Microsoft BI Reviews

I would describe myself as more of a casual user, only because I have so many other things that I have to get done. I wish I could be more of a user, but it's hard. Right now, I have two different main use cases. I use it for teaching. At another institution, I use it for demonstrating how easy it is to build dashboards. It was really to show to all my users the benefit of business analytics. I use it to demonstrate how easy it is to generate your own analytics versus having a department run reports for you then putting it in Excel and making graphs. 

I like the fact that Power BI lets me use Excel data. At least 90% of my state data is in Excel spreadsheets. Having the ability to just attach a spreadsheet as a data source is very, very important. It's also good for training and teaching. Sometimes you don't always have access to a live production database, so having a spreadsheet with sample data is always nice.

The Microsoft BI interface should be simpler and more user-friendly. I find it very difficult to move between their data sources and their analytics section. It's probably designed by data analysts that typically get the data from somewhere else. So, one person logs into Power BI, moves the data around and puts it in the proper form then somebody else goes in from the dashboard. What I'm finding more and more is that the person playing with the data is also going to be the person building the dashboard, so the interface needs to be more seamless and dumbed down for the average user. 

Tableau is much better at that, which is probably why it's more expensive. The days where one person works on the data and someone else does the analytics are coming to an end. In the past, larger organizations usually had a dedicated analytics team and a dedicated data team. Now we buy data as a service, so we got rid of our data team and we don't have analysts per se. Instead, we have smart users. So I think Microsoft BI needs to move on to the next iteration of truly user-friendly solutions.

I've been using Microsoft BI for about three years.

Microsoft BI has never crashed on me.

I honestly can't comment on how scalable Microsoft BI is because I've never taken it beyond training or simple use. But I would imagine, if it's on Azure, that it's scalable. I haven't had the pleasure of scaling it, so I don't know, but it doesn't strike me as a solution that would have problems with scalability.

I have not had to contact technical support, but I've actually downloaded and taken three Power BI courses for free and they're very good.

I was using Tableau but the licensing cost went up when Salesforce required them to raise the price. But if the price hadn't changed, I would've absolutely stuck with Tableau because I like it. I do not know about the cost of the licenses. We buy it from the state and when it went up, our CIO at the time said no more Tableau licenses. I had to scramble to find a replacement, and fortunately, I discovered that Power BI is included in Microsoft 365. However, I prefer Tableau's interface. Microsoft BI's user interface is convoluted in terms of how you attach a data source. You have a separate screen for defining your data and then you have to jump to a different screen to model the results. In other words, there are two separate interfaces for data and analytics. In Tableau, it's more seamless. 

Setup is very easy. You click on the icon, download the MSI, and it loads itself. It takes about a couple of hours to deploy overall.

I'd rate Microsoft BI as an eight out of 10. The biggest drawback is the user interface. From what I'm seeing, Windows 11 is going to have a more user-friendly interface. Even Microsoft Edge is adopting a more user-friendly interface. I'm hoping that Power BI follows this trend as well. 

My advice for anyone who is thinking about adopting Microsoft BI is to understand what you're trying to do with it. If you're trying to do analytics with it, then it depends on the kind of analytics. If you're want to do statistical analytics, it's not the tool for you. It's a tool that's better suited for visual analytics than it is for straight-up analytics. If you're dealing with patterns and data, it's great. If you're working with numbers and data, it's not so good. You're better off with a statistical package.

It is one of the business intelligence tools we are using—mainly for all our data visualization purposes and building interactive dashboards. We use Microsoft Power BI to generate all different types of analytic reports. We move information from our data warehouse to a SSAS cube that we've built on top of all our dimensions. We also do a certain level of aggregation in the cube itself, which is then connected to Power BI.

It works well with SSAS, which we use to generate all different kinds of trending and analytics reports. Sometimes we use Power Query and DAX to build some aggregations on the Power BI side as well.  

I would like to see Microsoft BI add custom visuals and certain machine-learning capabilities. It would be nice if the DAX functions could perform some kind of predictive modeling. Right now, it just does a kind of descriptive analytics.

I've been working on Microsoft Power BI for three years. 

Throughout several updates over the past three years, I never saw any issues, particularly with installation or anything, so I see the product as stable.

I feel that scalability is one area where there is room for improvement. When there is a huge volume of data, like when we apply the aggregation, the reporting slows down. That's why we mostly build things in the SSAS cube itself instead of bringing it back to Microsoft BI to do the aggregation. Certain incredibly small aggregations can be done on the Microsoft BI side, but if the dashboard size is more than 1 Gigabyte, you start to see some performance issues. 

The Power BI community is really big, so we mostly rely on other users for support.

In some projects, we have used Tableau or ThoughtSpot. If we're dealing with big data, then we often consider using Tableau. Power BI has some additional features that Tableau doesn't have, like DAX and Power Query, but Tableau works better from a scalability standpoint. Sometimes for reporting purposes, when we want to generate some kind of dashboard on the fly for the user, we have used ThoughtSpot. 

We didn't experience any complications. We built everything on the desktop and in the .pvi files, then just move those files to the server. Afterward, we didn't see any issues at all in terms of setup.

I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten. 

I used Microsoft BI to develop reports and then deployed them into Microsoft BI web.

Microsoft BI was very helpful for me because I had a huge variety of connections. It is very convenient to build reports, even if somebody has no experience using BI tools or data visualizations. Additionally, the performance is very good when generating reports.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately three months.

The stability of the solution has been good.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 100 people in my organization using the solution and they are mostly managers.

We used the solution on a daily basis, we were using it extensively.

I have used Tableau previously.

The initial setup was very easy to complete and it took approximately 30 minutes.

We did the implementation of the solution using two technicians.

The current licensing model that Microsoft BI has is expensive. My customers have told me the cost is approximately $20 per user and this can get expensive fast. There should be a one-time purchase option if the customer has a lot of users.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We are using this solution for analytic dashboards.

The solution integrates with other Microsoft solutions very well. 

When it comes to security Microsoft BI can integrate well with Microsoft Domain Services, you are able to make it as secure as you want.

There are useful visualizations available in the dashboards.

If you are having millions of rows of data or you have a large database, Microsoft BI's performance depends upon how powerful your hardware is. When I am handling large amounts of data I do not use Microsoft BI or Tableau because of this, I use D3.

In a future release, they need to have better integration to allow any visualization that is done in other solutions, such as D3 or Tableau, to be able to be imported in Microsoft BI easily.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately five years.

The solution is stable when the database is reasonably sized. If you have large databases of 20 million rows it can begin to have difficulties requiring a purchase of more hardware.

The scalability is good. If you have a direct query, Microsoft BI can run on billions of rows of data.

Microsoft BI is available to the 70,000 users in my organization.

This solution is used extensively because everyone has access to it, not because it is the best.

The support from Microsoft could improve.

The solution is easy to install.

We did the implementation of the solution.

For those customers we have that use Microsoft BI on a dedicated server, we have a technical team that does the maintenance.

I have evaluated Tableau and D3.

I would recommend Microsoft BI over Tableau if you are comfortable with Microsoft solutions. Additionally, understand your use case and choose the best solution that fits your needs.

I rate Microsoft BI a six out of ten.

The main use case is for dashboarding on Excel spreadsheets until data lake and similar sources are ready for us to start integrating and dashboarding that information. We are a government motor transport entity and for each vehicle, there's a lifecycle. At every step of that life cycle, we need to know how many of a particular type of vehicle we have in our fleet and its status. I'm an IT service and strategy consultant and we are customers of Microsoft BI.

BI is very easy to use including the desktop version. The visualization is valuable, it's easy to select visualizations and show your data in different views. It opens up a lot of possibilities that weren't previously available and it's versatile. We're integrating with other solutions and if you look at Power BI pulling information from the data warehouse, it's integrated to an Oracle warehouse and works well.

The formatting template could be improved. In order for me to easily do visualizations, I have to format my Excel spreadsheet in a very specific template. I can't take a spreadsheet from my financial director and quickly put it in Power BI and then pivot into visualizations. I have to first check the formatting, that it's in the proper columns, and headings are logical. It needs all of that database thinking before you can actually get valuable information out of it. 

I'd like to see more templates and better tooling so that when one opens a spreadsheet it's possible to manipulate data from Power BI without having to format the spreadsheet. If you were able to pull the information out of the spreadsheet via more detailed tooling, that would be brilliant.

We've been using this solution for about three months. 

Stability has been good so far. 

The scalability is good. 

We haven't required technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward and didn't take too long. We had a team, the Azure FastTrack team, that assisted us and they were superb.

We're using a subscription-based license and the government has a transversal agreement with Microsoft. We use the solution according to that contract, it's an EA license. When it comes to premium licenses, I think they all have room for improvement.

I would recommend this solution to everyone, whether small, medium, or enterprise-size companies. Smaller companies should use the free version because it offers quite a lot and is valuable. I would recommend it for any size environment and specifically because it's not boxed in and you can visualize data that's on Microsoft products. 

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

I'm a project manager and we are customers of Microsoft.

I like the toggling feature, the ability to switch from one page to another. 

I have a couple of dashboards that are weekly and monthly. I was able to download the dashboard, but I cannot paste any images into PowerPoint. There are also visuals based on the brand that should automatically pop up in the graph and which should be a toggling option. And I'm having performance issues if I want to add two or three tables at a time, which I could easily do in Tableau. Copy-pasting data to PowerPoint for presentation to the executive level should be easy but we're only able to copy the visual, not the underlying data. 

I've been using this solution for the past eight months. 

The solution is scalable but we haven't yet migrated everyone to Power BI. Our users are not finding Power BI as good as Pique, which perhaps they're just more used to. They're trying but some of the features available in Pique are not there so they are not comprehensively using it. It's being used mainly for internal analysis for now. 

We initially used Tableau because our data was an internal data source, and now all of our data is migrated to tool environments, that the Power BI is more comfortable with. BI is also a free product which is another reason the company recommends it.

The initial setup was straightforward, we have a Power BI admin team who take care of all that. 

Because of performance issues and because we're unable to do all the aggregation, I rate this solution six out of 10. 

I used it to build a simple dashboard. What I did was very simple. I used it to load different datasets. I defined relationships between them and played around with the data by using visuals.

I must have downloaded the version that was really available at that time.

I had to build a simple dashboard in which I had to combine two or three different datasets. They were large enough, so it wasn't possible to work on them easily in Excel. In Power BI, I used the relationship feature, and I was able to store the data in such a way that it does not occupy a lot of space. I could then send the file over email.

Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard.

There is a lot of self-help content available from a lot of different platforms, such as YouTube. So, whenever I faced an issue, it was not difficult. I could always find a solution to the issue I was facing.

Defining a relationship was very confusing. There were circular directions for which I had to do a lot of adjustments in the data. They can do something to make it easier.

I worked on it this summer. I just used it for a month or two.

Defining Relationships can be confusing when you are working with a complex data model. It can result in circular relationship referencing and the interface does not help solve it, or even understand it, in any way. It takes time to figure out a different way to structure the data model and Power BI offers no guidance on that. Online help is limited.

There is a lot of content available online. When I started out, the way I was defining the relationship between the data and the way my model was structured was not very efficient. I spent a lot of time in making it more efficient. So, I would advise others to do enough research. I was learning on the go. If you spend about six or seven hours learning it, it would be much better. Even though it is marketed as something that is easily usable and anyone can come and start using it, there is a bit of a learning curve.

I was very easily able to load the data and conduct an as-is analysis of what is happening, but if I want to do a deeper analysis of the data and break down a variable into different components, I don't know if it is possible in Power BI. I tried to do it a little bit, but it was not easy. So, it is good when you have the data, and you just want to present it and look at it in different ways, but if you want to analyze the data and break down the numbers and play around with the data, I don't know if it is possible in Power BI.

I would rate Power BI a seven out of 10.

