Microsoft Power BI Reviews

The primary use case was mainly to create dashboards and present them for reporting purposes. We use Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards, provide insights, and use its various analytical and insight functions to send to either the departmental manager or the general manager of marketing and sales or retail ops.

In short, we had to create sales reports. The sales reports needed to be emailed to the different sales managers all across New Zealand. The Excel file data had to be filtered manually, whereas, in Power BI, you can set restrictions. For example, if you have North, South, East and West branches, you can set corresponding restrictions, while allowing the national sales manager to view the entire data without having to do a lot of filtering, because of the restrictions involved.

It is time-saving for the person who creates the report and also a lot of that is automated, whereas with Excel you've got to keep working on it and keep filtering it all the time.

Our most valuable features are the dashboard and the reporting feature because, before that, our organization used to only use Excel. There was a lot of manual work involved with Excel, whereas once we moved on to Microsoft Power BI, it was a cleaner dashboard and it was faster too. The end user also had an opportunity to alter the reporting as per requirements with Power BI.

I haven't experienced any issues with it right now, so I can't really advise on that part.

I think because I'm moving more into RPA, I'd definitely like to see integration across the RPA, Power BI, or Tableau platforms because that integration could then make automation and mundane reporting much faster.

You'll always require some more complex reports that the analyst could work on, but the very standard sales reports could then be automated very quickly using Power BI and RPA together.

Stability is pretty good. I've been using other services from Microsoft and the support also has been really good so it's a very stable platform and the support services are excellent.

I've been using it for a year and it's only across my single department so I've not yet had to scale it to a very large level.

Across my department, there are two users. Across other departments at my company, there are many more. Most users are commercial or insights analysts.

Across our organization, Power BI is not extensively used, although I'm not privy to every department and their plans. I think it's being used moderately, but could be used more.

In terms of Microsoft Power BI, if there was ever a query, you can find support online. There's a lot of help available but what I generally meant was I have been using Microsoft Office products through the Office 365 subscription business and the support of Microsoft Office, in general, has always been really good. They usually come back on the very same day and try and solve the problem. This is not something I've experienced with other platforms in the past.

We hadn't previously used another solution. We were just using Excel and decided to go to a much better platform.

The setup was straightforward for me because as part of an organization, I didn't have to set it up myself. It was set up via the organization, through the IT department, so it was pretty straightforward.

I adopted it in my team, but it was already being implemented across other parts of the company. I just brought it into my department, so I wouldn't be able to tell the time frame for the actual implementation strategy. For my team alone, it probably took me around two months or so.

The other departments in my company were using Power BI, so it would not make sense to get another solution when they already had Power BI in other parts of the organization.

Microsoft Power BI is definitely a good product and Microsoft has a good integration of a good suite of products across the range. I think if you take UI parts recent release, for example, I'm not sure that does it with Power BI but it definitely integrates it across the Microsoft Office activities, so I think it's only a matter of time before a majority of the Microsoft Office products start integrating with UI parts. That would take analysis, reporting, and automation to the next level and we could free up time for the general reporter.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten because it's easy to use and there is a lot of support online. I think Microsoft Office itself has a lot of support being provided. In addition, I like its features and it's growing much faster than some of the other analytical tools out there, although it started off later.

We use this for data analysis and the creation of indicators. It is one of the most powerful tools for BI in my experience. It works very fast, is intuitive, and useful. You just drag and drop, as soon as you download it.

This solution works very well for updating indicator boards, and for quick visualizations in demos. You can present results in many ways to improve the presentation.

I have used it on a variety of applications where it is important to show analysis and present information in a graphical perspective, and also to modify and present information to developers and executives.

One of the features I really like is that there are a lot of different graphics that are very nicely presented. The uploading of information is very easy, as you just use an Excel sheet to start work right away and obtain the benefits of Power BI.

When you start, right from the beginning it can help you. Once you upload the data you can start to play with the different options you have from the graphics available, and also from the different mathematical and logical conversions that it offers.

I also work with other data processors and the facilities that Power BI offer can help to better understand the traditional database tools such as SQL, or others.

Another advantage is that you don't have to have a lot of knowledge about databases. This is because you use Power BI knowing your goal and what you want to achieve with respect to the data that you are processing.

I would like to see the product offer more graphics to impact different audiences. Also, I would like more ease in connecting with the different database drives.

This is different from other solutions in that Power BI offers ease of use. It is different from any SQL tool because you can use it right away.

If you are looking for free tools to process data in different ways for an easy to medium analysis then you have the free version available. However, if you want a complex analysis from multiple sources of data then you should look for the charge and support version.

In my opinion, both options are good.

I evaluated some other tools but I think they had very different objectives. Power BI looked more generic and has an easy and quick way to present the information in different forms.

It is important to say that the information cannot be confidential or secret. This is because the platform processes all data from the Microsoft cloud and you have to be certain of the security issues that someone could face if a security breach happens.

I very much recommend the free trial mode.

• Running a team to build end-to-end BI solutions for large enterprises. 
• Data typically stores in SQL Server. Some ad-hoc data pulled from SharePoint lists or Excel files.
• Use of SSAS Tabular in some models.
• Currently, no deployment of premium. A large deployment of PBI Pro.
• We also use Tableau Desktop and on-prem server, but Power BI was a go-to product.

