Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Microsoft BI can be useful for several scenarios, depending on your end audience, or what they're looking for. Depending on your creativity, imagination, and what the tool allows you to build, you can create a lot of cool things with it. You can build a lot of very elaborate and dynamic reports for example. The most important thing to consider is to understand what your audience is looking for. The development side of the tool is not the problem.

The usability of the tool is very simple. If you know the basics, it's fine. Even if you don't have the basics, there is a lot of self-service documentation available which helps to guide the user to start to use the tool, and how to navigate through it. 

There was also a new feature added last month to help new users practice using the system by providing an example data set to experiment with. Power BI server can be run on-premise so that your reports are available locally. Or you can have a premium version, including all your reports on the Cloud. It can be determined by the number of refreshes required from the reports or can depend on the volume of users that are consuming the reports.

The tool is very flexible so it allows for creativity. Power BI allows you to incorporate Microsoft Visio diagrams and other graphics from Microsoft tools. You can also integrate third-party visual graphics created from other tools, such as R or Python. It is useful to be able to obtain additional charts or different types of graphics developed by a third-party tool. This gives you more options for your end solutions. However, for some third-party tools and graphics such as Zoom charts, you have to pay for those separately. This is useful if you really wish to mesmerize your audience with dynamic, interactive visuals.

Alternatively, if you just want to use what is available to you, and with a little bit of UX/UI knowledge and creativity, you can build really cool stuff with it. For example, you can have dynamic dashboards on a screen that is connected in real-time. Users can interact directly with the data, so when they click the mouse, they can see the data changing. There's a lot of things that you can do with it. Let's say you develop a report, to put on a big touchable screen. Let's say the CEO is presenting to someone, and he's on a big screen. As soon as he touches a dialogue or a graphic on the screen, all the data changes. 

As an example, in CNN news, or any news, where they are presenting, and there are some dashboards and reports, journalist clicks on the screen, and everything changes instantly. That's what Power BI can do. If you have touch screens Power BI allows you to interact with your data.

I think that the product would benefit by increasing the range of visuals and graphics readily available, as opposed to using a third party included as part of the product. One way they could do that is for Microsoft to buy some of those third party companies, as they are specialists in visual creation, and they are making money from that. However, I understand that perhaps Microsoft maybe doesn't want to invest in that side of the business. Perhaps it is a financial decision. I would say that if we can have those additional visuals built into the product, it will be great. Alternatively, in the future, there should be an additional tool there that allows you to create your own visuals. That will give users more flexibility. 

It would also be useful for users with little experience in coding, or other Microsoft tools such as Excel. For example, let's say, you are a random user, and you're just looking at the computer for the first time. You open Power BI, but you know you can go to an Excel file and connect to that Excel file from Power BI. This is very simple and intuitive. So, once you have connected to the data, you can see your fields on the right-hand side, and all you need to do then is to drag and drop the fields you need. You can then select a relevant visual or graphic, and put the information alongside that visual, and then you have the visual and the data created as one item. This is very useful and dynamic. This would also have the other huge advantage, in that it would be a cheaper solution to use. I would like the ability to reuse connections. 

For example, if I created a connection to an SQL server, and I published my report using that connection, and then shared my report, it would be useful to be able to reuse the existing connection to the SQL server. In this way, I can reuse the existing dataset to create another report. I believe this is already the subject of a support ticket. Say I then wanted to reuse another connection from a different connection, say Oracle, to use in the same report, I could use the connections to those two sources and build the report. If I already have the sources online, and available for me, it would make sense that I could reuse them. At the moment, you can only reuse one data source. You cannot reuse more than one data source, at least if the data sources are online. One workaround would be to access each data source in turn, to obtain the data for the report. However, from October 2020, when using Excel driven reports, it is possible to reuse data flows or reuse the data component, from Power BI in Excel. So Microsoft has already implemented it for Excel, but it is still in the preview features. That will help a lot in financial areas. This could also impact company sales forecasts and sales.