The solution is basically used for data. It's on a proprietary piece of equipment on which we collect data. We look at impurities in molten metal, and it's a database and it keeps track of all the batches that we have through the furnace that we have. It tells when it's dirty and stuff like that. It's a large database that we keep track of the history of all the ingots that we run.

The solution serves its purpose. When you have the recurring cost every year on this other project, Qlik Sense didn't fit with it as you'd have to have Qlik Sense plus something else. 

As long as you don't need the data in real-time, it's okay.

The solution is stable.

We have found the product to be scalable. 

We looked at it for these two new projects too, however, we needed more real-time data on this other project and so it wasn't a good solution and we thought Qlik Sense would work better.

If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution.

I've dealt with the solution for about a year or so at this point.

From what I have seen, the solution seems to be very stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability of the product has been fine. We can expand it if we want to.

I've never contacted technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We have more of an industrial type application and we're going to have Tulip interface with Qlik Sense or we're just going to use Domo's platform. Domo is more expensive, a little bit more expensive, however, one of my colleagues here already used Domo and he really liked it, so we're gearing towards Domo. We haven't purchased it yet.

We looked at Qlik Sense. However, when you have the recurring cost every year on this other project, Qlik Sense didn't fit with it because you'd have to have Qlik Sense plus something else.

Our corporate office may have some sort of agreement with Microsoft. We're just an end-user.

Corporate is kind of pushing Microsoft BI, and they have questions about using it for this project, however, we had an IT consultant that said it's not a good solution.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's not ideal for every application, however, it works pretty well.

We are software developers. We generate data using the basic data connectors that Microsoft provides. We just follow the importing and exporting data around, the Azure platform.

We are doing C# development. We use an SQL server, and we use Power BI. Those are the main three technologies, and then it's just Microsoft to put it together.

We use this solution to create business intelligence reports for the executive users of our applications. We are creating standard business applications like ERP and CRM and e-commerce type applications. Then, we extract a sample of the data, build a simple data warehouse, in the Power BI service, and create some BI reports.

The data visualisation is very attractive from the user's point of view. Users see their reports and think "Wow - that is amazing". 

However, it is much harder to prepare data for reporting. I would say 95% of your development time is spent gathering, cleaning, and modelling data. However once that is done reporting is easy.

The capacity needs improvement. It is limited in its capacity in power.

Some of its features are incredibly difficult to understand. There is a learning curve to do the more sophisticated things. For example, paginated reports are complicated. But in general, Power BI, it's not an end-user tool, however much Microsoft pretended it is. We just treat it is like another tool that we use and we deliver the reports to our clients.

The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually. It should be one of the admin features of Microsoft BI.

I have been working with Microsoft BI for 15 months.

We are using the latest version.

It is a reliable solution. 

I haven't tried to scale it, but in theory, I know that is capable. Power BI Premium is easy to scale as long as you have the money.

Inside the business, we only have one user, and outside the business, we have our clients where we have four developers who use this solution.

Our clients are medium-sized companies with 50 to 100 users.

I have not contacted technical support. Google provides the information that we need.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It can take a couple of hours to deploy the gateways, then there is the development of it.

It doesn't require maintenance, but we are forever enhancing the reports. In general, it works without problems.

We are developers, we can complete the installation ourselves.

We view it as an expensive product. 

Most of our clients cannot afford the premium capacity. 

We just make do with Power BI pro features, which is always a big shame because we know that the premium version has a lot of features that we would like to use, and are not available to us.

There are a few different licensing models.

It ends up being complicated and people don't like paying for things. It's okay if you're working for a large corporation because they can obviously spend thousands of pounds every month on licenses, but our customers cannot.

Licensing is paid on a monthly basis.

Power BI has approximately 20 new features that come out every month. You just have to be patient and eventually, the features come out.

My advice to others would be to do your homework. It's one of those things where you have to get past the marketing. The marketing message is not helpful.

I would suggest that if you are going to use Power BI, you need to use developers who understand what it can do, what it can't do, and how it works. 

Then they will then guide you to say, this is the type of report you can expect. 

It took me a long time to realize what you can and cannot do with Power BI.

That's why I suggest doing your homework first. It's not as wonderful as Microsoft pretends it to be, but it's not bad, and I am not knocking it, but you have to cut out all the hype that comes with it.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

I use Microsoft BI for the reports and our displaying the data in different ways. As a project manager, I need to follow the budget and receive confirmation about our projects. We have an SAP database and we follow and check all the budget data of the project including data usage.

What I have found valuable about Microsoft BI is its performance and ease of use. The interface is very simple and it is accessible to everyone. If someone is new to this type of solution it is straightforward to understand.

The solution could improve by having more options to manipulate the views of the data on the dashboards. I sometimes need to make them myself but there should be more customizable with drag-and-drop elements and filters on that data differently than it was designed. There are filters in the design stage but there are times you need something else other than how it was designed. For example, if you did not have some of the information at the time of the design. Having the ability to design, or request the data from the database as an end-user is very important. It would be beneficial to have more autonomy on the design of the requested data. You are not able to change the fields or the request data because it was done in the backend and you are not able to see how that request happened. Sometimes you need to make your own requests or have different requests regarding the data. We do not have access because we are not administrators.

In the future, Microsoft BI can be better by increasing user-friendliness.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The solution is stable.

I have found it to be scalable.

We have approximately 1,000 people using the solution in my organization.

I have previously used QlikView and Qlik Sense.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We are using it for financial analytics and reporting. We are using it to keep a track of projects and being able to degrade the projects. We are also using it for contract closeout.

My technical guy has been using the first version of it since it came out, but we are getting ready to upgrade to the newer version. It comes along in a bundle with the 365 Enterprise version.

It is on the cloud. We're probably going to run a hybrid because we want to be able to move around. If anything happens or if needed, we can move from platform to platform.

We can see things from a bird's eye view. We can do predictive analytics. I can tell who's capable, who's doing what, when and how much money they're spending, and how fast they're burning. So, it gives us a bird's eye view over the financials and the money. It basically gives us the ability to collaborate and keep track of everything that's going on in an organization. We were able to bring all the collaboration and tasks right into Power BI.

It is easy to use. It has got a desktop where people can develop their own dashboards. Basically, we have figured out how to connect finance contracts and all programs for the government agency. So, they can see everything in a dashboard. So, it is very easy to use from a technical standpoint of view. We publish a report every morning for the government, and we got all the data into one place. The data can be refreshed. We are using the API to connect to various systems, such as the financial system, contract writing system, and workflow. We are able to bring things from NIPA, which is their budget and where they keep all their money. There are a lot of features, but the most important thing is it is very easy to use. It is not like Tableau. With Tableau, you've almost got to be a rocket scientist.

On the user side, it is quite simple. If you know how to run a pivot table, and then you can do almost anything. All the data is right there in the database. So, if you understand pivot tables and know how they are run, and you know the reports that you are looking for, then everything becomes very easy to run in your organization.

Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop.

We've been using Microsoft BI for about four and a half years.

Its stability is pretty good. It is pretty stable.

I would rate it an eight out of 10 in terms of scalability. Currently, we are running a pilot. We're doing a pilot for army headquarters. They dictate what happens and what they use. Currently, there are 10 users, but I'm looking to go up to at least a hundred. 

We got an architect and an assistant administrator. We got a staff of three and a half people because people take vacations or sick leaves. The good part about it is that these people can work from anywhere.

We are a Microsoft reseller. We have partnered with Microsoft. We have developed a relationship with their technical folks over the years. So, we kind of go directly to them. My partner came from Microsoft, so he has a very good relationship with a few technical folks. So, we, kind of, have some special privileges that a couple of other vendors don't have.

As a matter of fact, we had built a tool, but it took so long to get it vetted and get it through to ATOs. That's when we decided to convert to Microsoft Power BI. It has already been vetted and approved in the army environment. It is an approved government site for cloud services. We were looking for the easiest path, and that's why we worked with Microsoft BI. They've already been embedded into the government. It is bundled with Office 365.

If my technical person had to rate it, he would say very easy. All we need is to have the software.

It was done in-house.

They are charging us by users in storage, and there is a license fee. My financial people handle all that. The client has already worked out a contract with Microsoft, and basically, we're getting government prices.

The backend is the most important part. We understand its backend. We implemented the on-time system for an airport. We don't find its modeling complicated. We set up the back offices and get all the modeling done and everything connected. The customer doesn't even see that. They only see the part where they're running their reports and doing the analytics or whatever they need to do. We give them all the information at their fingertips.

Everybody is going to Business Analytics. A lot of people don't understand the difference between analytics and coding, but that's something for me to teach and educate them on.

I would advise doing your testing and environment setup. You should evaluate your product very well and figure out what platform your organization is running on. You should be careful and look at how well it integrates with other products. If you're not in a Microsoft environment, it is going to be quite difficult. Oracle and Microsoft are competitive. So, you go with one or the other. The reason why I like Microsoft is that they integrate with all applications. Microsoft controls 99% of the desktops.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of 10.

We use Microsoft BI primarily for analyzing data to construct indicators and dashboards. We use the information to better understand our business to make effective decisions about our business for the future, such as keeping competitive with other companies.

The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information.

Microsoft BI is a complete tool, it has all the functions needed for its purpose.

The solution could improve by simplifying the user interface and adding integration or compatibility with APA.

I have been using Microsoft BI for many years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We are able to see the users and the capability from the cloud platform.

Microsoft provides good technical support.

The installation is easy. However, there are many options and areas to configure that can be difficult.

I would recommend those wanting to use this solution to take some courses to at least learn the minimal knowledge to analyze and construct indicators. This is a very powerful tool and if you understand it you can get the most out of it.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

I've been a consultant, so I've built some reports for some clients. I use and prefer its desktop version. 

It is a little easier at buildings charts and graphs than Tableau.

At the enterprise level, it is a little expensive. To get the full capacity of integrations, you need to go premium.

It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table. The premium level is going to be more applicable for the higher transaction-level databases. 

I've been in the Business Intelligence Industry for about seven years. I use this product off and on.

It is complex to scale. There are just too many things you have to put in place. You got to have the gateways, and you got to have the premium service. There are a lot of components that get involved. It is not very straightforward. 

We sell our own BI tool. So, we have hundreds of clients. They are mid-sized organizations. We're building out our Power BI stack because people do like it, but right now, we have most of our stuff in Tableau.

I also use Tableau. They're very comparable products. I worked for different companies that built their own proprietary stuff, and mainly for visualization, Tableau and Power BI were the connectors to go to. So, there wasn't a switch.

I really like Tableau's web version over Power BI's web version. It is just easier to drag and drop things and blend data on the backend. It has a little simpler process in that regard. I don't like the charting in Tableau. Its charting is a little more complex than Power BI's charting.

Calculations are a little harder in Tableau. They can be a little more complex in Tableau as compared to Power BI. Tableau is a little more detailed in terms of creating calculations. You can't just add two columns together. Tableau should have the ability to add or subtract columns. They should make it like a wizard.

The simple stuff is easy. When you want to get into the calculations and building DAX-type formulas, I don't think DAX is that great. I find Tableau's coding a little easier.

Its pricing is reasonable for the desktop stuff, but for enterprise-level, it is a little expensive. 

I would advise others to just do their research and figure out what they want to do with it so that they know if it is going to be hard or easy.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of 10.

The visualization part and its inclusion in a cloud-based application are valuable features. 

The solution is somewhat costly in comparison with MSBI tools. 

In MSBI, when it comes to mobile and maps-related applications, we are always looking for some support with the reporting tools. Once we click on the region, then automatically it goes to the two area maps. Based on the map, it will reinforce our data values. There is constant change involved and new updates and enhancements are coming out as needed in new versions. 

The solution performs well and is stable. 

The scalability is very good and use of the application is flexible. 

We can create certain tickets, contact them and explain our requirements and they will look into the issue and help us to find a workaround for us to implement. They will address the issue in the next version. 

We are very satisfied with their support. 

We are implementers of this solution and maintain the visualization on the reporting parts, as well as fulfill the business requirements. 

