Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We have created the reports and are continuing to work on them. We are deploying them to the proxy, and the users are utilizing them for various business processes.

I work in Tableau or Tableau and Power BI. It can handle large data sets. You can just get the raw data. When it comes to Power BI, if you have to get the raw data and want to refresh it, the refresh at a point in time would degrade performance.

One of the key benefits of Power BI is how easy it is to develop reports. Even non-technical users can easily download the report and learn to include slicers and data filters once provided with a template. The platform is very user-friendly. Another advantage of Power BI is that if the report developer encounters any issues, they can quickly find solutions through Microsoft’s help resources. You can get your assistance by visiting the Microsoft support site or posting queries. This makes developing and delivering reports much easier. Microsoft Power BI provides much support and flexibility, making it a great tool for report generation.

It can integrate with different data sources. You can connect seamlessly to Databricks, SQL Data Warehouse, third-party sites, and multiple other sources.

We identified a couple of issues in the reports. Some reports took too long to load, particularly at the end of our data refresh. To address this, we optimized the data model using multiple tables, improving performance. Now, all reports are refreshing properly using DBP, and we’ve implemented these improvements in Power BI.

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for two years.

The availability of Power BI is excellent. Once a user is set up, they can easily access and work with the Power BI files from the repository. There are also various modes for adding features, allowing users to combine data in different ways to make informed business decisions. 

Based on business discussions, there are 25 to 100 business users. The users work with templates, and we collect UAT feedback from them.

The initial setup was straightforward. Based on the current requirements, I've been able to develop the reports independently. It's easy to use and allows for faster reporting.

Once we generate the reports, we schedule and publish them on the website and then share the process with the users.

We're able to refresh the Power BI reports and create data models to support the business at this stage.

I'm working with a company that manages detailed sales data for the clothing industry. We're tracking orders, brands, seasons, and which facility handled the order, along with audits. We're focusing on metrics like fabric consumption and fiber content for reporting. 

We can develop reports in Power BI, including RxTx reports. Many of the business teams are also using Power BI. For support, we use Slack to manage tickets and TableLab for some tasks. Power BI offers a trial version, and you can get a pro license at a relatively low cost, with users having access to AV accounts. The main advantages are that it’s easy to use and more affordable compared to other reporting tools.

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

Public Cloud

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. 

Public Cloud

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. 

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.

We have a lot of data, which we process and analyze using Python. Once the data is processed, we feed it into Power BI. In Power BI, we build dashboards and visualizations. Our team or customers can then view these dashboards.

Data visualization is crucial because while some people understand data, many find raw numbers or text difficult to interpret. Visualization makes patterns and insights clearer and easier to understand. Tools like Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are excellent for creating these visualizations, helping users grasp better and analyze large datasets.

For example, the variety of chart types available in Power BI is somewhat limited. While you can choose from various charts like dial gauges, bar charts, and line charts, there aren't as many diverse options as you might need. Sometimes, you might look for additional chart types and find that they're not available for download from the Internet.

Another area for improvement is data refresh functionality. Even with a premium license, the refresh rate is limited to every 30 minutes. This can be restrictive if you need more frequent updates, such as every 10 or 15 minutes, or at specific times, like every Monday at 4:25 PM. The current options are typically every hour, every 30 minutes, or daily. This limitation can lead to inefficient resource use if your data only needs to be refreshed at specific times.

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for four years.

Initially, Microsoft Power BI can be quite complex. The Microsoft website does not always provide clear guidance, so you might need to watch numerous YouTube tutorials. The initial setup can be challenging, but using Power BI becomes much easier once you become familiar with the process.

Once you use Power BI, you must install or subscribe to the software and spend time exploring and working with your data. Becoming fully proficient and deploying your solutions effectively may take a few months.

ROI is really great.

Power BI pricing is generally considered more affordable than Tableau. There is a free version available for Power BI, and the Pro version costs around $20 per user per month. In contrast, Tableau's pricing can be higher, with a Creator license costing around $70 per user per month.

Compared to Tableau, Power BI is considered more affordable. While Tableau is often seen as more versatile and professional, making it suitable for advanced and complex data visualization needs, Power BI is a more accessible option for beginners or organizations starting with data visualization.

Microsoft Power BI is a user-friendly tool for creating dashboards and visualizations. It allows you to easily import data from Microsoft Excel or CSV files, which are common data storage formats. Once your data is imported into Power BI, you can create a variety of visualizations, including line charts, bar charts, and gauges, to present it effectively.

Many people turn to resources like Google searches and YouTube tutorials to learn how to use Power BI. Microsoft also offers extensive learning materials.

