Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We use Microsoft Power BI to manage and visualize the control of permits to work for service companies in industrial plants in Mexico. The control of permits is crucial because all service companies must be registered with a special number by the government, and all personnel must be certified for the specific work they will perform inside the plant. For example, if installing cameras at a high level, you need a permit for that specific condition, which has specific rules to comply with to carry out the job. In Power BI, we can visualize the number of permits, open permits, closed permits, refused permits, and all types of permits we have. This allows us to manage all permits for people working on various projects inside the industrial site.

The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Power BI in my field is the insights it provides from analyzing data. Sometimes, these insights go beyond what traditional analysis can reveal due to the large volume of data involved. In terms of improving our data analysis process, it starts with identifying data sources, followed by cleaning and filtering out irrelevant data. Then, we categorize and structure the data to achieve the best visualization and insights.

Regarding Power BI's integration with other tools, although we haven't implemented it ourselves, it's known that Power BI can integrate with systems like SAP or ERP software, which could enhance our analytics capabilities if needed.

I believe Power BI could improve by making data tables and databases easier to handle, especially for non-programmers who may not be familiar with languages like Python. Simplifying these aspects would enhance the usability and accessibility of Power BI for a broader range of users.

I have been using Power BI for the last six months.

In terms of stability, it's been reliable. We haven't encountered any bugs or crashes.

We've definitely seen a return on investment. We calculated the benefits and ROI for our solution.

Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up.

Overall, I'd rate Power BI as an eight out of ten. It's been quite effective for us.

Dataverse is quite mature in terms of visualization. There are many interesting features for Power BI, such as role-level security, which allows you to control who sees what based on their roles. This is a cool feature, as you can separate reports depending on user departments or roles.

Real-time refresh is quite interesting and user-friendly, provided you have access to a gateway. It works well.

We have integrated it into the data warehouse.

It's not AI-driven. Although it has Copilot, which is in test mode, so it's not fully used.

Although there are many visualizations, most of them are paid separately because they have been developed by private developers. The visualizations that come off the shelf are quite few. 

You won't have very many common visualizations; you will have to download them from private developers, which come with their own limitations, or you have to pay.

I have been using it for more than three years. 

Stability is quite high. I haven't had any outages, so stability is also good. Maybe an eight or a nine.

I haven't had any issues with scalability. 

We are quite a big organization, and many of us use it without any issues. So far, I haven't had any hitches. I'll give it an eight out of ten. I haven't had an opportunity to use it in a very large organization, but for the number of users we have, it's been used without any issue.

If it's someone consuming the reporting, that could be over a thousand. But the people actually creating those reports are much fewer.

I personally use it daily. 

As a user, I haven't had any reason to contact them.

I have also used Tableau, but not to a very great extent. I have also used Oracle BI.

Power BI is more user-friendly and practical because it can democratize data. Anyone can use it, compared to other solutions that you might not be able to use unless you're in IT.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy. It is very easy and straightforward. 

We use it on the cloud, on 365.

It's saving a lot of time. You can submit some of the processing, so you spend less time on it.

The licensing can be complicated because there are so many options. Maybe they can make it a bit simpler to understand.

It's one of the solutions I've used and been happy with.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. I would recommend it. 

I use the platform primarily to create visualizations and reports from data to gain insights. It is utilized for operational, decision-making, and managerial reports.

The product's most valuable features are DAX functions for formulas and calculations.

I would suggest improvements in visualization standards, particularly in customization and appearance, to match tools like Tableau.

I have been working with Microsoft Power BI for two years.

I rate the platform stability a seven and a half or eight out of ten. 

The product is suitable for medium-sized companies with straightforward requirements. It can handle thousands of users, but its effectiveness depends on the data volume and reporting needs.

I rate the scalability an eight. 

The technical support team's response quality can vary based on the engineer's expertise and availability.

Power BI is more cost-effective, whereas Tableau provides more advanced features and higher-quality visualizations. For critical business needs and high data volumes, Tableau might be more suitable. 

The initial setup process is simple. 

I have worked with both the cloud version and the desktop model. Each has its advantages depending on the need for high-quality visualizations or the volume of data.

I rate the product pricing a ten. 

The solution supports integration from various applications well enough to meet most business requirements. 

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use it specifically for pure data analysis. 

I like the speed of building a visual and the transformation feature where you can make changes to the data, and then revert back very fast. These features, where you make transformations and then delete that step when you don't need them, are some of the best.

Power BI's integration with other tools is very good. With Power BI, if there are other systems on the network, you can easily connect to anything like SQL Server, Oracle, Amazon, Salesforce, SAP...anything you can easily connect. I have not faced difficulties with that.