The solution is less expensive than other PowerBI tools, but more so than those of MSBI. 

The solution is less expensive than other PowerBI tools, which is why most people go with it, although it does cost more than MSBI tools. It has good feasibility for fulfilling one's business needs. PowerBI is very strong in the market at the moment and we are creating visualization that works. It is a stable tool, as well. 

While PowerBI is cloud-based, it can be used both on-and-off-premises. MSBI can also be implemented on-premises. PowerBI mostly involves visualization. 

I rate Microsoft BI as an eight out of ten. 

There were two systems that the client was looking at creating some BI visualizations for. There was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. They go into voicemail, however, if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long a client was on hold, if an agent actually took the call, if the person hung up, et cetera. There are all of these different statuses and it would take all of those statistics. The product was used primarily to take that data in that case.

The other system was an ITSM system, which was the ticketing system. It would

it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. But the one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features, I think they were stronger on the Tableau side. But the data preparation features, I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features, at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

 combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when the call volumes were and what the performance rate was and the nature of the calls and things like that.

As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. 

The data preparation features were great. I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features - at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side.

There are two areas where the solution can be enhanced. One is natural language, where you can have third parties, however, it would be nice to have it built-in within Power BI, where a graph could be automatically explained in whatever language so that somebody can just kind of read through and have the graphic as an extra for exploring. That's something that I was looking at.

The other is the explained data, which is more of a lineage-type feature. My understanding is Tableau has that feature and Power BI doesn't. I was looking at a graph of comparisons and I noticed Tableau had this explained data feature, which gives, some lineage where data has come from, and Power BI doesn't have that. Or, if it does, it's not as well developed as Tableau.

I used the solution a few months ago. I'm semi-retired, however, I did have a two-month contract and did some work with it. On the project, I did work a lot with Tableau, however, I also used Power BI, and would like to continue to use it more. 

It was a short project on the Power BI side. I didn't really identify any glitches. Certainly, over time things might've come out, however, I enjoy doing experimenting and playing around with things. The one definite thing that I noticed, as I do art with Tableau, is some really neat art stuff, so I tried to replicate that with Power BI and the quality just wasn't there.

With ITSM, there's a lot of data that they collect on that side. That could be an issue, scalability. It wasn't moved to production yet. I basically produced a report as there were some issues with the ICE data, the voicemail system, and data collection. They had some issues that they had to solve. However, they were collecting data on a daily basis. You get thousands and thousands of calls on a daily basis. It depends on how they want to store that data historically. There may be some performance issues and scalability issues, however, for me, I can't really address that, as I didn't see that side. There's always a potential for trouble.

It was a really short project for me. I was really there just to analyze those two data sources and produce a report for them, with some examples, using Power BI. I was able to do that without getting tech support involved.

I've used other solutions, such as Tableau and Power Query. Tableau from a graphical point of view is much better than Power BI, however, from a data manipulation standpoint and things like that, I prefer Power BI and Power Query to prep the data.

Tableau got bought out by Salesforce, which is a cloud-based company, so they're all going to push everything to the cloud. I'm sure they'll incorporate all these new features.

I downloaded the solution from their website. 

The server side was already set up, therefore, I don't know much about the initial setup process. As a contractor, I came in just on the development side, which was just downloading the Power BI tool as a client. It was fairly easy. That's the nice thing is it's easy to set up. It is similar to Tableau, in that Tableau is fairly easy to set up. It is all built towards this whole idea of self-service.

I'm just a customer.

As I downloaded the solution right off the website, I assume it was the latest version. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

I would do the development on-pre

There were two systems that they were looking at creating some BI visualizations for. So there was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. And so goes into voicemail, but if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long you were on hold, if an agent actually took your call, if you hung up. All of these different statuses would take all of those statistics. And so it was to take that data.

And the other system was the ITSM system, which is the ticketing system. And kind of combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when were the call volumes were, and what was the performance rate, and the nature of the calls and things like that.

It's easy to set up, however, regarding scalability and high-end analytical features, Tableau is still better on that. It's always important to keep up, as technology's changing all the time. They're always adding new features. There are no negatives in exploring these tools. In the end, you just want some visualizations that help you make decisions. Both Tableau and Power BI tools are great for that. However, if you want advanced stuff, then it's just about experimenting and seeing what will help you solve your problems.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Power BI is a very powerful tool. It allows us to extract data from Excel or Share Point. 

We can send various project reports from the dashboard to management. It allows us to set up our own preferences. 

We can work with all sorts of data from the previous year or two. With that native data, we can have everything in one dashboard that accurately reflects the reporting. The visuals are great and make everything look very professional. We can change the look and feel or manipulate the data according to our requirements. It's extremely flexible. 

The solution has been very stable so far.

We find the product to be quite scalable. 

It's quite difficult to learn how to use Power BI. I'm not from the IT background, and I've been given the license to use the Power BI, however, I find that the support and video demos from Microsoft are not really helpful for me. I don't handle Microsoft BI 24/7. My working time isn't dedicated to using it and learning it. I need it for certain tasks and trying to wrap my head around it, while also handling other duties is difficult. There's too much of a learning curve for beginners.

The cost of the solution is high.

We originally started our migration back at the end of 2019. We've used it for a year or two now.

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem. 

Right now, in our organization, only 15 of us have the full license for the Power BI Pro. Not everyone in the office actually uses it. However, we have over 1,000 people using various other Microsoft products in our company.

As I am not technical, I did not handle the initial setup. We have IT personnel within our organization that handled it. I just gave them my laptop, and they just installed it for me. Occasionally, they can also do it remotely from their office to our office. I never touch it. We just open the apps from the desktop. The process, when do that way, i's quite convenient. It's quite easy for end-users.

We have our own IT team that handles the installation. They either take the laptop or do the installation remotely. In either case, it's handled in-house and not by integrators or consultants. 

The solution is quite expensive. 

I'm an end-user of the product, however, I'm not overly technical or in IT.

We have a custom Microsoft setup. We are using a few apps from Microsoft, such as the Microsoft Plan, and we are using Power BI, Power Automate, et cetera. It's all from Microsoft, and it is part of our IT infrastructure. When we combine it together, it is a project and portfolio management solution. It is not a commercial, off-the-shelf product. 

I'm not sure which version number we are using. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

In terms of Microsoft Power BI, for all people who need to do their own reporting or want to visualize their daily work or tasks, in terms of projection, giving others a view on what they are doing, it's a very good tool. It allows users to show projections of what we are doing. Users can grab statistics, which is quite convenient, and understand what they are doing from a visual perspective, which we find quite useful.

We use Microsoft BI typically to clean up data in Excel, as well as to create reports for my supervisor that will be analyzed and then used to draw conclusions.

It provides the common ground for data to be cleaned. We use this for everyone to work on cleaning up data in order to use it for visualizations, which has been helpful.

The transforming data before you start with the visualization comes in pretty handy.

It is quite easy to use and it helps me to achieve the projects that I've been assigned.

I have never had the inability to perform the tasks I've been assigned with the software. 

It's very useful because you can create helpful reports, which assist you to analyze data in a very organized way.

I feel the modeling page should be simplified. The links between different parts of your data, on the models' page, are a bit confusing. It was difficult for me to learn. 

I have been using Microsoft BI for three months.

We are using an older version specific to the organization.

Microsoft BI is a stable product.

Microsoft BI is quite scalable, especially with the number of coding languages that are available to use.

We have approximately 23 data scientists in our organization who are using this solution. We use it extensively.

We are mostly using Microsoft BI but we are trying to bring in Tableau and maximize the potential of both.

I have not contacted technical support.

I also have experience with Tableau.

When I arrived, this solution was already set up.

For others who want to start using Microsoft BI, I would say go through some tutorials on your own first and then try and practice with practice data sets that are available online. Also, feel free to play around with the different tools, and the different visualizations, because you can use them differently for different things.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

I am using this solution to monitor the dashboards that someone else has created.

The solution is easy to use and flexible.

The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version. Additionally, we have experienced a problem when attempting to update the desktop application. When we click to update we are unable to open the file to update.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

I have found the solution to be stable.

We have approximately 50 people using this solution in my organization.

I have previously used Microsoft Excel.

The installation was simple and it takes approximately five minutes.

I did the implementation of the solution.

We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair. 

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for analysis. I have a DB setup that I have. I use that DB for analyzing data, providing business solutions or business insights to the customers. Most of the time, I use Power BI for that or sometimes even Tableau.

The solution isn't hard to use. It's very user-friendly. 

The product is stable. 

The product is easy to install.

I haven't used the advanced version and therefore haven't accessed all of the features.

The solution isn't very scalable. My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability of the product is good. It doesn't crash or freeze. there are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable. 

I wouldn't describe the solution as scalable. 

While it is available as an option to most people in our organization, I'm not sure how many people are actually actively using it. I know that I use it myself quite often. 

I've never reached out to technical support for assistance. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I also use Tableau. I've used Tableau for about seven months. 

There are other programming languages like Python and R, where they use analytics for graphical representation, or they can use Power BI and Tableau in our company. There are many options.

The installation is not complex or difficult. It's straightforward. 

We have Office 365, which holds Power BI, and therefore I was able to have it easily installed.

I can't recall how long the deployment actually took. 

I personally do not pay for a license. It may be arranged through our company. I have no insights into that aspect of the solution, however. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

The solution, being on the cloud, is automatically updated, and therefore, you are always on the latest version if you are using it. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I'd recommend the product to those who want a basic tool that can help them study analytics.

I have used Microsoft BI for sales analysis. I've also used it to analyze people. Pretty much across the board, whether it's the number of people, number of dresses, number of hamburgers, number of widgets and then creating the dashboards and the metrics and so forth.

The best feature for me is Power Query. I know that probably sounds strange, but you can't do too much with visuals and reports if the backend stuff is horribly dirty and just bad. But for me, that is absolutely fantastic. I can load the data and do the transformation and be able to load it in a useful way. There are tons of connections, which is absolutely fantastic as well. It's been fairly easy, and it's intuitive.

It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI.

I have used Microsoft BI over the last 12 months.

I haven't really had any issues, but I haven't given it the full whammy or the full monty. It's been stable for my use.

The initial setup was easy for me.

I would tell potential users that there are many other tools out there, but I think it's a steep learning curve. For example, Alteryx and Domo, and Trifacta can be difficult to learn unless you have a SQL background. But if you're a Microsoft person, the transition is fairly easy for Microsoft BI. It's intuitive, and I would recommend it from that perspective. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI an eight.

The visualization and reporting are the most valuable features of this solution.

It is quite flexible for reporting purposes.

This solution is resource-heavy. I would like to see it consume fewer resources. When I use it on my laptop, it consumes a lot of resources.

I have used this solution within the last 12 months.

We are using the latest version.

It can scale easily.

We have more than 50 people who are using this solution in my company. Across the company, most are in marketing and finance.

I would rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

We use Oracle BI and Oracle OBIEE.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It would be better if the price was cheaper.

I would recommend this solution and suggest they use it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution primarily for making dashboards. We are also doing analytics on Microsoft BI.

The solution is very stable.

The product is easy to use and simple to navigate.

The product has proven to be quite flexible.

It is quite scalable and it is doing the work that we want it to. 

We'd like the solution to be more scalable. 

We'd like the ability to manage it on the cloud, as a cloud-based solution. It is running out of business as it is not able to keep pace with the big data. Big data is not something that BI can support. It cannot be scaled that much. 

The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files. Microsoft is aware of this.

I've been using the solution for seven to eight years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is very good.

The solution is quite scalable, although, in our case, as we are not on the cloud, we are facing some issues.

We have more than ten people using the solution currently.

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I wasn't a part of the initial setup. That was something that was handled by another team. I can't speak to how long it took to deploy.

My understanding is that you only need two people to deploy the solution. Admins usually handle it.

I don't have any insights into the licensing and payments required. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. I'm not sure of the exact version number. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. For us, it has met our expectations and we enjoy its capabilities.