Power BI has some AI capabilities, but it's primarily a tool for data visualization. For more advanced AI and machine learning tasks, such as those involving neural networks or complex algorithms, many data scientists prefer to use Python and integrate their results into Power BI for visualization.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

My work is more about providing security solutions for about three years, making this service available to end users.   

My scope of work involves making the Power BI solution available as a general product to end users, ensuring that relevant security solutions are enabled from an identity perspective, licensing perspective, and from data loss prevention (DLP) and data protection perspective.

I work for a bank, so we are a customer of these services. We serve internal customers by making these solutions available.

Power BI can connect to various data sources. Depending on the business users, some may be using it along with their Excel sheets. The data source could be just the Excel sheet or a comma-separated values (CSV) file, where they receive data in that format from whichever application it is, and then they feed it into Power BI. 

Based on the business, they would have created analytic reports, and they are able to produce insightful analytic reports on the fly, based on management, end user, or stakeholder requirements. 

Users connect to the data source, which could be coming from SQL, Excel sheets, their own applications like SaaS applications, internal HR solutions, the intranet, etc. Different business users use it for different purposes to make Power BI connect to the data source and generate the required reports.

For our bank itself, there are various tools used by different business users. Some people use MicroStrategy; some use Cognos or its next product. We wanted to have one common tool that any business user can use for analytics. 

Power BI, once made available, can connect to various data sources, irrespective of the application, whether it be HR or business applications. The bank has many applications, but all eventually need to generate reports for tracking, distribution, or problem-finding based on analysis. Power BI was made available as part of the productivity suite to all businesses, which can connect to their applications and provide the reports and analysis they require. 

So, it's more of a strategic tool for the bank to consolidate different siloed business analytic tools with Power BI, serving everyone in the business regardless of what applications they use; they can use Power BI to generate reports.

Power BI also offers mobile app benefits for data access and analysis. The mobile app is available but only in read mode. We are a bank, so there are specific data protection capabilities required to make this available for use on mobile. However, it is already part of the BI suite, and it is easy for us to roll out using Intune. 

Intune is another product we use to manage applications on mobile devices. It can protect data in case someone tries to copy it out. While Power BI has a mobility function, the bank has to ensure that the right protection technology is available. Microsoft Intune integrates very well, allowing us to apply protection policies, but at this point in time, it has not been rolled out.

In Power BI, there are two types of users: power users and light users. For those who don't have heavy use, we allow them to use the web version, which is quite light. They don't need to do much—they can click, and there are templates available that allow them to quickly connect to the data source. 

Even novice users can make use of it, and then they can apply the company-wide protection policies available. For example, we use other Microsoft suites, like Azure Information Protection, etc. So, it integrates well with our Microsoft suite. That's one feature that is quite useful for all users, and their learning curve is very less. It's about the integrated productivity suites.

One of the things Power BI offers is, once connected, it provides tools for cleaning the data, shaping it for analysis, or transforming the data. For example, a user wants to load a comma-separated values (CSV) file and filter some of the data, focusing probably on creating reports based on two columns. It offers on-the-fly filtering capability, allowing them to clean by just removing unnecessary parts and focusing on the areas the user intends to create reports on. 

Then, if they want to perform calculations based on only those two columns or say they want to find all the customers who have contributed revenue of more than two million and have been with us for three years, these kinds of ad hoc reports can be quickly analyzed. This is for a novice user. 

For an advanced user who needs to build relationships between data, that kind of modeling is available; they can take two different data sources, extract, and manipulate relationships between these different Excel sheets or data sources, and then match and append the data. It provides that transformation capability. Other tools also provide this, but because it is well integrated, and for those who are familiar with Microsoft Excel, it feels very familiar.

Some of the features are interactive as well. The dashboards are quite interactive, providing visualization templates quickly. Of course, there are plenty of other tools, but Power BI helps to integrate with our internal productivity tools. People are familiar with it, and it offers all the essential capabilities other tools provide in terms of data cleaning, transformation, or data modeling.

So, comparing Power BI to MicroStrategy, for example, some other tools are quite robust in terms of data analytics. 

From a scalability and performance perspective and based on my understanding and feedback from end users, there's room for improvement in data processing, scaling up, and leveraging the cloud. That could be an enhancement area for me to look into.

I have been working with it for three years. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. It is pretty stable. 

Personally, I use it every week because I need to generate reports for my team. Given the size of our bank, it is being used every day by various departments.

Microsoft is responsive.

Positive

We used different solutions, ranging from Excel to Microstrategy to various other business automation tools.

Power BI became part of our toolkit after we moved to Microsoft Office 365. It fits the requirements of 70% to 80% of the people in the bank, making it a strategic tool. If there are special needs, individuals might choose other tools, but overall, it is available for all users.