The real-time data refresh capabilities is one of the things I had issues with. The refresh sometimes doesn't really work very well because there are two ways of connecting: direct and import. 

When it's direct, it's refreshed, but then you have limitations. But when you import the data, I feel there is always a limitation in the refresh. It is kind of like a room for improvement for Microsoft Power BI to work more on these real-time data refresh capabilities.

Microsoft Power BI changes almost every month; make changes regularly. I sometimes even see features that disappear, change, and update. So, I'm not keeping up. They are already doing a lot of changes. They keep updating regularly.

I have been using it for six to seven years. 

It's quite stable. Power BI is very stable.

It is very scalable. Almost everyone in our company uses it. 

I personally use it daily. 

I don't usually deal with customer service and support. It's our technical team that deals with them, but I don't see them complaining.

I used Excel. Power BI can crunch the data faster, and you can build a dashboard nicer and faster. Building a visual in Power BI is always easier, quicker, and simpler than Excel. It's Excel on steroids. 

I used to use Excel pivot tables a lot, but with Power BI, it's faster. It's easier to play with the data. If I want to make a list or put some formulas and stuff, Excel is good. But if I want to visualize the data, crunch it properly, and build measures quickly, Power BI is better.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy and one being very difficult. 

It is deployed both on-premises and the cloud. 

The deployment time varies and depends on the company. Every company is different. Here, internally, we have Microsoft Power BI Cloud, so it's easy. 

But in the previous company, we did not have Microsoft Cloud. So, to install, we had to install Microsoft Reporting Server and then Power BI internally. That took quite a while. 

But if you have Microsoft Cloud in your company, that's easy. And it's quicker on the cloud than on-premises.

Maybe a third party helped with the deployment. 

Downloading Power BI Desktop is free. But when you want to use the cloud, this is where I think it's per user payment. I'm not really very familiar with the licensing because I think they have more than one level. 

But to use Power BI internally for yourself, it's free. You download it. It's a free application.

I would recommend Power BI to other people. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

In my company, we use Microsoft Power BI only for monitoring because now it is the only software you can use to connect to Azure DevOps. We use the tool to monitor our environment, activities, and KPIs and evaluate bug rates and future values. In our company, we use agile scrum methodology, and for every activity that we create in our backlog, we monitor the life of the activity in our backlog. When we deliver the above-mentioned features, we use the Microsoft Power BI to monitor and create KPIs.

The dashboard is very nice and it is very simple to understand every single component. You would use a new task manager to monitor goals to manage your team, but I don't like that and would prefer to work with and learn a new tool that does monitoring. Sometimes, we use Azure to measure every dashboard and to monitor the activity in the scrum, but only under the dashboard. For example, more or less the two or three KPIs can be monitored using your monitoring tool.

In our company, we don't have any big problems with the tool because I have only one member from the main team who works on Microsoft Power BI to create, or sometimes, when we push the request to bring a new dashboard in the tool. I currently have two members working on the same dashboard, but only one member can work on the dashboard at a time. Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project.

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for a year.

It is a stable solution. The tool is static after you create the language and put it inside the dashboard. You can schedule the report at a particular time in the day, making it a very simple tool with a scheduler to run your reports. I think it is a stable tool, but we don't stress a lot on our infrastructure with Microsoft Power BI. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

For me, scalability is hard to learn. I don't think it is a good tool for which the scalability part should be evaluated.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten.

The technical support for the solution is very fast, but finding the right technical person is not easy. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The problem with Microsoft Power BI is that we can use any language or developer language. Now, we have a small problem when different members of my team work on the same project on the same dashboard. We now connect Microsoft Power BI to Git, and we deliver it, but, of course, the tool is not engineered to function in such a manner. We face issues when lots of members work together.

The solution is deployed on a private cloud model, but I don't know what infrastructure is needed to use it. Five months ago, my company switched from the tool's on-premises version to the cloud one.

I find Microsoft Power BI to be the most effective for data integration.

Microsoft Power BI actually dramatically improved our company's data visualization, and if we are lucky, then we have the features inside of the tool itself, which we can develop, and it is a very fast process. When you need a new feature or a new dashboard, and when we don't have any good news on the internet from Microsoft, we need to develop such features from scratch, for which we spend a lot of time creating a new dashboard for monitoring purposes.

Microsoft Power BI impacted our operational costs, and the benefits are nice because you can monitor everything. The advantage that we have in Microsoft Power BI is something we need to learn, especially the new language and new tool, but it is not our focus because I am the leader of the software engineering team. Microsoft Power BI Power is a tool to support my team, and my first activity involved managing tasks.