I'd recommend this product to other users and organizations.

I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool.

The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

I mainly use it for sales analysis. We are in the telecom industry, so on a daily basis, we see a couple of trends in the number of activations of customers and registration, the performance of the dealer, and items like that.

Its integration with the Microsoft Office Suite is great. I can easily connect it to any of the Excel or any CSV files, and I can immediately create a dashboard. 

It's like the higher level of pivot tables. For the people who mainly use Excel, this is like an advanced version. This is much more flexible and I don't have to train people to use it, as it's very user-friendly compared to Qlik. Qlik needs some expertise and a layman cannot immediately go to Qlik and do stuff unless he understands it. When it comes to Power BI it's a five minutes tutorial, he can definitely understand what needs to be done.

The solution is stable and scalable. So far I don't have any issues, however, it depends on the amount of data we use. I'm just running it on my PC.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

The solution is free as it's bundled with Office 365.

Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik. 

They could also improve the mobile experience. If people are using this mobile app for BI, they need better performance there. The rendering of the objects, for example, if you create the dashboard on Power BI when someone sees that on the app, it comes in a different format. They can do some enhancements there to standardize it.

Once we expand it as a centralized repository, if I could find much more use cases, that would be ideal. However, now it's very limited in our organization.

We don't use the solution filly and don't yet have a license for it. That said, I've had the chance to work with it for more than a year now.

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and we don't have any trouble with it crashing or freezing. It's reliable and the performance is good. 

My understanding is that the solution is scalable. 

I can easily load a billion rows in less than two or three minutes and play around with it. However, I haven't tested on big data files or anything like that.

Right now, we don't have too many users. It's just three to four people as of now, as our primary BI tool is still Qlik Sense. It's only for ad hoc use cases we use Power BI, and just myself and a couple of team members, as well as the BI specialist, that access it.

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. If I run into issues, I tend to Google solutions to find answers to my questions. YouTube is also a good resource if you need information.

We currently use Qlik Sense as our BI product.

The initial setup is not complex or difficult. It's simple and straightforward. 

It took, 10 to 15 minutes, if I remember correctly, to set everything up. It's just a .exe file installing. It's not hard and it's pretty fast.

We did not need a consultant or an integrator to handle the implementation. I just played around a bit with it.

We don't have a license on Power BI, so we don't publish anything. It's mainly for some ad hoc use cases that we use Power BI format.

Power BI is free; it comes with Office 365.

I've currently looked at MicroStrategy and am in the process of comparing a few other products.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

We are using Power BI, however, not to the full scale. It's still unlicensed as of now, and I'm using desktop versions only.

I don't remember the version, as it comes with Office 365. I didn't give a thought to the version.

From my experience with the desktop version, I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

From my experience, I'd recommend the solution to others. 

We are using this solution to create dashboards and reports for business analytics. We are in the early stages of testing and we have yet to determine if we are going to continue using the solution. We have to fully evaluate the solution first.

The use of the dashboards with analytics has helped our organization.

The most valuable features are the easy creation of reports, dashboards, and the ability to perform analysis. It is important for us to create reports because we have some operations during certain hours and we can use this tool to track the information. Additionally, it is a benefit they are adding more features all the time, such as machine learning.

I have been using this solution within the past 12 months.

The solution is stable.

I never needed to use technical support. However, they have a good online community where I found documentation, a lot of general information, and tutorial videos on YouTube and Google.

The installation is simple.

The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We have a startup focused on analytics around sports and athletes' performance. The data sits in our platform called Hercules, which is exposed through an ODBC connector or API layer. We're currently building a connector to expose that data in a consumable way, inside Power BI (with one connector for Tableau as well). 

I love the fact that it's got a very intuitive user interface. 

I like the fact that you can create aggregations and view measures and metrics on the fly. 

I like the visuals themselves as all of our customers are moving away from Excel and this gives them a very unique way to have their data represented in a more visual manner with active slicing and dicing data right there, with the time dimensions and different dimensions. 

I also like the automatic refresh mechanism that it can do. You can have the data refresh automatically every 30 minutes, for example.

The initial setup is pretty simple. 

The stability has been pretty good.

The solution can scale.

Technical support has been great.

Most clients have MacBooks. Therefore, they use Tableau as Power BI Desktop is not available for the MacBook right now.

When you're building, the documentation sucks. It's a painful experience to find out how to do things inside the connector framework. 

I don't like the fact that they need to have a premium excuse to manage larger sets of data. On top of that, there are limitations in building a custom connector. If you want to build a custom connector for your customers, the navigation is flawed. For example, when I build a custom connector to talk to Power BI and report, I want some contextual data of the report, and I want to have what we call incremental refresh. However, incremental refresh right now is only supported in a SQL-based backend. It's not supported for API-based connectors. That's something that we really, really want. We only try to work around it.

Basically, I would love to see that incremental refresh with API-based connectors. I'd also want the report-based contextual information available inside the connector.

The licensing is very confusing.

I've been using the solution since about 2014. I've used it for many years at this point.

We've found the stability to be fine so far. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's easy to scale if you have the premium model. We just started exploring that right now.

The clients we have that use it are medium-sized businesses. These are basically soccer clubs or sports clubs, who are internally using it. however, we want to give it to a larger audience. We haven't gone there yet, though likely we will in the future.

Technical support has been awesome. they are helpful and responsive and we are more than satisfied with the level of service we receive from them.

I also use Tableau. I've used Power BI to a larger extent than Tableau, however, we have a startup in which we have an audience on BI and we are doing research to see how many of them are on Tableau versus Power BI.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We started with Power BI because that was one of our device partner's tools of choice. However, we are trying to support Tableau and Power BI now.

The setup was pretty straightforward. I mean the setup for the Power BI Desktop. The download is pretty straightforward. Once you get to do more complex things with it, using the gateway and things like that, then it gets a little complex. On top of that, the documentation is difficult. It's there, however, it's difficult to find.

The licensing is a little convoluted, and not easy to take advantage of. You're able to scale it in the premium model. However, they are very different versions. There's a difficulty in understanding which one of them applies to you and what the costs would be eventually, and what the performance and thresholds are for each one. The documentation might be there, however, for a small company, in order to find out all the aspects of licensing it's not that easy.

We've also evaluated Tableau and we use both right now.

We are in the startup program for Microsoft.

I'm on the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number.

It's deployed on the cloud for automatic refreshment service and it's got a gateway on-prem.

It's a very good tool to quickly get started and it does scale, however, as you get into the larger deployments and at a larger scale, it's better to involve a Power BI expert or a partner to help you get there.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. There's room for improvement from the setup and scale perspective.

Compared to Cognos, Tableau and Power BI are pretty fast. 

The initial setup is very quick. Connectivity, installation, and configuration are pretty fast and seamless compared to Cognos. Power BI eradicated dependency on a framework model. 

Power BI is cheaper than Tableau and Cognos.  Power BI Desktop comes free and the Pro license is $10 per month whereas Tableau desktop would cost you $70 per month. Cognos is mostly suited for large and medium size companies 

For someone who is new, I think that Power BI can be a little complicated. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Power BI a rating of seven. 

We use this solution for our departmental reports, which are accessible from Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint.

Microsoft BI is very friendly.

The interface is very easy to use.

The integration with other data sources is very easy and very handy.

The on-premises version lacks some technical features that are available with the Cloud version.

There is definitely room for improvement.

The visualization is lacking, it needs improvement.

I have been using Microsoft BI for one year.

Microsoft BI is a stable solution.

We have not contacted technical support.

Previously, we did not use another solution.

From a technical perspective, the installation is straightforward.

It took one week to deploy.

The deployment was done by the database team.

You only need one person to maintain this solution.

We did not evaluate other solutions before choosing Microsoft BI.

I would recommend the cloud version of this solution.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

Since we are a consulting company, our cases vary from customer to customer and from department to department, but mainly we have found two "standard" cases: Business users connecting to a DWH, or trying to consolidate several Excel workbooks to create business dashboards.

In the DWH cases, it is simpler since most of the data transformations and modeling are done by IT, but in the 'spreadsheet world', it becomes more complicated.

Users try to move from a huge table filled with numbers and "color-coded" cells to data visualizations, sometimes not even knowing how to write a simple Excel expression.

The biggest improvement comes from a "do it once, refresh many" concept. The users used to perform a lot of massaging on the data itself prior to the analysis phase. Now, they build their reports and refresh the data, so they have a lot more time to perform analysis, which is the real added value to the business.

Unlike other tools (like Tableau), getting to this point took a lot of resources in training, but when the users got there, it is a real time saver for them, allowing them to focus more on analysis, not on data manipulation.

I like the downloadable visualizations a lot. I think that they give the user a very nice starting point in creating awesome dashboards, with the right way to tell their data story.

Data Modeling is very simple and powerful for an experienced user, but I think it needs some improvement for the non-technical people. Besides this, it allows us to save a lot of time in data "massaging" prior to the analysis phase.

Reports are quite easy to build, even when some programming concepts are needed. Some users struggle with DAX a lot!

I think Power BI needs to focus more on the end-user (i.e. the business user). Solving things in DAX is not a nice approach to a user that has no knowledge of IT nor wants to get it.

Some kind of expression wizard, where the user can build a complex expression without any knowledge of DAX, can be a good addition to the product.

I see a lot of materials on how to go about doing things in Power BI, but Microsoft can add a "learning path". It would instruct users where to start, then what to learn next, etc, to sort out their learning journey.

I have been using Microsoft BI for ~four years.

I'm using the desktop version and collaborating within our company.

As a training company we wish to analyze the instructions as they relate to our customers. Also, we take certain examples for our classrooms, our training.

I consider the solution to be quite good. In contrast to what we were using before I think that Power BI has given us more extensive results. It's more intuitive and it is better for understanding the whole process without much code. We're only using the user interface, not writing code.

We find it to be easier and it provides a better understanding of the results, both for us and our customers.

I cannot think of anything needing improvement at present and am quite satisfied with what we have, This said, I would like to see integration with Excel. This is because many of our customers like to have their results appear not only on a dashboard, but also in Excel, as they use it extensively. They would approve of the integration. 

Also, there should be greater functionality from Power BI for the performance of certain complex tasks. Many things are being done with the interface and if we'll want automation to play a role then we will need more flexible programming, such as we have with Data Expressions. The interface must be utilized for carrying out more complex tasks. We wish to automate this using software and programming language. 

I have been using Microsoft BI for one or two years. 

I feel the technical support to be fine. We have all the support that we need.

Having a proper understanding of how the data is modeled poses the greatest challenge. However, someone who has this should find the installation to be quite straightforward. The initial step involves having an understanding of the data model. 

I think the setup is quite easy and straightforward. The solution can simply be downloaded  and used. The most difficult thing involves the distillation of SQL Server, not what relates to Power BI.

From our side we have around 20 people who are responsible for the deployment and maintenance, although I include in this figure not only the technical but all of the administrative staff. We have the trainers and also the people who are working with the technical support to deliver the training.

The cost of the solution is more flexible for us because the desktop is free and we pay as we use it in the cloud.

The customers have licenses of their own. We use their installations to help them with their work. Usually, these people represent new entries into the company and we give them the initial experience to start working with the software.

As I could tell, I feel the solution to be easy. It is very good that all the users, as they use MS SQL, have a product from the same company. It is an overall experience for them to use Power BI.

We are an end-user and a partner to the vendor. We do training and provide consultations to our customers. 

We work with companies, around eight in total, and we deal with their employees. Overall, we are talking about approximately 300 people. We give training to the employees of these companies and also provide consultations. 

I strongly recommend the solution because I think it's a very modern tool and quite easy for all the data analysts and programmers.

I believe that all of the people who we have mentioned so far are quite satisfied with the solution.

I rate Microsoft BI as a nine out of ten. 

I am using this solution for official purposes and for my personal needs. I use it to sort my documents.

I have yet to experience all of the useful applications. I need to experience a lot more.

I would like to see better, undisturbed stability without any interruptions.