So, the bank has an Office 365 contract with Microsoft, which includes various services like SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It is used as a productivity solution in the bank. In doing so, we also need to mitigate risks, such as malicious attachments, links, and files attempting to steal credentials.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps the bank mitigate these risks. It performs real-time scanning and uses machine-learning algorithms to help us detect and block threats. So, we use it as part of our Office 365 to mitigate risk against our productivity suite of applications.

There are three Defender products.

• One is Microsoft Defender for Office 365, also known as MDO.
• The other products under the Defender category are Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Identity.

So, there are three products: MDO, which is used for Office 365; Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, which is used as an endpoint solution on desktops; and Microsoft Defender for Identity, which is a sensor used in our identity management. The one we mainly use is MDO.

Power BI has good integration capabilities with Microsoft suite products and backend products like SQL and SharePoint, both on-premise and online, as well as other internal applications using databases like SQL or Oracle.

The Power BI on the cloud is very easy. Just turn on the license, but there is some administrative work to be done. 

On a scale from one to ten, rolling out Power BI is probably an eight out of ten, compared to other products, which can be very complicated. However, there's the question of whether it can handle large datasets as well as other tools or provide advanced analytics on par with tools like MicroStrategy. That's what I understand from our end users who deal with huge amounts of data. 

There are areas like statistical modeling or forecasting where other tools might be slightly better. But those use specialized tools compared to Power BI. 

Otherwise, in terms of integration, it's quite easy. Mobility is easy. From an administrative perspective, setting up is very easy because it's just part of Office 365, and we can package and roll it out as a desktop tool as well.

The Power BI license is available on the cloud, so those who have licenses can use it there. It is also available as a desktop client app for those wanting to do more robust reports. It is packaged as part of a desktop product and pushed as a desktop point.

Our business units consume it directly from us at the whole bank level; we make it available. If a department needs specialization, they may get consultants or hire people specialized in Power BI, depending on their requirements. They might put in more effort or recruit manpower to bring in the expertise needed by the bank. 

If a team is already well-versed with business analytics professionals, it's straightforward. However, for a team like us, we might send one or two people for a week's training with Microsoft or another provider. It's not a complicated product for small-scale use. For handling large databases, specialized recruitment may be necessary to manage the workload effectively.

Deployment is very efficient. We have a standard packaging team. As part of the desktop image, when people request, it is pushed through Microsoft SCCM. Packaging takes some time, which is standard across all products. 

When people request, it's automatically pushed. So it's all automated for us. From an end-user perspective, it's very transparent, auto-provisioned on demand.

It's cheap compared to other solutions.

I would recommend using this solution. Within the bank, we mandate the use of Power BI first. If it can't meet specific requirements, then departments might look for other solutions. 

Outside the company, I would say it's value for money, especially for those with a lot of SQL databases or .NET applications. It's a product worth considering for its value.

Public Cloud

The primary use case for Microsoft Power BI is mainly for operational reports. I primarily use it for these types of reports.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power BI is the user experience. Additionally, the features that Power BI provides in the cloud present a strong value proposition for me.

I face performance issues with Microsoft Power BI, which are unsolvable. There is a lack of features between the on-premises and cloud version, which poses a challenge for me. Real-time capabilities are also limited, especially on the on-premises version.

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

The stability of Microsoft Power BI depends on the data size. It is very stable for small data, but with big data, there are performance challenges. For example, calling a report with one hundred thousand rows leads to performance issues, necessitating memory injection, which is a long process.

I would rate the scalability with Microsoft Azure as a ten.

I think the support is good because there is also a community available. If any issue arises with Microsoft Power BI, it is easy for me to find a solution. I would rate it a ten.

Positive

The initial setup process is very simple.

The pricing for Microsoft Power BI is low, which is a good selling point.

The only limitation is the customer size. For smaller to medium-sized clients, I recommend Microsoft Power BI. However, for enterprise-level clients, it is better to recommend non-Microsoft Power BI technology due to the need for robust support as a system integrator. Overall, I would rate Microsoft Power BI an eight.

On-premises

Microsoft Azure

I use this solution for activity reporting.

The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them. Additionally, it effectively supports communication or data diffusion.

I have used the solution for five years.

I have observed issues regarding stability.

I have found that some issues exist, indicating room for improvement in scalability.

I rate the customer service a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup was easy.

The implementation required only one team.

I have seen some cost savings, however, overall, I have not experienced a return on investment.

I found the setup cost to be expensive, and rate it at seven out of ten also.

SAP Business Object is considered an alternative.

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

Other