Microsoft Power BI Reviews

I am a consultant for a big company. We deal with energy companies, petroleum, sales companies and we deal with everything from financials to operations. We deal with market strategy and we provide consultancy services - I'm a part owner of the company. 

I like the CS, administration, most of the features are good as well as the technology.

I think creating dashboards could be easier. Compared to other solutions, the cost of the license is expensive and that could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for over 20 years. 

The stability is excellent. 

The scalability is excellent, all our professional consultants use it. Where we deploy in the banking sector, they can have 1,000 licensed users; in smaller companies there can be 50 users. 

Technical support is quite good, but I'd like to see a quicker response time. 

Deployment time depends on the company, it can take up to two months. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

I have used the solution for analytics which is displayed on the dashboard for my client.

The solution is easy to use.

There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated. They need to make it easier for developers because they could bring key components into the dashboard. I have found using scripting language in other competitor solutions easier.

Since I am new to using this solution I am not sure what should be in a future release. I probably do not need all of the features in this current version.

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

The stability is good. 

The solution is scalable. We have a couple of people using the solution in my organization.

I have used Qlik Sense in the past and it is more functional than this solution. I prefer Qlik Sense and I will most likely be switching soon.

The solution is easy to install and it does not take long.

I did the implementation.

As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution.

Comparing this solution to others such as Tableau and Microstrategy, this solution is probably better. However, I think overall Qlik Sense is best for me.

I am not going to be using the solution in the future because I prefer Qlik Sense.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

I use Microsoft BI for my own projects that are related to integrating with Excel datasets. I use the visualization and graphing functions, and I have tried using the Python integration.

The most valuable feature is integration with Python.

The integration with third-party products could be more stable.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately one month.

Microsoft BI could be a little more stable.

We have approximately 10 users. I don't expect that we will expand our usage or continue using this product.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

There is no complexity in the initial setup. It takes approximately 15 minutes to deploy.

There are twenty people in the team that handles the deployment and maintenance of our solutions.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have integrated this solution into the software that we created for a client specifically for reports and data consumption. It is a hybrid infrastructure project with hybrid integration. It has a lot of reports executed or created from the cloud.

It has helped us to have a really quick view of the most important indicators of the operational issues of our platform. It has enabled collaboration between different operational levels in the company.

The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable.

Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions.

It has good stability.

We haven't used it a lot, but it seems good so far. We have only three users. We may include two or three more users to the platform.

Their technical support is bad. I didn't like the technical support of Microsoft.

We also use Oracle and Tableau.

The initial setup was not complex, but we would like a more agile process. The initial deployment took about two months. The platform that we created was very robust.

We are a reseller of the solution. We did the deployment.

We were thinking of integrating Tableau instead of Microsoft BI, but the client chose Microsoft BI.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for integrating into our ERP so people can have a dashboard analysis of whatever is important to analyze or compare, whether it be top-selling products or sales performance, or quota analysis.

Just as a BI tool, there's not much difference between solutions. It works well with our product and it's something that customers are familiar with and they often already have a lot of licensing with Microsoft. It's an easy add-on to their users.

There's generally a sense of familiarity with the product.

It integrates with all of the Microsoft tools.

It's not even fair for me to respond on that as that's not my wheelhouse. I don't know how easy it is as I'm not doing any of the designs. Therefore, I have not had any real training on it. I don't think that's fair for me to criticize anything that they're doing.

The initial setup is a little bit technical and what an end user wants to see is always a moving target.

The solution needs better technical support.

I've been using the solution for about three years at this point.

In terms of stability, we haven't had any challenges with it at this point. As with multiple integrations across several companies we tend to make whatever change is best for the biggest base of clients. We haven't had any issues thus far.

Technical and end user support is something that might be lacking from Microsoft. As a user when I want to find an answer to, "Hey, how do I do this?" I often get better answers by going to a  website of a company that represents them than I do going directly to their site.  Maybe they do that on purpose to help drive business to those people, however, it would be helpful if it was more centralized and the quick and simple steps answers that I get elsewhere.

I have some past experience with solutions such as Tableau and Cognose but not integrated into this ERP product.  We chose one that we would feel would be on a common platform of our customers.