I have been working with Microsoft products for three decades.

I believe we are using Version 10.

Because our internet here is not constant, it fluctuates, which is why I don' use the cloud-based version.

It is not stable. The stability could be improved.

Microsoft BI is scalable.

We have more than 50 users in our organization. More of the users are technical people.

We have an IT technical expert in our organization. If we have any issues, he is the person who resolves them.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to install.

I completed the installation myself. I did not need the help of an integrator or consultant.

I am considering personalization but I don't know what the possibilities and the advantages of it are.

I would recommend this solution to others who are considering it.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We have some monitoring data from turbines, and we want to plot the data to monitor the health state of turbines in different time stamps. I tried to download some data from the Postgres database and then do some plotting with that. I also tried to link different plots with each other to filter them and things like that.

I liked that Microsoft Power BI handles a large amount of data. I can handle hundreds of rows from Postgres in a few minutes. I also like how it detects the relationship between the tables without explicitly saying that. It just detects the relationship automatically. That made it easier to work with the data.

It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use.

For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that.

Suppose you want to code a plot, Python available. You can code the plot you want, and you don't have to use a predefined one. But when you want to plot it and you want to import like five or ten packages in Python, there are limitations. It doesn't support all the libraries that Python has. Microsoft BI only supports a few, like three or four libraries at most. When I want to use my old code in Power BI, it doesn't handle it, and that was also annoying.

In the next release, it'll help if they added a coding area where you are more open to make custom things. Especially for a developer, it needs to be improved. For a Power BI person, it's fine, I think, because it doesn't require much technical knowledge, but a developer will need it. Maybe they should create a space for that.

I have been using Microsoft BI for the last three months. 

It's stable, but it's so slow. Sometimes it takes some time to respond, especially when you put two or three plots with big data. It becomes very slow.

I didn't contact technical support as I used the support on the internet. I'm satisfied with the documentation, but I didn't find what I was looking for.

I was using Dash Open Source, but when I discovered that it would take a lot of time, I wanted to define a platform for that. So, Power BI was the solution. Now I want to try Tableau, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

I used a two months free trial to see if it had what I needed. I can pay later for a full license, but I don't think I will do that.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a six.

Microsoft BI can be used for business data visualization.

When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it.

In an upcoming release, there could be an associative experience, such as in Qlik.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The stability is good but as you add more data the stability decreases.

In my experience the scalability is good. You are able to increase users and add more data.

The initial setup can be easy if you have a small amount of data being used. I have found Qlik is better if you have large amounts of data.

We have a team of approximately 20 people that handle BI operations.

The solution is priced well for what they offer. However, the premium version is very expensive.

I have evaluated Tableau and Qlik.

I would recommend this solution to those that have smaller businesses where they have lower user numbers and not a lot of data points. If they have a larger business I would choose an alternative, such as Qlik.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

This solution can be used for enterprise reporting, ad hoc visualization, and statistical analysis.

In an upcoming release, the solution could be simplified and have a more complete product package rather than a suite of products that we have to put together.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

In my experience, I have found this solution scalable.

The scalability is good. We have 20 people in my organization using this solution and plan to increase usage.

The technical support has been good and the responses have been fast.

I have used other business intelligence solutions previously and I switched because this solution was cheaper and is on a Microsft platform.

The initial setup is more complicated than other solutions. Microsoft typically has more involved installations. 

I did the implementation myself. We have three administrators doing the deployment and maintains of the solution.

Power BI is cheaper for smaller groups when comparing to competitors. It requires a monthly per-user subscription.

I have evaluated Tableau.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We use it for management reporting.

It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly.

One of the advantages of Microsoft BI is that it's easy to integrate it with any databases.

Another is that it doesn't need a lot of technical support because it's easy to use.

The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating.

I've been using it for 3 or 4 years.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable.

It's easy to install. It requires that you prepare some databases for installing this product, but it doesn't take too much time to do it.

We used a consultant.

Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Microsoft BI at ten.

We use this solution for dashboards and reporting.

We work in manufacturing and we track any incidents that we have regarding safety.

The most valuable feature of this solution is real-time report tracking. For example, we have a report for a human body and the human body is populated with injury data. In real-time, we can see where most of the injuries have occurred. 

It is a difficult tool to use and it's hard to figure it out.

It's not user-friendly; more tutorials, training, and better documentation would be helpful.

I have been using Microsoft BI for three months.

We are running the latest version.

I don't have any issues with the stability of Microsoft BI. It's a stable solution.

It's mainly used by developers. We have 10 to 20 developers who are using this solution in our organization.

Technical support could be improved. If you are able to get someone it's great, but if you don't then you are left hanging. 

Previously, they were using BusinessObjects.

With the EA agreement, we get access to everything from Microsoft. It just made sense to switch.

The initial setup was completed through our internal Microsoft team.

Licensing costs are on an annual basis. There are no fees in addition to the licensing.

For anyone who is interested in using this solution, they should hire a dedicated Microsoft team to implement it, and get a lot of training.

I don't know it well but I would rate it a five out of ten.

We're a retail hospitality chain spread throughout India, operating over 330 outlets across the country in various formats, ranging from a coffee chain to fast food restaurants through our in-house bespoke brands. All these brands run out of travel hubs like airports, railway stations, and highways stops. We needed a solution to manage both the multiple SKU levels and in terms of individual dynamics, the profitability of each store. We constantly track the various types of back-end raw materials, specifically on our prediction modeling where we use Power BI. We also use Power BI analytics to drive those results with regard to the day-to-day dashboarding, reporting in terms of collection, on sales trends per hour, manpower and the like. We are customers of Microsoft and I'm the CIO. 

I like that the interface is very fluid in the sense that you can upload via Excel or you can attach via connectors, any software you like.

The challenge of this product is in truncating the table data. It would be great if Microsoft would include a naming convention which has the advantage of enabling a VLOOKUP on top of it, so two tables can be merged more seamlessly. Currently, the time it takes to merge two tables in Power BI makes the entire analysis quite complex because it requires common numbering in one table and then creating another common indicator in another table in order to merge the two. It wastes precious time. 

Secondly, while they talk about visual analytics, sometimes the challenge is when you're looking for more in terms of geovisual analytics, such as city maps which requires a functionality whereby you can upload transactions. For example, if I want to visually present my data on an airport map, showing which stores are generating what revenue dependent on the traffic heat map, I am unable to do that because I cannot upload drawings. Ideally, I'd like to show each store as a bar map with waves explaining the sales in each location. It allows me to pinpoint which locations are more profitable. 

I'd like to see a degree of variability so I have the flexibility of putting those variable components in my predictive modeling, and I can get a feel for the trends. It requires a common input database. You can do it in Excel, but you can't do it in Power BI, which I find surprising.

We've been using this solution for nine months. 

The product is fairly stable, it doesn't get too many upgrades or updates from that perspective so it's fairly straightforward in terms of implementation and our entire ecosystem was on Microsoft which helped us. The only area that can be problematic is when you're trying to create relationships between two databases and you're trying to link it with your Power BI solution, sometimes that mapping takes considerable time.

The solution is scalable. We are a cluster of eight legal entities and we've been able to expand to all of them. We started with 20 outlets and today we have 350 outlets. We are more granular and today Power BI allows us to drill down to the last voucher. We have around 14 users from the finance and operations teams.

We haven't needed to call Microsoft, because we worked with one of their gold partners in India. So we are on an AMC model with them in terms of manpower. If there are any problems or upgrades we need, we reach out to the partner. 

The initial setup was straightforward for the simple reason that our entire ecosystem was on Microsoft and we use Azure Web Services in terms of hosting. We split the entire project into two parts to simplify things. The first part was more about the granular analysis of sales and various other elements, which took considerable time due to the many external stakeholders involved. Phase two was relatively simple, because it was department specific and we created a split team, which led to the creation of a better platform.

Licensing is on an annual basis. We have a complete Microsoft Ecosystem license. I think there is room for improvement with the licensing, specifically during the pandemic when it would have been reasonable to offer a discount. Many other companies, SAP and Oracle, for example, gave waivers to the MSME sector. Microsoft traditionally is used by smaller or medium-sized companies so I was expecting some sort of discount on the pricing, but unfortunately that didn't happen. We managed to avoid an escalation in cost, but frankly speaking, a discount would have been much appreciated.

It's important to understand your entire ecosystem in terms of your tables; the kinds of tables your back-end database has and the elements of analysis that you are looking at. If you are looking at predictive modeling, you need to have at least two to three years of data, because that allows you to define the trajectory of the predictive modeling. Otherwise, it doesn't serve any purpose. Secondly, be very specific with your implementation partner, as to how you'd like a particular visualization tool to look, otherwise you may not get what you want. Finally, it's important to invest in people and create a center of excellence made up of people who know Power BI well, or who will get trained and certified on it. You'll need an in-house team which can do the small tweaks and changes as you require, otherwise you'll get stuck each time you need to do something.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use it for reporting. We are using its latest version.

Its visualizations and dashboards are most valuable. Power BI is great in terms of visualizations and dashboards. The reports that we previously had were not very nice in terms of visualization. It also provides the ability to play with the data.

We have a lot of servers and applications from which we want reports, and it allows us to create reports from an SQL source or some other source.

They can improve it in terms of rule-based security. Currently, it has very limited rules.

They can improve the user interface a little bit to make it more user-friendly. When creating a dashboard, it is not very user-friendly. You have to click on a certain style and use your keyboard keys to move it. You cannot drag and drop it. 

Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case.

I have been working with Power BI for five or six months.

I am at the initial stage of using it. We have just deployed a report in our organization, and it is working fine so far. It seems to be stable. I am not sure if we faced any issues with it.

It is good in terms of scalability.

I have had only one interaction with them, and it was a bad one. They took around a month to resolve a simple issue. We also had to escalate the case. The resolution was very simple, and ideally, they should have found it on the first day. They normally take too long when it comes to the escalation of cases.

As a first-time user, I found it to be of medium complexity. You have to connect it with the SQL database or your data source. You might not find it very straightforward.

It can also be deployed on-premises. If you have it on-premises, make sure that you meet all the prerequisites and have all permissions. You should sort these things out before deploying Power BI. I faced some issues because I missed one of the prerequisites, and it took me one month to get it resolved. That's why I recommend completing all prerequisites.

I would rate Microsoft Power BI a seven out of ten.

One of our primary use cases is to build an MSBA-based business intelligence solution for  collection agents, so that they can receive daily information relating to bills in the form of ledgers. I've built several packages to import the data from where it has been dumped. I then created the data mask for data analysis to showcase all the outputs and conclusions. As a result, there is a clear breakdown of total collections, the different parameters, customer-based information, and other essential information. We are partners of Microsoft BI and I'm a solutions architect.

The solution has helped increase the client's total sales revenue for their collection agent. It's basically MSBA, plus an AIML kind of solution and it helps the client to increase the overall efficiency of their collection agents, increasing total revenue for the company. 

The most valuable feature is the data flow related to the container and the control flow. Microsoft has recently introduced paginated reports in the status part. These are web-based and also mobile-based, depending upon the layout of the report. It can be easily printed in Word format as well as in layout format, regardless of size. 

There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution and there are certain features that Microsoft should include in the MSBA solution. One is the connective level problem that we currently face from the different data sources. It provides about 80% connectivity to all the data sources, but there is the remaining 20%. They could provide some kind of additional functionality which would make it a great solution. 

I've been using this solution for about 18 months. 

The solution is pretty stable in its current form, and we are working on the same platform to optimize and incorporate everything. 

This solution is fully configurable and totally scalable. We are currently expanding the solution to include the area collections managers, the territory collection managers, and the regional collection managers. There are currently close to 3,000 users who are field collection agents. There is a maintenance cost but it's pretty low because it's an on-premise solution, so there is no cost attached to the server-based maintenance. Our support team is responsible for maintenance.