I have 10 years of experience using BI tools, like Tableau, Power BI, QuickView, and MicroStrategy. I have a background in technical architecture but my main expertise is in BI tools. I use Power BI. It's a business intelligence tool that helps you develop and create reports that you can connect to various data sources. Then you can slice and dice, and build what you want to build from there.

Microsoft BI is stable.

The product is scalable, and new updates come out every month.

Microsoft Technical Support is very good. If I need their assistance, they will liaise with me. They are very flexible, useful, and very friendly. They are very open to helping you out. So depending on how you escalate your call, and say it's a high-priority issue they contact you very fast. They have support lines globally. So if I'm in the Czech Republic, I may be contacted by someone from Romania, or from India, or another zone. It's fine, if, for example, I'm not English, and I need to speak to someone who speaks Spanish, they put me in touch with someone who speaks Spanish. There is a lot of available support for Power BI, and they have their own Power BI page called Power BI Support. Power BI issues are registered on that page. Support usually fixes the issues within the given timeframe. The other good part about Power BI is the huge Microsoft community that it is there. So you can raise tickets and use the community which is on the same page. Sometimes the community helps you find your solution. So, it provides two ways to access support solutions.

It's easy to install which helps new users to the product. The installation process is easy. You can install it from the Microsoft store, or you can go directly to the Microsoft portal, and download the version that you require. It keeps historical versions available in case you need to test a different version. The advantage of the Microsoft store is that as soon as you install it from there, it always keeps you updated with the latest version. Also from a Power BI service point of view, you have several capabilities. The learning curve comes in when researching the different features, and what is new in the product, as well as what is going to be provided in future versions. The advantage of Power BI is that every month you have something new provided with the update. For example, you may have a new connection, additional visuals, or use new narratives.

We have 8,000 Power Bi licenses in our organization, so it is widely used. Setup is easy, and the cost is economical. You do sometimes need to pay additional costs for third party products which "plug-in" to Microsoft BI.

I would give Microsoft BI a 10 out of 10.

I use Power BI primarily for generating reports, analyzing data, and supporting data-driven decisions across various functions within the organization.

The solution's data integration capabilities are beneficial because they allow us to seamlessly integrate data from multiple sources, simplifying the analysis process and providing a comprehensive view for better decision-making.

There is room for improvement in terms of customization and configuration options, particularly for more advanced users.

I have been using Power BI for quite some time now.

The product is scalable. Expanding its use across different teams within the organization has been relatively easy.

We are seeing a good return on investment with Power BI, particularly in terms of how it has streamlined our reporting and analytics.

The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided.

We receive real-time reporting with Power BI, which greatly impacts our decision-making process by allowing us to respond more quickly to changes in the data.

The data visualization tools particularly strong. The ability to create custom dashboards and reports tailored to different

It is highly user-friendly and cost-effective. However, it may lack certain advanced features present in other solutions.

Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten. 

We utilize Microsoft BI for conducting comprehensive analytics by comparing data from the current year with the preceding year to identify patterns and variations. This software aids us in performing overall data analysis.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud and on-premise.

Microsoft BI has proven beneficial for my organization as it simplifies the presentation of complex data that was previously challenging to comprehend through other means. Specifically, Power BI allows for graphical representation that significantly enhances data understanding compared to raw tables.

The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are its intuitiveness and ease to use.

Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately three years.

I rate the stability of Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

I have plans to use the solution more in the future.

I rate the scalability of Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

The initial setup of Microsoft BI is simple.

We have received a return on investment using Microsoft BI.

The price of the license can be better. 

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

Enterprise reporting and digitization of dashboards using Microsoft Power BI, SSRS and Azure Reporting DB by integrating several applications to establish single version of truth.

Microsoft BI stack is very easy to use and most of the developer versions are free such as Power BI, DAX, SQL Server Development Edition. This helped us quick prototyping to generate value of data resting in silos. 

What I like most is that I can do everything in Power BI that I can do in Excel. It is very compatible with Excel tools, and anybody who works with Excel can learn and use Power BI quickly. 

