• Row-level security rules produce the same row counts per user

Additional resources

• Conceptual Differences
• Project Structure
• Local development with AI agents
• Quickstart
• AML Documentation