The setup is fairly straightforward but implementation is a little bit complex mostly due to how the customer driven scope changes often as they realize the power of a BI tool and want to be able to expand it's use.

We're on a Progress platform, so that's a little more technical on our side at the beginning of the original project.

The licensing costs vary. It all depends on the individual customer due to the fact that Microsoft's options are modular. For example, they have Microsoft Office suite, then they add CRM and then you might add BI.  It's not expensive per user, however, as you increase the functionality or add different tools, it becomes more expensive.

We qualify as a partner as we're a software distributor. We're using the most current version of the solution.

Here is the biggest thing: when you look at any BI tool or if it's the first time you're implementing one, you can easily get over enticed by the flashy display or the common things. However, it's the ability to drill down to your true business processes that are going to make it or break it as being the right tool or accesses the right information. Somebody that gets a BI tool for the first time will open a dashboard and say, "Oh, that's important for me to see every day." However, the reality is, when using a dashboard view you're looking for a red flag or highlights. The power of the BI tool is allowing you to drill down to the data behind the dashboard, that's where the real testing comes in.  Figuring out where to get the information from and how best to analyze it.  That's my best BI tool advice. Anybody can make a dashboard look pretty. It has to be useful too.

In general, I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

This solution is primarily used for business analytics. We generate reports so that the business analytics team can use them for their analysis.

Previously, we used Excel to perform the analysis. It was very tedious for them to get data into Excel, do the refresh, and generate the reports. Now, using Microsoft BI, they can connect directly with the data, it gets refreshed automatically, and they don't have to worry about refreshing it.

They get the data in the report section and they don't have to worry about report generation, data modeling, and other aspects.

The most valuable feature is the reporting. It's easy to create reports and it's easy to download the data from the corresponding report.

This product enables self-service BI.

The paginated report functionality, which was intended to replace SPSS, is not yet up to the mark. We would like improvements made to the paginated reports so that it produces quality similarly to SSRS.

There is no automation for paginated reports, so then need to make it automated.

Ultimately, I would like to see all of the features from SSRS that are missing. That's ideally what I would like to have.

I have been using Microsoft BI for the past 10 years.

This product is pretty stable.

Scalability depends on the kind of reports and data we are looking at. It has multiple features for us based on the functionality and the requirement of the customer. It's not limited only to enterprise-specific customers. Rather,  It can be used by small, medium, as well as enterprise-based customers.

There is no limitation as such. So it's quite scalable.

I have work two different companies at this time, and as far as I know, there are between 1,500 and 2,000 people who use this product.

The quality of support depends on the Microsoft partner that you are working with. 

We have not faced any significant issues, but when we have, we raised a bug with the Microsoft technical team and they have resolved things accordingly.

This is the only tool that we are using for reporting. Previously, we used Crystal Reports.

We deployed this product ourselves. We used the documentation that is available at Microsoft.com.

The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user.

Our company focuses on Microsoft products, so we did not evaluate solutions by other vendors.

My advice is that if you are looking for an aggregated level of data, using it for reporting, then it's better to use Power BI because everything will be in memory and it will be much faster.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The dashboard features are really valuable, you can connect to multiple data points. Overall, the solution is easy to use.

The solution could be more customizable and you do not have enough freedom on the code.

I have used the solution for one year.

The install was straightforward and the advanced dashboards operate on well-branded tablets.

The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive.

If you are planning on implementing Microsoft BI, having experience with other Microsoft products will make using this solution easy and straightforward. 

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We are a service provider and Microsoft BI is one of the tools that we implement for our clients. We do not use it ourselves.

My primary use case is integration, but it is also used for reporting and data analysis services.

The user interface is easy to work with.

More connections with other systems should be added, which would allow for other integrations.

I have been using Microsoft BI for between eight and nine months.

Microsoft BI is a stable product.

I do not have experience with technical support. In cases where I have found an issue, I Google it, spend time learning about the problem, and then resolve it.

I have also used Alteryx and Informatica. We still may use one of these other products, depending on our client's requirements. If the client wants us to work using a specific product then that is their choice.

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment will take an hour, or an hour and a half.

We deployed this product ourselves. It is easy to work on.

I primarily use Microsoft BI for integration, so it is difficult for me to say what needs to be improved. Overall, this is a good tool and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.