The solution is currently used throughout the company although there are geographical restrictions. They plan to extend usage to a pan-country level. It will take some time to implement but we are at the end stages of deployment on the pan-country level. Once completed, we expect there will be around 15,000 users. 

We provide technical support as required by our clients. Urgent issues can be resolved within two or three hours. 

Microsoft BI is similar to Talent and Pentaho BI but Microsoft is more competitive and flexible over the other BI solutions. We can cover up or build our end-to-end solution from scratch and that includes reporting and we don't need to go to any kind of a visualization tool for that.

The initial setup was complex because the data vault was not totally structured and we needed to create some kind of a data lake, dump the data, then analyze it and create the data mask. We require certain validations and checks before importing or exporting the data as well as the application of the cubes to SSRS before reporting services. Deployment time can be dependent on the server and we have designed the system to optimize the process. We have a deployment team which can include two to three developers. Deployment takes about 10 minutes. The client decides on the deployment plan because they have applications that hang on the production server and don't want deployment to hamper other applications. 

Microsoft BI is provided as a BI solution to incorporate or implement all data in a single platform. It enables you to build a data mart for your company and analyze it on a single platform. Even data analysis techniques can be carried out on this platform, and output of data can be visualized from the SSRS reporting tool. In this solution, the ROI is quite high because collection has increased up to 25% in one month compared to the same month last year.

We have used a client-based service in the pricing. As yet, there are no additional costs. 

For anyone interested in building a BI solution from scratch, it's important to be aware that the data is not taken at a single platform. I believe that Microsoft BI is the best platform for this because it gives the flexibility to store the data into an SQL Server from different sources, and the ability to first dump your data into those servers. The analysis and reporting is in the same platform. Power BI has a much greater range than SSRS. Microsoft BI is a tool that gives it to you on a single platform, and you can build an end-to-end BI solution. This is not possible in Power BI. 

This solution gives me the total flexibility to use my skill set, in the technical forms and in the analysis form, in one go. I can do several things on a single platform regarding the data science, as well as the data analysis, pulling information, analyzing data, transforming data, creating data lakes, data warehouse, and data masks, all in a single platform. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

There are multiple use cases. I can't count them even on my fingers. There are around 20 to 30 solutions we have been deploying. We use it across finance, procurement, HR, engineering, and whatnot. Each of the domains we have touched. Data visualization is the main need of any organization. With Microsoft being in our ecosystem, Power BI works perfectly well for us.

The solution overall works quite well, especially if you have a Microsoft-heavy ecosystem.

The ease of creating the dashboard is quite good. 

The analytics are very strong when we couple it with Azure. It offers very good Big Data Analytics that work perfectly well. 

Scalability is not at all a problem. 

You can perform the role-based access perfectly. It gives you everything you need with a single sign-on authentication due to the fact that we are in the Microsoft environment.

You don't have to worry about security. That is very robust.

What matters most is the turnaround time to create a solution, which is quite fast. This is due to the fact that it's quite intuitive in nature. Even those new to the solution can create solutions very quickly. There isn't a high learning curve.

The initial setup was not difficult.

The pricing has been pretty good. 

Technical support is quite responsive.

Overall, the solution is quite intuitive.

If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization.

We've been using the solution for three and a half years at this point. We've definitely used it over the last 12 months.

The product is quite stable. It works well in the Microsoft environment. It doesn't crash or freeze. there are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable.

The solution scales very well. If a company needs to expand its offering, it can do so easily. It's one of the selling points of the solution.

We have about 60 to 70 people on the solution currently.

We already are deployed it at a global level. It's just not India-based. We use it across our organization, and it is getting used a lot.

We've dealt directly with technical support. They have been responsive. We have called them multiple times and the response was good. We are quite satisfied with the level of service.

The initial setup was okay. We didn't have any problems. I wouldn't call it complex. I'd describe it more as straightforward. It took us around three or four months to set up and deploy the solution.

We have a yearly contract. We signed up for three years and that rolls over annually.

We have a bundle, an enterprise-level package. Its pricing is good for us.

We did evaluate Tableau for a moment, however, due to the existing license of Microsoft, the default choice was Power BI.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I can't recall the exact version number.

It's one of the leaders in the top data visualization and analytics toolsets. I'd advise other companies to go for it. It's stable, scalable, and a powerful product and it comes very handy when you want to create visualizations very fast. It's a go-to product if you want to go for data visualization and reporting.

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

I am using the solution for data analytics.

I have found the best features to be the dashboard creation, graphs, charts, and presentation bar graphs. As for now, I am able to do a lot of operations but not with much proficiency. I am just getting started with it. I am not very good at doing dashboard creation or writing reports but sometimes I do it during office hours to understand and learn the analytical tools.

I have been doing trial and error to figuring out how to do the data analyzing and modeling. There could be some improvement to simplify it.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

I am only working with small datasets at the moment and the solution has been stable. I am not sure how it will be for larger datasets. We have approximately 50 people using the solution in my organization.

This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license.

This solution is a useful tool for the business and experts. It has plenty of features. I do not have a lot of advice because I am just starting to explore the solution but I have found it very helpful in terms of data presentation. 

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on. 

It should have more integrations.

I have been using this solution for probably two years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. I have a few large customers of this solution.

I don't have any experience with their support.

I also use Tableau. Tableau and Power BI are similar in terms of capability.

It was easy. It was done in minutes.

I can do it on my own. You would require external consultants or in-house experts.

Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it.

The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. 

Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person.

It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this. 

I have been using this solution for one year.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

My team uses it. They majorly used to work on SSRS and SSIS.

It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite.

It should be more user-friendly and simple.

I have been using this solution for almost five years.

Their technical support is good.

Companies that are Microsoft shop do prefer using this solution, but non-Microsoft companies or customers generally go for solutions such as Tableau and Domo. Companies that want to go really cheap without any tool costs generally go for an open-source solution. In terms of reporting, data visualization tools such as Tableau and Domo are its competitors. 

The pricing of all these tools will vary depending upon the licenses that you are using and the contract that you have, but from the ease-of-use perspective, Tableau is very easy to work with. A lot of work is being done on Tableau.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

It is used for data visualization and analytics. We have its latest version.

It has provided better and deeper analytics for our data. It has also been helpful for custom visualizations as per client requirements.

Reports, dashboards, and visualizations are most valuable.

It should have more report outputs. They should expand the report outputs.

Its documentation should also be better.

I have been using this solution for five years.

It is fairly stable.

It is scalable based on licensing. You would need premium and additional organizational licenses. Mostly everyone in the organization uses this feature. We have around 4,000 users of this solution in our organization, which includes a lot of project management people.

We don't have any plans to increase the usage in the future. We are currently content with its usage.

They exceed expectations and provide good quality support.

We had other solutions, but they were some form of ad hoc databases and spreadsheets. We switched to this solution for integrating various data sets from different data sources and for richer analytics.

It was straightforward. It took two weeks.

It was an in-house job. For its maintenance, we probably have a staff of about 20 people.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten. It is a really well-developed product, but it has some room for improvement.

We use the solution for revenue forecasting and other predictive analytic reports based on specific requirements.

I have found the quick reporting and the conductivity with all the data sources valuable.

I would like to see some AI incorporated into this solution in the future.

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

The stability of this solution is great.

The scalability at first was not the greatest but it has turned out it can be very good.

The support has been good.

I have found the installation straightforward compared to other competitors.

Having this solution on the could cloud allows for quick deployment. We could deliver the solution within four to eight weeks depending on the complexity.

There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We use it for BI analytics. I am a data scientist, so I model data and show the data through dashboards using this tool.

I think that the best feature of this solution is the way you can plan, communicate, and visualize all the knowledge you extract from the data for the customers. I like the way you can show or visualize the information a client needs to answer a business question.

I think that they can make the solution easy to use for people who are not experts in data because many clients try to use it, but they need to be prepared before using it.

Also, now we have another solution on the market that is more easy to use for those who are not trained in these kinds of tools.

I have been using Microsoft BI for more than five years.

I think the stability is good. I haven't had any problems yet with Power BI.

My experience with technical support has been good.

For me, the initial setup was easy, but I have been working for more than 20 years in data analytics. However, sometimes for end-users it's not as easy as another tool on the market.

A dashboard can be made in 30 minutes or two days, depending on the client, the information, and the quality of the data. I am also a teacher, so for my classes I can create a low plan dashboard in 30 minutes.

I used to recommend Microsoft BI, but the only issue is that you would need to know data analytics before using it. So it is not easy to use if you're not an expert. However, it is a good tool, and I think it's a good solution for many business problems.

Also, I would rate Microsoft BI at eight on a scale from one to ten.

We primarily use the solution across many company verticals and within every area of the company - including finance, accounting, operations, logistics, HR, et cetera.

In general, it's helping companies be more efficient, more productive.

There's not one specific feature we prefer. I would say it depends on the customer and the processes. What is important to one user may not be as important to another. There's no one feature that excels over another so that we don't see it like second place.

The product offers very good efficiency.

The solution is very stable.

The solution can scale well.

The documentation on offer is good.

We found the initial setup to be straightforward.

In Power BI, it would be ideal if we had the capability to import data with forms or similar methods.

It would be nice to have the ability to have a service price to offer customers of Power BI, without having the customer be part of Power BI, I would say. Maybe that could help us consult the suppliers.

The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards. It can sometimes get a bit slow.

I've been dealing with the solution for about five years or so. It's been a while.

The solution is extremely stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable in terms of performance, but it is slow sometimes.

The solution is easily scaled.

Most of our clients are quite large companies. The companies we deal with have thousands of users, however, only a few really use Power BI. Typically only the supervisors and managers use it, not everyone.

We've never used customer support. We haven't needed to reach out to them.

The documentation on offer is okay. It can help you troubleshoot or learn about the product.

We also work with Tableau and and QlikView alongside Microsoft. We do use some others, however, to a much lesser extent.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes a good two days to finalize.

In terms of maintenance, we have a support team that covers all of our customers. There isn't really that much that needs to be done. 

There are less expensive options on offer.

Tableau is always one of the solutions we would like to evaluate further, and ClickView is another one.

It is my understanding that ClickView is less expensive, whereas Tableau is more expensive. Really, the reason why most companies go through Microsoft is if they have a Microsoft Business Suite or Office and it's all tied in the same ecosystem. That's perhaps the biggest benefit. It's all within the same ecosystem.

We are consultants and implementers so we usually resell software. We do the end-to-end automation for customers as well. In the case of Microsoft BI, our clients are the ones that buy the license and use it. We don't necessarily use it directly.

We're always working off the latest version, as the solution is constantly updated online. 

I would recommend the solution to other companies and users. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I am currently using it for my professional and training use. I am using the Power BI Premium per user recent scheme announced by Microsoft. In my current company, we are using Tableau.

I’m going to go cover my TOP 5 Features for getting you started on your own visualisations so you can be up and running and leveraging Power BI within your own business in no time at all. Power BI Desktop Sure you probably want to build some beautiful and interactive reports and dashboards to share all those insights from your data with your business, but perhaps lacking the experience that report designers, data queries specialists or Excel Power Users have? Well now all your end users can easily access data and build their own reports using a simple yet powerful interface, Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is a free download which provides an excellent canvas for creating your own masterpiece’s or perhaps just a simple report or dashboard tile. Power BI Desktop with its monthly release cycle is constantly evolving with newly added features or enhancements that can ‘bring data alive’ often in just a few minutes or hours. Visibility Data is arguably one of most precious resource that businesses are generating today. The key aim to be able to manipulate and easily combine this valuable data with other datasets, and then have a simple way to gain a deeper understanding of their business. With data often residing across multiple systems and formats, a valuable resource that businesses need is to be able to collate the various datasets and generate different ways to visual and understand it. In order to identify trends and relationships which were not previously visible and help make those important DECISIONS that business need to make every day based on the right facts. With a deeper understanding that comes from interpreting data in a visual form, the data world has become even more important for a business to be able to leverage and gain the competitive edge it needs; so it’s no wonder that Microsoft’s BI can provide so much value with the data-shaping and modelling capabilities to unlock hidden insights. Custom Visualisations Every business has its own culture and way of doing things, sometimes the ‘standard way’ of doing something just doesn’t cut it and a need to customise it to make it work is needed. The same goes for visualisations that come as standard with Power BI tool, which for some may not provide the depth or complexity of visualisation that is needed in order to ‘bring data alive’. However by accessing the growing library of custom visualisations or even creating ones that meet a specific need is perhaps a way to find a competitive edge. Import Excel Data One of the recent improvements that was added was the ability to import data from Excel. It has a wizard for making it very straight forward so your Excel ‘Power User’s’ now have even greater functionality to make sense of the data. Power Q&A Have you wanted to be able to ask questions in your own language and have it answered? Now Power BI makes that very easy with the Dashboard Power Q&A and the underlying data models. You just start typing in your question and the data model provides the context and answer which can then be manipulated to suit your own visualisation needs.

