The Legacy Application Data Explorer (LADE) is a Power BI Application which acts as a one stop shop for accessing data from decommissioned legacy applications. 

The Apps simple design and functionality is built to allow a broad audience of non-technical users to self-serve their own data.


Why is this App needed?

This app has be born out of necessity following a review of the Legacy Applications. 


One the one hand we have a growing and aging legacy application estate. With that comes a large support burden, bloated licencing costs and a growing security risk. 

One the other hand we have a business requirement to retain the information held within these applications. This could be due to financial record keeping rules, audit requirements, to facilitate subject access requests or simply because the business still need the data to operate. 

This app aims to close that gap by allowing the Apps and their aging IT Infrastructure to be decommissioned whilst also meeting our data retention obligations. 


Key Information

  • The App is hosted in the Power BI Service at Powerbi.com. 
  • All users in the group have access to the Welcome Page of the Legacy Application Data Explorer App which can be found here: https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/apps/4d42834a-b37c-4baa-b7e6-231e729ff58b/reports/e4f502cb-39c5-462f-bd08-cb4e9f42c7c0/ReportSection?experience=power-bi
  • This URL is available via the Vistry Links favourites in web browsers under the Legacy folder. 
  • At the initial go live there will be just two reports; SunSystems and SunSystems - Bank accounts. Subbies will follow shortly after and then reports for other Legacy Apps will be prioritised and added in the following weeks / months. 
  • There is a Report per Legacy application and access to those reports is controlled using Power BI Audiences with one audience per report. 
  • Access can be requested by the users via the Fresh Service Catalogue under Core Application Access or by following the link to the request form from the Welcome Page in the Legacy Application Data Explorer app. 
  • Fresh service will automatically add the requested user to the required AD group after approval has been granted. 
  • The Power BI datasets and reports are managed in the Legacy Application Data Explorer Power BI workspace. Admin access to this workspace can be granted by adding the user to one of the two AD groups listed here:


GRP.PowerBI-Workspace-All-Admin 

GRP.PowerBI-Workspace-Legacy_App_Data_Explorer-Admin


How does it work?

The diagram below describes how the data from the legacy applications is brought to SQL Azure and then surfaced in Power BI.