• An easy learning curve for analysts. If they know how to use Excel pivot tables, then they can self-serve building visitations on curated data. 
• Full stack end-to-end ETL and viz in one tool. 
• Power Query for ETL, and externally easy to use. Majority of activities are low or no code.
• Creating a model and augmenting with additional calculations and measures extremely easily. 
• Viz layer build is super fast. Very much like a PowerPoint experience. 
• All elements together allowed for the rapid deployment of PoC products that could be tested and validated by businesses before being deployed. 

• Power Query: The data prep tool allows for very easy ingestion, shaping and prepping of the data before loading into the model.
• DAX: Its ability to do almost anything to create the necessary calculated fields and measures. 
• Viz layer: It's just easy to lay out a page.

The only real need is a lower tier pricing plan around premium. It’s a big step-up unless you have a very large user base (1000).

• Management BI/dashboard reporting
• Quick sharing of data from source to business users which is very useful.

• Giving visibility to management/business users about the business by mobility.
• Easy to develop and manage.

• Mobility.
• It's easy to use.
• Multiple data sourcing.
• Quick development and deployment.
• Mobility and ease of use.

• Dependency on data warehousing and pricing.
• Clarity on the Power BI (free) compared to Power BI (pro).

My primary use case is for the performance, compared to MS Dynamics NAV, and flexibility in data and dashboard building.

Better insights, flexibility, and performance.

Great performance.

• Sharing reports with non-Power BI users 
• Use of ISO weeks (European) in relative date options.

I primarily use this for creating dashboards and reports for the oil and gas industry.

Power BI is always updating. I receive multi mail from Power BI with new visualizations, new analytics, new webinars and I'm going to Microsoft here locally in order to have a updated presentation about the new features of Power BI. For me it's very versatile. I can publish on my iPad. I have a Power BI application in order to manage the visualization of my report and my dashboard. Also I can speak to Power BI and ask about production and Q&A. But, I don't have compilation with other tools yet. For me, Power BI is the best.

I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect. 

It was straightforward. We had no problems with implementation.

The pricing is fine for our company. It is reasonably priced.

Because this solution is very easy, and very visual, you can have results in minutes. 

It is a good platform for data analysis, organization, and all of the other interim performances that are necessary.

It could have more of a hold on big data. Manipulating big data on this solution complicates things. This needs to be improved.

Also, we post NGDP data and manipulating this kind of data could be better.

The stability is good but sometimes we need to validate the data. 

Tech support helped us handle the implementation to completion. They were helpful.

I did not find any complexities with the setup. 

We are a Microsoft partner so we did not look at other solutions.

The primary use case for this solution is mirroring it to the dock so we can match up different parts of Office like Excel, Word, etc. and then we can clear it.

Microsoft always believes in adding different features. We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog.

We were having trouble working with the icons.

The Microsoft tech support blog was very helpful to me. But, it supports the non-BI people also.

I was not involved with implementation of the product.

I do not have a comment on the pricing of the solution.

My primary use case is for view of the dashboard. 

We did not previously have a BI platform before. This has helped us.

It has a nice integration with Office 365.

Once the report updated, we want the system to send a notification to user automatically. Especially if the email can imbed the dashboard data into the email, instead of a link. This does not necessarily happen.

In addition, importing the dashboard to a powerpoint is not available in the report server.  Even though we go to the public cloud service, the export is only the picture, or a snapshot of the dashboard. We cannot play the features or see the data we could change in a powerpoint. This is frustrating  because sometimes the finance manager needs to export the report to a powerpoint. Actually, we wanted to export because we wanted to do the presentation. We wanted to show the figures or something like that, but those figures are just static, and are only a picture.

Finally, an additional feature should be added to add a cost table.

Actually, it's a stable solution. But in some companies, based on my experience, my previous company, using the FAP solution for their IP solution. Then for our Powerband, the BI2, the data come from EIPCN, something like that, but actually it seems that the Powerband don't have very good integration with FAP interface. The integration from from FAP is not so convenient

The scalability is quite good. 

The technical support team is quite responsive and helpful. They are responsive to our questions in their forum.

I was not involed with the initial setup of the solution.

We always review:

• Scalability
• Price

It is a cheap solution for our needs. 

It is a solution that is easy for developers to be hands-on, even if they do not have prior experience with it. It is quite easy to learn.

We use Microsoft BI for all of our data analysis processes.

In comparison to Excel, this is a much more powerful tool. 

It is a very good software solution. It makes life very easy for us. It is easy to grasp, and it is useful. The set-up visualization format was very helpful.

I've been working with connecting with the right platforms and we need to use other connectors to link with the data. This would be a nice feature for BI to add in the future. For example, we needed another connector in order to make our Wordpress functional. More options for the connectors are really important for us.

At times it is not stable, and we need to use other connectors to link with the data.

We have not had a need for technical support for this solution.

When evaluating a new product, I would first ask my colleagues or other friends that I know based on what their opinions are about the product.  Also, I would be concerned with the level of crashes. The less they crash, the less problems and the easier our life will be. Furthermore, the level of support that the product provides is important, as well.

I used Excel and Rapidminer in the past. But, I really like the BI product.