Writing formulas and data transformation are good features.

The only challenge I have found is that they do not have a Mac version of Power BI. They should have versions for both Apple and Unix because you cannot install the desktop version for these operating systems.

In the future, I would like to see them add more AI and machine learning features, as well as self-service analytics.

You can use R and Python, but it would be helpful if they had some no-code machine learning options that you find in other tools.

The UI/UX can be improved. Products such as Tableau and QlikView are very good in terms of the user interface.

I have been using Microsoft BI for five years, on and off.

I have not found any issues with respect to stability. Microsoft has invested a lot and they are continuing to invest in Power BI.

Given that there is a server version for services that can be used to implement and roll out reports at the organizational level, it's scalable.

In my current organization, I am training 15 people on how to use it and I am looking to expand to 50 users.

Microsoft support is quick. We also have a dedicated partner for support, and they are good.

Positive

Prior to incorporate Power BI in the stack, we were using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services(SSRS) only. They do not have any visualization interface, but you can do static reporting. This is the reason that we are switching. Probably, we will use SSRS and Azure SQL at the backend, but there won't be used as the visualization tool.

For visualization, we used to use Excel. Which not reliable. 

The installation is easy. The download takes perhaps five minutes, depending on the bandwidth. Overall, it can be downloaded and installed within half an hour and no training is required.

The desktop version is used for development and the cloud version is used to submit a report. Essentially, it is Power BI Desktop and Power BI Services. The desktop version is what is on-premises.

You can deploy yourself but of course, in an office, you require an administrator.

The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer. It is the cheapest of all of the visualization tools. They have a 30-day trial available for you to try it.

For personal use, this product is free to use.

Tableau is a little bit expensive, although it is good if they want a very sophisticated solution. Both Tableau and QlikView are a little better in terms of the user interface.

You need a technical team to operate the solution. You need people for the administration of the data connection and data integration. They should be skilled in SQL, data management, and so forth. Typically, these are data engineers.

We plan to continue using Microsoft BI. We are onboarding and implementing organization-wide for our long-term strategy, and the entire organization will be using Power BI.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it is easy to learn, especially for somebody who is good at Excel. Other tools are easy to use as well but if you are a Windows user then Power BI is a good option.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using Power BI for reporting.

It is very good, and it supports the Microsoft ecosystem, including Excel, etc.

We have been using it only for a couple of months, and we are at the beginning of our learning. The area of improvement is difficult to say. The handling of the workspaces can be made more granular for user access rights. It can be managed a little bit better in terms of the connection to Active Directory so that we have more granular access rights. I am not sure if this is really possible or if we can solve it differently, but we need a lot of workspaces, and we are not sure how we can deal with it from the access rights perspective.

I have been using this solution for a couple of months.

It is stable.

We are not sure because we currently have a simple installation on the PC, but the idea is to scale it via Office 365 cloud implementation.

It seems suitable for small, medium, and large enterprises. It should be able to scale up. Based on the marketing slides, it should be able to handle all kinds of enterprises.

We have not had any problems, so we had no requirement to use technical support. 

It is quite easy. You just need to install a program and use the connectors and drivers, and that's it. 

I did it myself.

We are end-users, and we don't take care of the prices and accounting. We get a product and pay the fee to our internal service provider, but its price should be reasonable. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bought it.

We are not very experienced in it. So, I don't know if I can recommend it, but we are using it because it is very good.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

The solution is very powerful and very flexible. 

It is very easy to set up and you can connect it to multiple systems very easily.

They keep on upgrading, performance-wise. 

Power BI is very fast; they have improved Power BI a lot in general over time. YOu can see the difference. 

The stability is great and continues to get better and better.

The pricing is pretty good.

They should provide some kind of extra visual. There are a lot of third-party companies that provide these visuals, however, it would be better if, instead of relying on a third party, they could have their own. We should have by default in the package itself, some good visuals.

Technical support could be a bit better.

