Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Our primary use case is for data prediction. We use our predictive model index, and then express the data to Power BI.

It's user-friendly and provides data abstracting capabilities. We are also able to share reports with our colleagues very easily.

The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas.

The stability is good.

The setup was straightforward.

The most important criterion for me, when selecting a vendor, is that the product is cost-effective.

It depends on how you're going to use the reports, but when looking into this product or similar solutions, check the security side of things. If you don't want to share information with everyone, how does it deal with that?

So far, it's one of the best reporting tools I've found. They are improving the product every month. I would rate it at eight out of 10. The two missing points are to see what comes out in the future.

• It is free. 
• SSAS and SSRS work great together. 
• There is a lot of help and documentation on the Internet, so no special training is needed to use the source code.

It has the most secured database that I have ever used, which is the most important part of Microsoft BI.

The reporting part of Microsoft BI is rather limited compared to other reporting tools.

It works perfectly so far.

The information which we are working on is not that deep.

We use information from the Internet everyday.

We previously used iFrame.

We did long studies about which tool to use in our company. We decided to use Microsoft BI because it was a complete product, and it is easier and cheaper than others.

In the beginning, it was a rather complex because all the documents are in English. If it is in French, it was really complex, so then we would have to read the English documents. That was the most difficult thing here. It made the product difficult to use, because of the language, so Microsoft did provide help.

In the beginning, we were about to choose Pentaho because it is an open source suite. The problem is that beyond the enterprise version of Pentaho, it is more expensive than Microsoft. We would always need to rely on an expert of Pentaho, instead of finding solutions on the Internet, and that was the reason why we did not choose it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Price
• Ability to go on the Internet and locate support information.
• Secure product
• Easy interface to use.

Using it, I receive financial information from the financial department.

It gives us accurate data and an easy way to navigate.

I get the information I need easily, and it's easy to read.

They should add mobile access.

Stability is okay.

For me it's okay, I don't have any issues with scalability.

The decision to use Microsoft BI was made by the financial department.

I don't have any advice as I am not in a position to recommend it. I am just an end-user, I do not develop, I do not maintain it.

It is a good solution. We use it for analyzing and visualizing data relating to warehouses and connections from other ERP systems, etc.

It helps the decision-maker to make decisions related to the data. Power BI is easy to use and user friendly. Because of that, we use it as a visualization tool for our data.

Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision.

It is a good product with great abilities and easy features to use.

It should be easier to use when there are multiple system sources, and simplify the connections to it.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

I watch videos and read training materials. I practice and apply them to circumstances of technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It is part of our Office 365 license.

I would recommend this solution to another user.

We are not dealing the vendor. We are using it directly from Microsoft as part of Office 365. 

Its primary use case is for CIPs from the purchasing department. It performs perfectly. It is very quick and easy to use.

We approve it for use with SAP BI, so it has been more effective for our users and much cheaper. So, the costs are small and the benefits are high.

Its connection to every database: Whatever and wherever it is. 

It is easy to work with and very chic.

The look is simple, and could be a little more professional.

The stability is very good. We have no problems.

We receive an update every month with new functions, so we are not missing anything.

The scalability is good. It works for a large community just fine.

We have not needed to use technical support. We are able to do everything by ourselves. That is one of the main reasons that we like the product.

We have SAP BI working. It has cost us more than a million Euro, and it does not work. This was one of the reasons to change.

Power BI is very easy to use and much sleeker. 

The initial setup was straightforward. 30 minutes, and it runs perfectly.

I would recommend Power BI as the best working solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Usability of the solution.

It's primarily for reporting, and the performance has been very good.

Other people can access data much more easily than before. Its usability is the main advantage, people in the company are using it.

It works mostly with Excel, and it's a very good price.

The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective.

The stability is very good now; it was definitely really poor a year ago.

Because it's cloud-based, it's very scalable.

I haven't used tech support specifically for Power BI but, in general, for Office and Office 365, it has been very responsive.

Before, we just had a whole bunch of spreadsheets lying around all over the place. So we really needed to get things tightened up but we weren't ready to invest in a database. But with Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are usability and support.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

The shortlist was, obviously, Tableau because they're in everyone's face and a couple of other smaller tools.

I rate it a nine out of 10 because it's very cost-effective, so it's very accessible in that respect, and a lot of folks do use spreadsheets so it helps ease the transition from using just spreadsheets to a more mature reporting environment.

My advice is, speak to your users because, at the end of the day, if they don't use it, you've failed, which was the case with other reporting tools.

