Migrate from Project Insight to Another Solution

Keep My PI Data Accessible in its Familiar UX

1. Consult with PI to discuss minimal user licenses for continuation of the services.
2. Use PI for historical data lookup and retrieval only.

The above process is by far the easiest and safest option. As stated by the PMBOK, “A project can be defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.” The requirements for all current projects will close and this option is often no more than a year. Export the reporting data you want to keep and you’re done.

Export Critical Data

The best starting point is saved reports and data warehousing. You may have third-party tools gather and storing the report data as well. Reports saved by you and shared with you always contain the most meaningful data. Each can export to CSV and Excel.

1. Data warehouse extraction is already getting your most valuable information. Get the latest data and stop the update and purging. Consult with your SMEs on your data warehouse systems. Common data warehouse examples are Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse, Qlik and Tableau.
2. If you do not use data warehousing, view your reports in terms of the raw data as opposed to the presentation. A chart doesn’t need to be saved, but rather the data you’ll use for charting elsewhere. Remove Group By to keep the data flat and re-apply the grouping in other tools, such as Excel.

Compliance Requirements

Does compliance require maintaining all data in its original format for a set period? If you can’t maintain a minimal user license as suggested earlier, take the following steps.

1. Contact PI service requesting the full database extraction in its native PI schema.
2. Reference the duration of time for which you’ll need to maintain the data. For example, you're required to maintain it for seven years.
3. Store a record of the login information to PI for a system administrator. Make sure this login information does not require SSO.
4. Consider that making your data easily usable will require a new deployment of PI in a dedicated environment. This will upgrade the database to the latest PI version. Although the data is available in the database without using PI, much of what you’re used to seeing in PI is presented by executing stored procedures and JavaScript for web browser use.

As we often advise customers migrating from other systems to PI, you decided to change your project execution procedures, so let's change them. Leave the data formatting and routines from the prior system behind and move forward under the guidance of your new provider.