Microsoft Power BI Reviews

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.

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.