Visualization and minor analytics. It has performed quite well thus far.

We've not used it enough to be able to speak to organizational improvements.

• Low cost - it's a free application
• Ease of use - excellent user interface

Perhaps the inclusion of ETL functionality would help.

Flawless. Absolutely flawless. The stability is excellent.

Integrates really well.

We did not have a previous solution. And we did not choose this solution. We actually inherited it. 

There was no real set up, just install the application. No complications whatsoever.

On our short list, for future consideration: Oracle.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are cost, cost, and cost.

I rate Microsoft BI at seven out of 10 and that's because I have not utilized it as much as I would have liked to. However, it is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow.

Consider very carefully what your requirements are and plan your projects well. This is a wonderful tool but it will not get the work done for you.

We use it primarily to create visualizations, along with very light analytics of education performance data.

We cannot truly speak to improvements yet, as we are just exploring it. Potentially, it can provide instant access to a very current state of affairs for school performance.

• Dashboard functionality
• Ease of integration with various data sources

It is definitely a wonderful analytics tool. However, database ETL, data integration functionality would be absolutely perfect in many cases. Currently, it doesn't get the job done and we need to extract, transform, and load the data from faulty data sets into something more suitable for the deployment of the analytics tool.

No issues with the stability.

I can't speak about the scalability, but I can speak more towards the interoperability. There is a very rich capacity for sharing its functionality.

It is a very simple application so there was no real setup. Just download it.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• cost
• sustainability.

I would rate it at eight out of 10 because of its ease of use, simple setup, and excellent integration. I would rate it a 10 if they provided free training.

It's a wonderful application, it meets our needs.

We use it for visualization, to create presentations and dashboards. It works pretty well.

We are using Power BI because it is one of the best tools. It has been very good for all situations. The DAX coding language is good for creating formulae.

It is easy to work with. The tool is very complete.

The stability is good, no problem. We haven't had any trouble with it.

Our solutions are not for very many people, say 25 users. For them, it works very well. I don't know how it works with more users than that.

The customers we work with didn't have very elegant solutions. They were using traditional ERP and were getting default reports. Now, with programming code, it is fantastic. They are very happy with our solutions with Power BI.

Qlik Sense and QlikView are very good tools, very close to Power BI. Tableau is also a competitor but we haven't used it.

When selecting a vendor we look for expertise, a company that understands the problems and knows the market, solutions, tools; and one that creates successful products. That is the most important criterion. Also, when you are in front of your clients, you need to know who is supporting you from the back.

I would rate Power BI at eight out of 10 because it enables us to do all the things we want to do. Moving forward, for more than 5,000 users, or for very complex dashboards, we don't know how it works.

I always recommend Power BI. It's very good.

We are using this tool for different departments. Mainly, it's connected with the ERP to show our users information that comes from data in different areas. For example, we are using Power BI in production on quality and logistics. We have created the appropriate package of data that is connected with Power BI to show our end-users the graphics, the figures, the key indicators.

It has helped us to have the information in a visual format, using graphical tools. Until now, we had to view the information on paper or in Excel files. With this tool, we can view the company's and departments' situation graphically.

It also gives us the flexibility to interact with the data. For example, we can see information for one year, or one month, or a given project, or two projects. And it produces the information very quickly.

• Easy to use. 
• End-users can make changes to the graphics.
• The tool runs very fast.

I am a SAP user and I would like this tool to have more connectors - and to more easily connect to - the ERP or SAP environment.

Also, I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data. Power BI, this global solution from Microsoft, is shared with multiple companies. I would like that the content that I create, my data, be available only for me, not shared with other companies.

It's very stable. I'm very satisfied with the tool.

For me, the scalability is sufficient.

I would rate technical support for this solution at nine out of 10.

As the IT manager in my company, I oversaw the resources and the setup of the solution but I was not involved on the technical side. But I think that it was really easy. It was not complex to set up.

My team did have to read a lot of technical documentation. We also contacted a company that knows this solution, one that has implemented it for other companies, consultancy-based.

Still, I have installed more complex tools in my company. This was one of the easier tools to put into production in my company in the last four or five years.

When selecting a vendor or product, the most important criterion for me is the usability - it must be easy to use. It must be one that end-users can learn to use on their own, so that the IT department does not have to make changes or solve problems for the end-users.

It's a good tool, easy to  use, Microsoft is adding more and more functionality.

My advice would be, always compare with other tools. In part this is own our internal rule, we must compare with others, to make sure we have the best tool.