Microsoft Power BI Reviews

With Power BI, I create dashboards. We have an IT manager responsible for supply chain and CRM, including billing. I handle the supply chain module, receiving end-user requests for dashboards and reports.

I create analysis and measures in Analysis Services, then craft dashboards that meet end-user requirements.

My work involves using SQL Server Integration Services to integrate data from various sources, including Oracle and SQL Server, and then store them in Data Warehouse.

Power BI significantly organized our KPIs, making them accessible for immediate business decisions, like analyzing profits or losses. 

For example, in supply chain management, Power BI provides well-organized KPI data and calculated measures that aid decision-makers. Unlike before, they don't have to wait for detailed data; they get well-defined KPIs and calculated measures that offer insights into the business, allowing them to make informed decisions regarding future strategies and properties.

Power BI's collaboration functionality improves teamwork in our organization. We had a lot of entries and a lot of people who were working with Power BI. It's been four years, and some new members have less experience. We all collaborate to share information and experience, which improves collaboration.

Power BI's ability to integrate any data source, whether it's a cloud database, Analysis Services, or another type, is incredibly valuable. It allows us to make the right data available for analysis. 

Additionally, the flexibility to enhance our dashboards with new charts found online further helps with our analytical capabilities.

I also like the feature of the Page Navigator in Power BI. The Page Navigator allows users to navigate through different pages on the dashboard simply by clicking on the desired page, and Power BI will automatically open that page. 

Additionally, Power BI offers interactions where I can decide what Slicer or chart can filter another. Not all sources can filter all the others, and not all filters can be applied universally. 

I've also found Bookmarks to be a valuable feature, allowing for control over what sources are affected or whether they are visible or invisible during any interaction in Power BI. 

The dashboard and reporting features are very effective in decision-making. They enable decision-makers to determine the next steps, such as analyzing profits and losses, evaluating supplier performance, including late fees, and managing purchase timings in relation to delivery and order dates.

Data integration is very useful in Power BI. It lets me collect data from many sources, especially with IT support. I get data from tools, databases, data warehouses, and data lakes. For example, I can get data from Oracle databases and SQL Server databases at the same time.

We combine this data into a single destination—either a table or a database. This lets us analyze the combined data and create visualizations. Ultimately, we can consolidate information like customer details from different solutions into a single table. We can also change data types, clean the data, and organize it effectively.

When I create measures, sometimes the error messages aren't clear. It makes me spend more time searching for solutions. I need the error messages to be more specific.

So, I would like clearer error messages when creating measures.

I've been working with Power BI since January 2020, so it's been four years.

It is very stable. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

It works well for a large number of users. We have almost 15 to 20 end users. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a four out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy to set up.

It's difficult to set up. Sometimes, I need technical support to resolve issues.

We use it on-premises.

The deployment time varies. Sometimes it takes two days, and sometimes it takes two weeks. If the dashboard has a lot of KPIs, it will take more time. Also, if the data already exists as measures, it's less complicated.

It's accessible with some subscriptions. We have a lot of users that we can send dashboards to daily, and that would cost a lot of money otherwise. But setting up Power BI itself is not expensive.

I would definitely recommend using this solution. It's easy to use. It can get data from a lot of sources. It's user-friendly. It's easy to learn, and it's easy to search on the internet for information about it.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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 uses Microsoft BI for reporting purposes. In my company, we extract data from different sources, put it in the staging area, and then use Microsoft Power BI to build the reports and dashboards.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an easy-to-use tool.

Microsoft BI lacks integration capabilities, so it needs to consider increasing its integration capabilities. Microsoft BI needs to improve its mobile application compatibility so that people view their reports and dashboards through a mobile app since, nowadays, people move towards tools that are in the digital transformation phase.

I have experience with Microsoft BI. I recently joined a new organization where I see Microsoft BI being used extensively.

Considering that most people in my organization use Microsoft BI, I can say that it is a stable solution.

Microsoft BI is a part of Microsoft Power Platform, because of which Microsoft can increase its capacity based on the needs and licenses of its users.

Around 20 people in my company use Microsoft BI.

My company plans to increase the use of Microsoft BI.

The initial setup of Microsoft BI is straightforward since it comes along with Microsoft Power Platform.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

I am unsure about Microsoft BI's deployment process since it was already deployed when I joined the organization.

In my company, we have two developers and two testers to look after the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

The company's in-house team did the installation process of Microsoft BI.

When my company compared the price of Alteryx to Microsoft BI, we found Alteryx's price to be higher than Microsoft BI's price.

In general, Microsoft BI's price is lower compared to Alteryx.

I am not a user of the solution at the moment. I am an architect taking time to evaluate and see how my company can use Microsoft Power BI.

Our company hardly finds a tool where we can say one size fits all, so we need to use other tools for larger amounts of data and data cleansing.

It would be effective for those planning to use the solution to find the best solution that suits their requirements.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

It’s not just a specific tool I use when providing solutions. In these scenarios, clients often have a significant Microsoft presence with servers for data collection, whether it's in a data lake, data warehouse, or a data lake house. Their users typically require reporting, dashboards, or ad-hoc queries based on their specific business needs. However, most vendors tend to offer inflexible solutions, focusing on predefined reports.