Power BI is good with handling simple relationships between tables in a data model. But, if there are complex relationships between tables, that is, if they have more than one links between tables, Power BI might not handle them well. You need to create a data model carefully by having more unique fields so that Power BI does not confuse the relationships when it comes to complex relationships.

In most cases, you might not feel the need to configure and optimize visualizations in Power BI. But even if you do, Power BI does not provide many options to configure your visualizations as per your requirements. Thus, users have limited options for what they can change in visuals.

The user interface of Power BI is often found crowded and bulky by the users. It is in the sense that there are many icons of options that block the view of dashboard or report. Most users wish that the user interface or the report canvas was clearer with fewer icons and options. Also, creating scrolling dashboards is a native feature.

As we know, the expression language used to deal with data in Power BI is DAX. However, you can perform a lot of actions using the DAX formula in Power BI, it is still not the easiest language to work with. Sometimes the formulas you create work well in Power BI, sometimes they don’t. You can concatenate up to two elements but concatenating more than two elements needs nesting statements.

Power BI has a limit of ingesting data at a time which is approximately 2 GBs of data. If you wish to import and use data of even greater volumes, you need to extend your free version to a paid version of Power BI. Also, users have reported that Power BI takes a little more than usual time or even hangs while processing millions of rows and columns of data.

Usually, Power BI is the easiest to use BI tool if you are using it simply to import data and create reports. But Power BI is an entire suite having a lot of other interrelated tools. When the purpose of your use is more than just creating reports in Power BI Desktop, you need to learn and master several other tools like Gateways, Power BI Report Server, Power BI Services, etc.

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

I am currently using it for my personal training, and I didn't find any stability issues, but when it comes to big data, there may be some sort of issues where the system might hang.

In terms of adding more users, there shouldn't be any issues or limitations. Currently, I am using it for my personal use.

For very big companies with large-scale data and many rules, there would be speed issues with Power BI. Therefore, I don't recommend Power BI at this level. For such organizations, Tableau is the best solution. I have tried Tableau in many companies with many nodes, and I found no speed issues with Tableau. So, I won't recommend Power BI for organizations where 2,000 or 4,000 computers are connected, and there are multiple branches with data coming from different countries.

I contacted them for an installation issue related to the RPA Power Automate Desktop. I had downloaded this software, and I was trying to use it with Office, but there were some installation issues. I contacted Microsoft's technical team, and they logged in to my computer and fixed the issue.

Their support is very nice. They called me and then remotely connected to my computer through Teams. They gave me very good support, and I am perfectly satisfied with them.

I can mentions main difference between Power BI and tableau which is as under. Advantages of Tableau Here, are pros/benefits of using Tableau BI: •Less cost of training •Very fast and easy to create visualizations •Good customer support •Data Interpreter Story-telling ability •Tableau offers a feature of visualization •It helps you to combine shape & clean the data for analysis. •It helps you to handle a large amount of data. •Uses scripting languages like R & Python to avoid performance for complex table calculations. •Allows users to create reports, dashboards, and stories using Tableau Desktop. Advantages of Power BI Here, are pros/benefits of Power BI •Offers pre-built dashboards and reports for SaaS Solutions •Provide real-time dashboard updates. •Secure and reliable connection to your data sources in the cloud or on-premises •Power BI offers quick deployment, hybrid configuration, and a secure environment. •Data exploration using natural language query. •Feature for dashboard visualization •New features frequently added that are great for excel users. •Extensive database connectivity capabilities Q&A feature publish to the web. •integration with both Python and R coding to use visualizations. •Power Query provides many options related to wrangling and clean the data. •Post publishing the data into Power BI web service can schedule refresh without manual intervention. •Power BI backed by the superpower of with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Disadvantages of Power BI Here, are cons/drawbacks of Power BI •Dashboards and reports only shared with users having the same email domains. •Power Bl will never mix imported data, which is accessed from real-time connections. •Power BI can't accept file size larger than 1 GB. •Dashboard never accept or pass user, account, or other entity parameters. Disadvantages of Tableau Here, are cons/drawbacks of Tableau •Relatively high cost •No change management or versioning •It is expensive, BI, when compared to other tools. •Importing custom visualization is a bit difficult. •Not offers easy methods for embedding reports to other applications. •Tableau is suitable only for a large organization which can pay for licensing cost. •The tableau does not offer support for artificial intelligence and machine learning. •There is integration with other Microsoft products like Power Apps , Dynamics 365, Office 365, and Microsoft Flow, which uses Single Sign-On (SSO).

Its initial setup is very simple. There is no issue at all. If you have everything set up on your computer, it takes only 10 minutes.

In terms of maintenance, Power BI does not require any maintenance, but the database behind Power BI requires some sort of maintenance. Power BI is like a tap. It is just providing what is in the tank. For clean water, you just need to clean the tank at the back. To get good visualizations, you need to clean your database, tabling structure, and data modeling. If you are doing all data modeling in Power BI, then data modeling requires some sort of maintenance.

Power BI comes in three levels – Desktop, Pro, and Premium. The Desktop level is free for individual users. Pro – The Pro plan costs $9.99 per user, per month and includes a mobile app, the ability to publish and share reports, a 1 GB model size limit, eight data refreshes daily, the ability to connect to over 100 data sources, embedded APIs and controls, AI visuals, data security and encryption, metrics for content creation and publishing and up to 10 GB per user maximum storage. Pro is available for free for companies that have the Microsoft 365 E5 solution. Premium (per user) – Microsoft launched this new pricing strategy that costs $20 per user, per month. It includes all of the features of the Pro plan, plus paginated reports, a 100 GB model size limit, 48 data refreshes daily, advanced AI features, XMLA endpoint read/write connectivity, data flows, the ability to analyze data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage, application lifecycle management and up to 100 TB of maximum storage. Premium (per capacity) – This plan starts at $4,995 per month per dedicated cloud compute and storage resource. It includes all of the features of the Premium per user plan, plus on-premise reporting, a 400 GB model limit, multi-location deployment management, Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) and autoscale add-on.

No, I am diehard fan and accredited professional of Microsoft technologies, so I have no other thought.

I will suggest below guidelines to Power BI users. Limit the number of visuals in dashboards and reports According to Microsoft's Optimization guide for Power BI, placing many visuals in a single report slows report performance. Limit widget visuals to eight per report page and grids to one per page. Limit pages 30 points (cards: 1, gauges: 2, charts: 3, maps: 3, grids: 5). Limit tiles to 10 per dashboard. To improve Power BI report performance, remove unnecessary interactions between visuals By default, all visuals on a report page can interact with one another. For optimal report performance, interactivity should be minimized. Reduce the number of queries fired at the back end and improve report performance by disabling unnecessary interactivity. Enable Row-Level Security (RLS) Row Level Security restricts user access to certain rows in a database depending on the characteristics (role) of the user executing a query. With RLS, Power BI only imports data the user is authorized to view. Combining Power BI roles with roles in the back end can result in substantial performance gains. Test all roles before rolling out to production. Use Microsoft AppSource certified custom visuals Power BI certified visuals are AppSource visuals that have passed rigorous quality testing. Microsoft verifies that certified custom visuals have robust, high-performance code. Certified custom visuals are the only custom visuals that can be viewed in Export to PowerPoint mode and email subscriptions. Use preview feature of hierarchy slicers instead of custom visual If you need to show hierarchy in slicers, enable the preview feature provided by the Power BI desktop instead of using of a custom visual. Provide data categorization for Power BI reports (HBI, MBI, LBI) High Business Impact (HBI) data requires users to get a policy exception to share the data externally. Low Business Impact (LBI) and Medium Business Impact (MBI) data do not require exceptions. By using Power BI data sensitivity labels, you raise user awareness about required security and how reports should be shared inside and outside the organization. Use on-premises data gateway instead of Personal Gateway Personal Gateway takes data and imports it into Power BI. Enterprise Gateway (on-premises data gateway) imports nothing, which is more efficient when working with large databases. Use different Power BI gateways for Live Connection and Scheduled Data Refresh If the same gateway is used for Scheduled Data Refresh and Live Connection, Live Connection performance will slow down when Scheduled Data Refresh is active. Avoid this issue by creating separate gateways for Live Connection and Scheduled Data Refresh. Test custom visual performance on reports to ensure fast report load time; use an alternative visual if the chosen visual performs poorly Uncertified custom visuals are generally not tested by the Power BI team. Custom visuals can perform poorly when handling large datasets or complex aggregations. If a custom visual performs poorly, consider replacing it with a different visual. Limit complicated complex measures and aggregations in data models Push calculated columns and measures to the source where possible. The closer they are to the source, the higher the likelihood of improved performance. Create calculated measures instead of calculated columns. Use star schema to design data models. Use slicers sparingly Slicers are a great way of allowing users to navigate data, but they come at a performance cost. Each slicer generates two queries: one gets the data, and the other fetches selection details. Creating too many slicers negatively impacts performance. To evaluate which slicers are infrequently used, use the Filter pane and remove unnecessary slicers. Ensure the Power BI report and data source are in the same region With the tenant and data source in the same region, you can reduce network latency. The results are faster data transfer and faster query execution. Import only necessary fields and tables instead of entire datasets Ensure the model is as narrow and lean as possible. Power BI works on columnar indexes; longer and leaner tables are preferred. Ensure the cache update frequency aligns with the data source refresh frequency Cache update frequency should be set at similar intervals to data source refresh frequency. By default, the Power BI cache update frequency is set to one hour. If, for example, your data set refreshes only once per day, you should update the cache frequency accordingly. Use white or light background colors For users distributing printed reports, white or light backgrounds are printer friendly. Shorten numbers Don’t exceed three or four numerals when displaying numbers. Display measures to one or two numerals left of the decimal point and scale for thousands or millions. Use Report Tooltip pages to provide more context for the highlighted measure Report tooltips are a great way of sharing additional information on the metric. Use limited visuals in Report Tooltip. Ensure you select Tooltip field carefully (categorical or measure). Use templates (.PBIT files) to speed up and standardize report development instead of starting with an empty .PBIX Templates can be saved with custom color palettes and themes pre-incorporated. Templates ensure corporate branding is pre-applied to all pages. Templates ensure connections to commonly used data sources are already in place. Templates create commonly used DAX measures. Source: LinkedIn Use names that are meaningful to your business users or intended audience Power BI provides the ability to give aliases to report objects. Avoid ambiguity when naming columns and measures. Consider hiding unused columns in the data model. Source: LinkedIn Reduce queries Reduce the number of queries sent by Power BI using the settings for Slicers and Filters.

Around 50% of our customers use this solution. We plan to extend our usage of this solution.

Our customers really like the dashboard. They can click on whatever they want for an in-depth view. Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use. 

In general, all the Microsoft programs are integrated quite well, but it could be improved. Also, integration with products that are not Microsoft could be more improved.

I have been using Microsoft BI on and off for the past two years. 

If implemented correctly, Microsoft BI is quite stable. 

It's quite scalable. 

I have never contacted customer support. 

I don't know much about the licensing because our customers pay for it. 

