Microsoft Power BI Reviews

There were two systems that the client was looking at creating some BI visualizations for. There was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. They go into voicemail, however, if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long a client was on hold, if an agent actually took the call, if the person hung up, et cetera. There are all of these different statuses and it would take all of those statistics. The product was used primarily to take that data in that case.

The other system was an ITSM system, which was the ticketing system. It would

it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. But the one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features, I think they were stronger on the Tableau side. But the data preparation features, I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features, at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

 combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when the call volumes were and what the performance rate was and the nature of the calls and things like that.

As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. 

The data preparation features were great. I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features - at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side.

There are two areas where the solution can be enhanced. One is natural language, where you can have third parties, however, it would be nice to have it built-in within Power BI, where a graph could be automatically explained in whatever language so that somebody can just kind of read through and have the graphic as an extra for exploring. That's something that I was looking at.

The other is the explained data, which is more of a lineage-type feature. My understanding is Tableau has that feature and Power BI doesn't. I was looking at a graph of comparisons and I noticed Tableau had this explained data feature, which gives, some lineage where data has come from, and Power BI doesn't have that. Or, if it does, it's not as well developed as Tableau.

I used the solution a few months ago. I'm semi-retired, however, I did have a two-month contract and did some work with it. On the project, I did work a lot with Tableau, however, I also used Power BI, and would like to continue to use it more. 

It was a short project on the Power BI side. I didn't really identify any glitches. Certainly, over time things might've come out, however, I enjoy doing experimenting and playing around with things. The one definite thing that I noticed, as I do art with Tableau, is some really neat art stuff, so I tried to replicate that with Power BI and the quality just wasn't there.

With ITSM, there's a lot of data that they collect on that side. That could be an issue, scalability. It wasn't moved to production yet. I basically produced a report as there were some issues with the ICE data, the voicemail system, and data collection. They had some issues that they had to solve. However, they were collecting data on a daily basis. You get thousands and thousands of calls on a daily basis. It depends on how they want to store that data historically. There may be some performance issues and scalability issues, however, for me, I can't really address that, as I didn't see that side. There's always a potential for trouble.

It was a really short project for me. I was really there just to analyze those two data sources and produce a report for them, with some examples, using Power BI. I was able to do that without getting tech support involved.

I've used other solutions, such as Tableau and Power Query. Tableau from a graphical point of view is much better than Power BI, however, from a data manipulation standpoint and things like that, I prefer Power BI and Power Query to prep the data.

Tableau got bought out by Salesforce, which is a cloud-based company, so they're all going to push everything to the cloud. I'm sure they'll incorporate all these new features.

I downloaded the solution from their website. 

The server side was already set up, therefore, I don't know much about the initial setup process. As a contractor, I came in just on the development side, which was just downloading the Power BI tool as a client. It was fairly easy. That's the nice thing is it's easy to set up. It is similar to Tableau, in that Tableau is fairly easy to set up. It is all built towards this whole idea of self-service.

I'm just a customer.

As I downloaded the solution right off the website, I assume it was the latest version. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

I would do the development on-pre

There were two systems that they were looking at creating some BI visualizations for. So there was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. And so goes into voicemail, but if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long you were on hold, if an agent actually took your call, if you hung up. All of these different statuses would take all of those statistics. And so it was to take that data.

And the other system was the ITSM system, which is the ticketing system. And kind of combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when were the call volumes were, and what was the performance rate, and the nature of the calls and things like that.

It's easy to set up, however, regarding scalability and high-end analytical features, Tableau is still better on that. It's always important to keep up, as technology's changing all the time. They're always adding new features. There are no negatives in exploring these tools. In the end, you just want some visualizations that help you make decisions. Both Tableau and Power BI tools are great for that. However, if you want advanced stuff, then it's just about experimenting and seeing what will help you solve your problems.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I am using this solution to monitor the dashboards that someone else has created.

The solution is easy to use and flexible.

The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version. Additionally, we have experienced a problem when attempting to update the desktop application. When we click to update we are unable to open the file to update.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

I have found the solution to be stable.

We have approximately 50 people using this solution in my organization.

I have previously used Microsoft Excel.

The installation was simple and it takes approximately five minutes.

I did the implementation of the solution.

We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair. 

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for analysis. I have a DB setup that I have. I use that DB for analyzing data, providing business solutions or business insights to the customers. Most of the time, I use Power BI for that or sometimes even Tableau.

The solution isn't hard to use. It's very user-friendly. 