Microsoft Power BI has handled scalability as our company's data analytics needs have grown because you can use the tool's scalability feature on the cloud. If I need to add a new member to work on Microsoft Power BI, I don't think it is good because every single person can work on a single dashboard offered by the tool, but if you would scale up, then you won't be able to work using one dashboard.

Though I have no idea how the maintenance is done, I know that it is a process carried out by our company's team members.

I rate the tool a five out of ten.

Power BI is primarily utilized for seamlessly integrating data from diverse sources and streamlining their analysis. Its secondary function is to facilitate the effortless creation of reports and dashboards.

Power BI has significantly enhanced our data analysis and visualization capabilities, showcasing its versatility. It seamlessly connects to a multitude of data sources, ranging from traditional databases to diverse formats such as flat files and specialized systems like ERP and SharePoint. Additionally, Power BI's transformation language, known as the M language, is remarkably flexible and user-friendly, empowering users to efficiently analyze and merge data sets.

The architecture of Power BI, including its dashboards and data refreshing capabilities, is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Particularly in the Azure environment, it offers enhanced power but also complexity. Managing this complexity can be challenging, requiring a skilled team to configure the tool and handle data transformations.

Integrating Power BI with other applications and services offers numerous benefits. It serves as a powerful tool for gathering analytics from diverse data sources or applications, providing quick access to analytical capabilities ranging from simple data slicing and dicing to advanced data science tasks. Power BI seamlessly integrates with data science tools like Python, enabling enhanced functionality. While its built-in charting capabilities may not be as extensive as some competitors, there's an ecosystem of add-ons and partner products available. Additionally, Power BI offers an open customization programming framework, allowing users to create custom features when needed.

The greatest value of Power BI lies in its ability to integrate data into a single platform, facilitating analysis with ease. This makes it ideal for proof of concept and launching initiatives, as tangible results can be achieved quickly. Power BI offers a straightforward path to generating multiple insights, providing a fast and efficient tool for obtaining actionable results.

The robust connectivity is a key strength of Power BI. The ease of integration and connectivity stands out as the most critical aspect, followed closely by the flexibility to customize reports and dashboards.

There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex. While the current setup process is not necessarily bad, investing effort in this area will be beneficial given the challenges involved. Additionally, with Azure itself evolving into a sophisticated and complex platform, coupled with the integration of various analytics tools within the Microsoft ecosystem, challenges arise from multiple fronts.

Another aspect worth mentioning is data transformation integration. Currently, there are multiple approaches to data transformation on Azure, including Azure Data Factory, Data Lake, Power BI's data transformation capabilities, and data flows. The abundance of these approaches can lead to complexity, and there may be benefits to converging them into a more integrated solution.

I have been using it for four years.

It is much more stable compared to ten years ago.

It is scalable, but achieving scalability necessitates subscribing to higher tiers of the product.

In terms of technical support, although I didn't directly interact, the team I collaborated with frequently contacted support and reported issues, which were promptly addressed. Leveraging the partnership level of your company can significantly assist in this process. Given the large user base of the product, it's crucial to maintain close communication with support to ensure that issues are resolved effectively.

In my previous experience, I had some exposure to SAP Business Objects. At that time, around ten years ago, the main differentiators were the pricing and the integration with Office tools and data sources, making it stand out in the realm of BI.

The initial setup of Power BI can be complex. Currently, Microsoft is attempting to combine various historical approaches and keep them available, which can lead to confusion about which path to take. Power BI is now becoming an integral part of Microsoft's overall ecosystem, adding to its complexity. While this integration provides additional features, it may also pose challenges for new users navigating through the layers of Power BI's capabilities.

Deployment and maintenance can be efficiently handled by a small team of two skilled engineers. With adequate rights to administer both the core BI services and supporting Azure services, two people can accomplish a significant amount of work.

Subscribing to Power BI entails various payment options, including different tiers of subscriptions, some of which can be quite costly. However, there is also a free tier available. Additionally, Power BI licensing may be bundled with Office or Microsoft 365 subscriptions, offering different levels of partial licensing based on your Office 365 subscription. Microsoft emphasizes bundling licensing to make it more appealing to users. While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality.

I would suggest starting with Power BI for an easy entry into business intelligence and analytics. As you gain experience, you can assess whether customizing the platform or utilizing partner components suits your needs. Alternatively, you can compare it with other products that may require deeper learning or higher entry levels. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

I use Microsoft Power BI a lot for visuals in my work.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power BI is the drill-through feature that takes you to a details page the users want to see. The solution helped with the visuals, and it is easier to use compared to other things that we used before.

When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot. It's not very fast to upload and refresh the real-time data that we use. The solution works fine for a dashboard that does not have much data, many levels, and breakdowns for different fields.