The performance could be enhanced in the sense that there is a limitation of the volume of data that it can hold. 

While they have some different options out there, they did not improve anything when you connect to any dataset, when you have to import. You need to connect online, meaning live.  

You cannot create so many things on the Power BI side, such as adding a new column, which is not possible in your live reporting, direct query option. In contrast, with the import method, you can do so many things. They need to improve on the direct query option side.

The product is stable. I have seen a lot of improvements in the stability of their application lately. If you compare what's available now to the last three to four years back, you can see it's more stable.

It's scalable and it scales quickly. Nowadays, being on the cloud, expanding is very easy.

While support is okay, they need to improve it a lot. Of course, they're improving as we speak, yet, I would say, if you can ask me the ratings, I would still say it's still rather low and good - not great.

I'm also familiar with SAP, which doesn't scale as well. SAP also is much more expensive. SAP is a big product, whereas Microsoft BI is much smaller. They only overlap in terms of the analytics cloud and the SAP goes above and beyond and offers many, many more things. 

The pricing is fair. They give you many options by splitting up the licensing. They have multiple types of licenses out there based on your usage. You can increase your pricing if you use it a bit more, however, it's still quite reasonable as compared to SAP. 

We are a customer and end-user. We are not a Microsoft (or SAP) partner.

I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Power BI is used internally to track indicators like KPI, sales, and a bunch of other essential metrics for our company's strategic planning. Power BI creates reports and compiles data coming from various sources, and we create dashboards for managers and executives to monitor these indicators.

There is also an external use case. We also have a team that provides BI as a service. Let's say your company collects all your data manually in Excel sheets and creates reports. We get rid of the Excel files and automate everything using Power BI to create dashboards and reports.

Microsoft has made a lot of progress with Power BI in the past couple of years, but there is still some room for improvement. For example, Integration is one area they could work on. They are adding more integration with other Microsoft tools, but I would like it if they sped up the process.

We've been a Microsoft partner for 12 years.

Microsoft Bi is stable. 

Microsoft BI is scalable. 

Power BI has strong support from Microsoft. If you need help, they answer promptly. There are also several discussion groups where you can get information, like the product roadmap and any new things coming up. 

Everything is in the cloud, so you don't do anything. You only need to download a client, and that's it. If you have to create an embedded solution, it only takes five minutes.

The entire deployment takes a couple of hours, but you don't need a specialist to deploy it. Obviously, you need someone who understands the technology and how to follow instructions, but it's pretty straightforward stuff.

Power BI's price is good relative to its competitors. It has more than 400 or 500 different connectors. A lower price would always be welcome. The price is fine, but the licensing is complicated. Quantum mechanics is easier to understand than Microsoft licensing.

I rate Microsoft BI nine out of 10. If you are thinking about using Microsoft BI, go for it. Microsoft BI is worth it. It's one of the products Microsoft got right from the beginning. It's perfect.

We are using this tool for management reporting.

One area for improvement in Microsoft Power BI is serviceability. If I compare this tool with Tableau, there are a lot of things which I cannot do in Microsoft Power BI that I can do in Tableau.

I've been using Microsoft Power BI for five years.

Microsoft Power BI is a very stable tool.

Microsoft Power BI is a scalable tool.

As we are using the cloud service of this tool, the initial setup for it is fine.

I pay for the Microsoft Power BI license on a yearly basis.

I was able to evaluate Tableau.

I've been using these BI (business intelligence) tools: Microsoft Power BI and Tableau.

I'm somewhat satisfied with the performance of Microsoft Power BI.

We've all been using Microsoft Power BI in the company, from the time it was introduced.

For the deployment and maintenance of this tool, we have a team of 20 who are currently in charge of full-time development. These are the users who are the main developers. Scalability will be for the end users, e.g. the business users, and could be increased to more than 2,000.

I've contacted the Microsoft Power BI technical support team a lot of times.

I'm recommending this tool to others who want to start using it.

On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating Microsoft Power BI a seven.