The product is stable. 

The product is easy to install.

I haven't used the advanced version and therefore haven't accessed all of the features.

The solution isn't very scalable. My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability of the product is good. It doesn't crash or freeze. there are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable. 

I wouldn't describe the solution as scalable. 

While it is available as an option to most people in our organization, I'm not sure how many people are actually actively using it. I know that I use it myself quite often. 

I've never reached out to technical support for assistance. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I also use Tableau. I've used Tableau for about seven months. 

There are other programming languages like Python and R, where they use analytics for graphical representation, or they can use Power BI and Tableau in our company. There are many options.

The installation is not complex or difficult. It's straightforward. 

We have Office 365, which holds Power BI, and therefore I was able to have it easily installed.

I can't recall how long the deployment actually took. 

I personally do not pay for a license. It may be arranged through our company. I have no insights into that aspect of the solution, however. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

The solution, being on the cloud, is automatically updated, and therefore, you are always on the latest version if you are using it. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I'd recommend the product to those who want a basic tool that can help them study analytics.

I have used Microsoft BI for sales analysis. I've also used it to analyze people. Pretty much across the board, whether it's the number of people, number of dresses, number of hamburgers, number of widgets and then creating the dashboards and the metrics and so forth.

The best feature for me is Power Query. I know that probably sounds strange, but you can't do too much with visuals and reports if the backend stuff is horribly dirty and just bad. But for me, that is absolutely fantastic. I can load the data and do the transformation and be able to load it in a useful way. There are tons of connections, which is absolutely fantastic as well. It's been fairly easy, and it's intuitive.

It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI.

I have used Microsoft BI over the last 12 months.

I haven't really had any issues, but I haven't given it the full whammy or the full monty. It's been stable for my use.

The initial setup was easy for me.

I would tell potential users that there are many other tools out there, but I think it's a steep learning curve. For example, Alteryx and Domo, and Trifacta can be difficult to learn unless you have a SQL background. But if you're a Microsoft person, the transition is fairly easy for Microsoft BI. It's intuitive, and I would recommend it from that perspective. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI an eight.

We primarily use the solution primarily for making dashboards. We are also doing analytics on Microsoft BI.

The solution is very stable.

The product is easy to use and simple to navigate.

The product has proven to be quite flexible.

It is quite scalable and it is doing the work that we want it to. 

We'd like the solution to be more scalable. 

We'd like the ability to manage it on the cloud, as a cloud-based solution. It is running out of business as it is not able to keep pace with the big data. Big data is not something that BI can support. It cannot be scaled that much. 

The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files. Microsoft is aware of this.

I've been using the solution for seven to eight years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is very good.

The solution is quite scalable, although, in our case, as we are not on the cloud, we are facing some issues.

We have more than ten people using the solution currently.

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I wasn't a part of the initial setup. That was something that was handled by another team. I can't speak to how long it took to deploy.

My understanding is that you only need two people to deploy the solution. Admins usually handle it.

I don't have any insights into the licensing and payments required. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. I'm not sure of the exact version number. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. For us, it has met our expectations and we enjoy its capabilities.

I'd recommend this product to other users and organizations.

I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool.

The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We are using this solution to create dashboards and reports for business analytics. We are in the early stages of testing and we have yet to determine if we are going to continue using the solution. We have to fully evaluate the solution first.

The use of the dashboards with analytics has helped our organization.

The most valuable features are the easy creation of reports, dashboards, and the ability to perform analysis. It is important for us to create reports because we have some operations during certain hours and we can use this tool to track the information. Additionally, it is a benefit they are adding more features all the time, such as machine learning.

I have been using this solution within the past 12 months.

The solution is stable.

I never needed to use technical support. However, they have a good online community where I found documentation, a lot of general information, and tutorial videos on YouTube and Google.

The installation is simple.

The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for our departmental reports, which are accessible from Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint.

Microsoft BI is very friendly.

The interface is very easy to use.

The integration with other data sources is very easy and very handy.

The on-premises version lacks some technical features that are available with the Cloud version.

There is definitely room for improvement.

The visualization is lacking, it needs improvement.

I have been using Microsoft BI for one year.

Microsoft BI is a stable solution.

We have not contacted technical support.

Previously, we did not use another solution.

From a technical perspective, the installation is straightforward.

It took one week to deploy.

The deployment was done by the database team.

You only need one person to maintain this solution.

We did not evaluate other solutions before choosing Microsoft BI.

I would recommend the cloud version of this solution.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.