When we build something a bit more complex, Microsoft Power BI takes a lot of time to upload. I don't know if that's the solution's fault or our system's.

Sometimes, the solution doesn't work. You need to have a license, but we integrate it and make it part of our system so everyone can use it without a license. If I share a report in PowerPoint, it takes a while when you deploy it again. So, it's not always fast, and then I have to ask IT for help.

When you export a file, it should be the export that you choose on a report rather than just the raw data. At the moment, it just gives you everything as raw data in a page without any filters.

I only did some courses last year and learned how to use the solution.

After building a report, when you review it, it doesn't have the correct data. Some things don't rebuild after a while, but I don't know if it's our data or the solution's fault.

I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten for stability.

Microsoft Power BI could be more scalable.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten for scalability.

I previously used Dundas. Compared to Dundas, the visuals look better in Microsoft Power BI. Microsoft Power BI gives you the option to have paginated reports rather than just one page, which I find quite easy.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight out of ten.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My main use case for Microsoft Power BI is creating a dashboard for stakeholders to see the progress in our organization on a daily basis reporting.

The best feature Microsoft Power BI offers me is the RLS one, which allows us to manage roles for different users in different countries. Row-Level Security is a very nice feature for my needs.

Microsoft Power BI has positively impacted my organization in terms of decision-making.

The main reason I would give it a seven instead of a higher or lower score is that it is free and has a maximum rating of seven.

I have been working with Microsoft Power BI for two years.

There is nothing that has been frustrating, even slightly, about Microsoft Power BI.

My advice to someone considering using Microsoft Power BI is to consult with teammates or colleagues. I would rate my overall experience with Microsoft Power BI as a seven.

We use the solution to build business intelligence dashboards.

The solution's most valuable feature is the graphic representation.

The dynamic browsing tables could be better in Microsoft Power BI.

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for three years.

I have not faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

I am satisfied with the solution’s scalability. Our customers for Microsoft Power BI are enterprise businesses in the engineering sector.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

Microsoft Power BI is a simpler solution than Tableau.

The solution's initial setup is easy. The solution can be deployed in a few hours.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup ten out of ten.

Microsoft Power BI is a comparable tool that provides very quick ROI, and it's as good as or better than other products like QlikView or Tableau.

Microsoft Power BI is not an expensive solution. The solution’s pricing is reasonable.

The solution's real-time data processing feature benefits our organization because most managers want to have real-time data compilations. They want to integrate SQL and expect the data to be current. Different clients have different environments. Sometimes, the tool is deployed on the local server, and sometimes in the cloud.

Microsoft Power BI is worth trying because it's very popular and easily adopted by organizations. It's easier to adopt than third-party products. Microsoft Power BI provides good graphical overviews, good graphic preparation of data, good integration with SQL, and good data integration.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company, we work as consultants. We help set up the environment for our customers. We do the initial setup for the customers so that they can use it. 

To a certain extent, we also set up dashboards and workplaces within Power BI for customers and run automation.

Our customers are mostly in security, finance, and some marketing companies.

The dashboards are valuable. We use them to help customers who are scattered across multiple countries. We can scope the access and information so that only relevant parties have visibility to what is relevant to their environment.

I haven't used real-time data processing much. It's more about the dashboards, where we play around. We work on Microsoft 365 and Azure and populate the dashboards with that information. Then, the dashboards are published to the end users so they can view relevant information.

The AI support is really good. We have plans to use the AI mechanisms and algorithms that Power BI uses to publish more easy-to-understand reports for our customers. We don't have to start things from scratch when we have metadata via AI. It integrates with the existing Power BI system and pulls up the data. It feels like they are being more open so that the data can be easily readable, and then using AI, it can be published in a better way.

The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out.

Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out.

The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins.

So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

I have been working with Power BI for two years. 

It is quite stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. I haven't heard any complaints from our customers. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It still needs some more things within the system.

Our customers are mostly medium and enterprise businesses. 

The support has been good. It takes time for them to respond, but when they do, they are helpful. I would give it an eight.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It's quite easy. Not that complicated. You just need the license, and then you're done.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, with ten being easy. 

It takes a couple of hours, four hours to eight hours. 

We are the integrators.

It did positively impact ROI. From a time perspective, at least four to six hours are saved because a lot of manual work is eliminated. Things are easily available, so people can do their work more efficiently.

When you have more number of users, like we have one customer with 200,000, it's a bit expensive. But I feel it's reasonable for small-scale customers.

I would recommend exploring it. A lot of features are available within Power BI. People complain that they want this or that, but everything is there. Explore it more, read through the documentation, and that would be helpful.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.