Power BI stands out because it provides considerable flexibility in creating reports, dashboards, and various types of analytics to meet those dynamic requirements. It is lightweight and easy to use with good support.       

Microsoft BI typically connects to a database, often SQL Server, but it's also capable of connecting to multiple databases, pulling data from them, and allowing for data consolidation. You can then aggregate and generate dashboards and reports from this combined data. Personally, I wouldn't claim to have the expertise to suggest significant changes or additional features, as it functions quite well as is.

I have been using this solution for the past five years. 

It is a stable solution. 

It's a cloud-based platform, and it scales seamlessly based on your usage, which is one of the key advantages of cloud services. You pay according to your usage, without worrying about licenses or ownership. However, there are some limitations to consider. While it's a front-end tool for visualization and analytics, it lacks extensive customization options. If you require complex reports or queries, Microsoft offers support to help you achieve those goals. In my experience over the past five years, I haven't encountered any use case that couldn't be addressed with Power BI. On the contrary, I faced performance issues with other tools like Spotfire, which prompted us to explore different solutions. The effectiveness of Power BI also depends on factors like architecture, deployment, and network quality. If network configurations aren't optimized, it can lead to slow data transfer. However, being a cloud-based solution, the cloud infrastructure often manages these issues. Nevertheless, if you want the best performance, you might need to invest in improving your network infrastructure.

Positive

I'm not very familiar with the licensing aspect, as it operates in the cloud as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Essentially, you pay based on cloud cost models, which might include hourly rates or similar billing structures introduced by Microsoft. Many organizations utilize it and pay for its services, somewhat like Office 365. It's a cloud-based platform that provides the necessary services, including support, for development, and you pay accordingly for the usage.

 would recommend the solution, rating it eight out of ten. There’s no such thing as an ideal product. In my perspective, perfection remains an unattainable goal. However, I can't rate it lower than eight because Microsoft actively invests in BI's development and expansion. They have a roadmap and allocate resources to it, which is evident in the growing user base. This continuous growth adds value to the product and benefits its users.

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.

We use it for data modeling, joining data from different data sources, and visualizing dashboards and reports for end-users and business process owners in the company.

The various different ETL tools within it and the ability to have different data refreshes and scheduled refreshes [real-time data refresh capabilities] have most significantly improved the data analysis processes.

Power BI is easy to adopt. It's quite easy to roll out into the business for end-users, and the functionality for modeling and such is quite extensive for the data department.

It has connected to quite a few different things. We use the Microsoft stack, so it's fairly connected.

Better structure and stability in terms of licensing and capacity. Microsoft is changing things with Microsoft Fabric and how it's impacting different functionality for premium users, capacity users, and pro users. So, that's where licensing could be improved.

I have been using it since it came out. It's been many years.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.  

Sometimes, updates can cause data refresh issues.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

There are 100 end users in my organization. We use it daily. 

It takes a while to get the issue described, looked into, and resolved. It's a lot of troubleshooting and "try this, try that," rather than acknowledging that they've had this issue elsewhere. There doesn't seem to be a joined-up approach for people experiencing similar issues and how to resolve them.

Neutral

I have used various different modeling tools and BI tools. 

We used Tableau before, and general Excel modeling, etc.

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

It's cloud-based.

Initially, it's quite straightforward. It depends on how you want it set up, like with gateway refreshes, etc.

Just more visibility for end-users to use and interact with data.

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use it to create dashboards. We input our data and visualize it as dashboards.

While it hasn't significantly enhanced collaboration, it has greatly improved our reporting capabilities. It allows us to present visually appealing dashboards to management.

Our main focus with Power BI is dashboarding rather than collaboration.

Power BI makes it easy to visualize our data through dashboards. It is quite dynamic. We can easily modify views based on our requirements, which helps us see the data more clearly and makes it visually appealing for management.

Moreover, the integration of Power BI with other Microsoft products is quite easy. 

There are certain features that are only available in the cloud version. It would be beneficial if they could be brought down to the on-premise version without the necessity of using the enterprise SQL database, as that can be very costly. We need more cost-effective features that are available in the cloud to be accessible on-premise.

We've been using Microsoft Power BI for about three years now.

It is a stable product for me. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. There are less than ten end users in my company using this solution. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The customer service and support are okay.

Positive

We're essentially a Microsoft house. We use a wide range of Microsoft products and are very happy with them. So far, we have no plans to switch, as we haven't found alternatives for essentials like Office or Windows.

Azure DevOps is something we're starting to explore to enhance our desktops. We also work with Microsoft Dynamics, DPM, Hyper-V, and Microsoft Exchange.

Cost was a decisive factor when opting for Power BI. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy to set up. 

The deployment process took one to two days. 

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. 

I would recommend it, especially the Pro or Premium versions. They are better.

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

I've been using it for financial data.

Flexibility and usefulness of the data.

Trend data and dashboards need improvement.

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for some time. 

The stability is a seven out of ten. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

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