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Switching from Databricks AI/BI: what to export, what carries over, and how to run both

A practical guide to moving a team's questions off Databricks AI/BI: what to export, how the data maps, what carries over, and running both side by side.

By CoviragePublished 24 September 20263 min read
The short answerMoving a desk's questions off Databricks AI/BI starts with the exports behind them, not the dashboards. Dashboard datasets can be downloaded as CSV or TSV (up to about 1 GB) or Excel (up to 1,000,000 rows), and visualisations as PNG. Dashboards support scheduled email or Slack subscriptions, iframe embedding and REST API management; underlying tables remain in Unity Catalog and can be read by any tool that connects to Databricks. Take the source files your systems already produce, map their columns once, and run both side by side for a month so every figure can be checked against the one people know.

Teams move a desk off Databricks AI/BI for ordinary reasons, and most keep it for other work. This guide is about the practical part: what to take out, what to bring, and how to check the new figures against the old ones.

Why teams move a desk's questions

  • AI/BI works on data registered in Unity Catalog, so teams not already on Databricks would first need to adopt the platform.
  • Genie spaces are built and tuned by analysts or a data team, which may be more set-up than a small team without data staff can provide.
  • Costs are consumption-based (DBUs for warehouse compute and Genie usage beyond the free allowance), which some finance teams find harder to forecast than a fixed licence.
  • Genie answer quality depends on well-documented tables and curated context, so poorly described schemas may need work first.

What to export from Databricks AI/BI

Dashboard datasets can be downloaded as CSV or TSV (up to about 1 GB) or Excel (up to 1,000,000 rows), and visualisations as PNG. Dashboards support scheduled email or Slack subscriptions, iframe embedding and REST API management; underlying tables remain in Unity Catalog and can be read by any tool that connects to Databricks.

Exports of finished reports are useful for checking, but they are not what to move. The better source is the files underneath: the ledger, budget, sales or balance exports your systems produce before any analytics or planning tool touches them. Those are what Covirage reads.

What Covirage reads, by kind of desk

Desk Files
Cost and FP&A actuals, budget, forecast, headcount, timing and one-off items
Programme cost budget by workstream, actuals, purchase orders, forecast and change requests
Commercial sales by customer, product and month; market data, distribution and promotions if you have them
Bank income balances and interest by product and segment; fees and account openings
Markets income revenue by desk and client; market volumes and plan

Column names do not need to match. On the data map every column is matched once, by name, and the mapping is reused every month after.

What carries over, and what does not

Carries over Rebuilt
Your definitions: accounts, periods, hierarchies, thresholds Dashboard layouts and visuals
The questions people ask every month Custom calculations, as tested measures
The exports your systems produce Scheduled refreshes, as file delivery or a connection

Run both for a month

  1. Pick one recurring question, such as the monthly variance or the revenue bridge.
  2. Answer it in both tools from the same period.
  3. Reconcile every total. Our tools assert that each bridge sums to the change; differences show up as lines, not gaps.
  4. When the figures agree, move the next question.

A checklist

  • The source exports behind the reports people use
  • The hierarchy files: cost centres, regions, products, desks
  • The definitions people rely on, written down
  • One recurring question to run in both tools
  • An owner for each answer, so the list gets worked

More on Databricks AI/BI alternatives, every source Covirage reads, and how to evaluate an analytics vendor.

Sources

Facts about other products were checked on 24 September 2026 from the pages below. Product names are trademarks of their owners; Covirage is not affiliated with them.

Questions people ask

Do I have to stop using Databricks AI/BI?

No. Most teams move one desk's recurring questions first and keep Databricks AI/BI for what it is built for. Running both for a month is the safest way to check the figures.

Do our dashboards carry over?

Not as dashboards. What carries over is the definitions: which accounts, which periods, which measures. They become the measures and the configuration we set up for you, and the answers are rebuilt from the source files.

How long does the move take?

For one desk with its exports in hand, set up is usually within a week. A custom configuration takes longer and is agreed with us first.

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