I would recommend this solution. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a rating of nine. 

The solution is a dashboard. We have the on-premises data gateway, which allows us from the Azure Cloud to get into Power BI. The dataset content comes from the on-premise data warehouses.

We have produced historical analytics and KPIs from ServiceNow for Incident management, performance, SLA coverage, trends, and identifying anomalies. Anomalies are, for example, if a ticket is reopened, that means it was closed incorrectly or the solution was not correct. If a ticket has been an incident or a request has been routed more than two times, that means somewhere in the processes it was not clear and the ticket is going in circles out to the anomalies data.

A lot of analytics based on ServiceNow and Gyra as ITSMs systems. There is also combined analytics between Salesforce and for example, Web analytics, Google Analytics, and so on. Allowing us to see how visits to the website translate into lead opportunities. This is done by combining the two, extracting them and combining the two sources of data, such as Google Analytics and Salesforce.

Some of the most valuable features of this solution are the ability to take your data and have the possibility to combine them into datasets and have synchronization. 

You are able to synchronize the data without additional cost eight times a day and you can set when you want to synchronize it. For example, during business hours, we synchronize the data once an hour and during the night I do not synchronize it at all. 

The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app.

Microsoft is open to suggestions for improvements in future releases. We requested to allow Python Notebooks to be displayed as visuals on top of the datasets, which now available and was not five versions ago.

The possibility to synchronize more often without having to pay more would be great. They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I have found the solution to have high performance and to be reliable.

The solution is highly scalable. We have approximately 100 people using the solution in my organization.

The solution is a service, which does not require a traditional installation. However, there is a large configuration portion. It can be very simple to configure minor operations but can become complex if you connect via Power BI, a lot of sources.  For example, from on-premise and from multiple clouds. It allows you to go from very simple, to very complex. It is up to your solution design in the end. 

You can create your first dataset in a matter of hours. This once again is dependent on your configuration.

The solution requires maintenance but not to the Power BI itself. The configuration is deployed on top of Power BI, you can set automatic alerts if, for example, the data is not synchronized or It not available.

The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We get a lot of chunks of data, especially production data and data based on education — performance-related data. We use BI to analyze the data so we can give feedback to our clients. If they're experiencing problems, we help them find trends, etc.

Within our organization, there are roughly six or seven people using this solution.

Microsoft BI allows us to connect to any database or any dataset. It automatically renders some of the information which makes things a lot easier for us.

Compared to other applications, like Tableau, Microsoft BI doesn't have as many functions that allow you to do a more in-depth analysis and represent the findings. I think they have a standard that they keep to.

As the UI experience is always changing, the interface and security can always be improved. 

I have been using this solution for roughly four years. 

Stability is quite good. It's reliable.

We haven't had to expand because usually we just wait for the data. However, we do have plans to expand.

On a scale from one to five, I would give their technical support a rating of four. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. 

I believe we pay on a monthly basis. Compared to what's available on the market, I think we pay a fair price.

I would recommend Microsoft BI to others. On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation.

Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution.

Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on.

The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. 

Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire.

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years. We use Power BI Premium, and we have its latest version.

It is scalable once you've got your ducks in a row. We live in a world of fast-paced data. The business I am working in is dealing with a lot of unstructured data, so it has to go through the data onboarding transformation piece. It is more scalable if it connects to a data warehouse, but connecting to an Excel spreadsheet or unstructured data requires enormous amounts of investment. I have seen some other tools that are more data wrangling tools, so you don't want to blur your line. You need to stick to what you're good at. Is it data visualization and modeling, or is it data transformation? They're trying to diversify and make the tool all-encompassing, but we're now having to use a different tool for data transformation or data wrangling. We then just connect it to a data warehouse, and it becomes a really slick and scalable tool.

They are very good. They are extremely responsive and helpful. They arrange a call quite quickly, and they actually get on the call and help you and do troubleshooting with you. They are not sending you to the Q&A page. They are quite hands-on in terms of support. So, I am really happy with their support.

I would advise others to just make sure that whatever you're going to deploy can be scaled out. You should get your data modeling in place first. 

I would recommend this solution. They have so many releases every month, which is quite cool. They are keeping on top of it, and it is not like you have to wait six months for a release. I'm still trying to keep up with the releases of the last four or five months.

I would rate Power BI a nine out of ten.

We are using it for analyzing transactions. In the products that we develop and supply to our customers, there are some applications that are connected to payments. We analyze the trend of transactions or payments that are done in our system by our clients. We want to understand how our clients are using our solution and if there are some conditions that are making them use our product more than others. We also analyze who is paying and how much, and how and at what time are they using our system.

It is stable enough. It has a lot of powerful functions. It can also be customized with the DAX language. 

It is also intuitive enough and incremental. You can start with something simple, and then step-by-step, you can increase the reports and dashboards according to your needs. 

When you go to the cloud, its licensing is not intuitive. It is a little bit complex. When you have to purchase a new license, it is difficult to understand on their website what exactly you need to pay and how you can group. It is something that is applicable to all Microsoft products. They're not always so simple and clear when it comes to licensing.

Their support can also be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. They are able to resolve the issue, but they can be better at explaining the approach they took to resolve the issue.

It could have something in the direction of machine learning. It can have some kind of integration with machine learning where you can ask for some reports with natural language.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable enough.

It is easy to make it grow as a product. Our organization is not big. We have a total of 10 to 15 people who access this solution. We will continue to use it for sure. 

In general, we are producing applications that we sell to our clients in a SaaS model. All data of our clients is inside our database. The clients have to manage the service. All this data that they are loading in our server can have interesting information for them. So, we are using it to understand our clients and the behavior of the user.

We had to use some support for licensing. They were fast enough, but sometimes, they were not very clear. We had a few calls with them. In the end, they solved the problem, but they didn't have a very clear approach. It was more of a communication problem. Their support can be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. 

Its installation is easy on the cloud as well as on the desktop. You can also easily move and publish from desktop to the cloud. We had issues with licensing, but after you have received licenses, it is easy. 

It is also good how the data that is being collected on some servers for different data centers is automatically synchronized. It is easy enough to do automatic scaling or collect the data from the source and the publisher.

We did it ourselves. At the moment, we are not using a consultant. It is intuitive enough for our use, and there is one type of analysis and one type of role. However, in the future, we might require a consultant for customizing the dashboard and the reports and splitting the data according to different roles. We would require analysis of different roles based on different sets of data. For machine learning, we'll surely require a consultant.

For its deployment and maintenance, we have three or four people for each specific competency. Some of them are more experienced in the data that has to be collected, and some of them are experienced in how data can be collected from the in-house server. There are also some people who are more competent in the business domain.

We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free.

Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution. It has many features that are good. It mostly needs improved licensing. 

I would rate Power BI a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this solution is as a reporting tool. We implement it for our clients. I'm a consultant in business intelligence and we are customers of Microsoft BI.

I like this product because it's a free software, very intuitive and very easy to use.

The capacity of the solution could be improved. If you don't need all the data it offers then don't download it because the software slows down. 

I've been using this product for the last year. 

It's a stable solution. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are using it for reporting ERP data, IT service data, financial data, and so on.

It has been helpful in getting insights. We weren't able to get insights at such a level. It is also helpful in getting an overview of different departments. We are able to do it much faster than before.

We are able to collaborate on things and get insightful data visualizations.

Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region.

Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources.

I have been using this solution for two years. In this company, I have been using it for two months.

It is not completely stable. Sometimes, it goes off for the whole North Europe region. Its stability should be improved.

It is scalable, and there are no issues with its scalability. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability. We have around 300 users of this solution.

We don't have any issues with their technical support. 

I have worked only with Power BI.

It is easy because documentation and a lot of tutorials are available. Its deployment took one month.

Power BI premium is really expensive for our market. A lot of small and medium companies would like to purchase it, but they can't afford it.

I would rate Power BI an eight out of ten.

It is for dashboards and reports. 

It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured.

They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is reasonably stable.

In my organization, we have around ten users. In our client's organization, we have about 100 users.

I normally find whatever I need in Microsoft documentation or through Google. There is a lot of activity in the market. A lot of other people typically would have already asked the same question that I have, so it is fairly easy to find information.

I didn't really use any other product. I used to be a Qlik partner, and I became a Microsoft partner two years ago.

Its installation is straightforward. The developer suite has one-click installation. The end-users just get a web URL. There is no installation for end-users. They just access it.

There is a Microsoft certification that you need to complete, but it is all deployed on the Microsoft Azure cloud. So, there are no infrastructure requirements.

It depends upon the tier of your Office 365 subscription. On E5, which is a Microsoft Azure subscription, you get it for free. If you are on a lower tier, you can subscribe for $10 a month per user, which is really cheap.

I would recommend this solution. It is pretty good. Technically, it is at the same level as the other products that I've used so far. It has all the features, and it is easy to deploy. Its costs are really palatable. They are improving it all the time. I am fairly satisfied with this product.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten. There are always areas for improvement, but I am fairly happy with it. I would not rate anything else also higher than seven.

We are using Power BI Premium at the moment. It is an online solution, which always has the latest version.

It is for data visualization and data insights. BI means business intelligence, so it helps you understand the performance of your business better. It gives you deeper insight into the data so that you can draw meaningful conclusions from the data, and your decisions are based on data insights rather than a hunch. 

It is a good and very useful product. I find it to be extremely useful because it gives me a deeper insight into my business, and it lets me analyze things and make decisions based on the data.

The way data is presented is very valuable. The amount of information that we can get at a glance is also valuable. You can then drill-down and see data from many different angles in the same chart by selecting certain things. Based on the selection, everything changes automatically. If we have four parameters in a particular item, when you select a parameter, the remaining charts on that page automatically change for that particular parameter.

Its price could be better. Its licensing cost is very high.

We discovered it about two months ago, and we started using it.

It is very stable.

You can scale it to thousands of users. It is a cloud product. Microsoft Cloud is being used by people across the world. So, there is no limitation in terms of scalability.

At the moment, we have about five users, but the number of users will increase to 50. We are absolutely going to keep using it.

We generally don't approach Microsoft for support. We are able to handle things at our end.

We used simple Excel reports, but Excel reports are not as good as Power BI. Power BI is far ahead.

It is a cloud product. You can access it through a web browser. It takes no time. 

It takes time only when you have to prepare the reports because you need to know how to prepare the Power BI reports. There is an MIS team, and there are Power BI designers who design the reports, but for users, it doesn't take much effort because they just have to click and see.

Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We use Microsoft BI for analytics.

I like the flexibility it offers.

The graphic interface could be better.

I would also like to see it mobile-friendly.

I have been using Microsoft BI for one year.

We are using the latest version.

In some ways, it is stable.

It's a scalable solution. We have 10 or 15 users in our organization.

Technical support is good, and we are satisfied with it.

Before Microsoft BI, we used Tableau.

I was not involved with the installation but my understanding is that it was easy to install.

We have a team of two people to maintain this solution.

There are licensing fees.

It's an expensive solution.

I am not sure if we will continue to use this solution, it depends on the business requirements.

Depending on their business size and setup, I may recommend this solution.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We are using it for reporting, analytics, and data science. We have its latest version.

Microsoft's CRM platform has very limited reporting capabilities. Power BI was able to meet the business requirements for reporting and more in-depth analytics. It is a part of the Microsoft Ecosystem, and there is a straightforward connection from Power BI to CRM. 

It is a pretty straightforward and flexible solution for data integration and modeling. It is a low-code solution. When you are doing data integration, you can use the GUI, which is very simple and straightforward. You can also do very intricate custom queries and model it at different levels. It is very easy to use and scalable. 

It is kept very current, and there is an update literally every month. However, the interface changes quite randomly with no documentation, which is difficult at the domain and architectural level where you're planning things and engaging the business. Things change frequently, and you wonder where has the button for the new report gone. They should provide better documentation on interface changes.

It should be better optimized. It is supposed to be a data integration tool, but it is doing relatively simple queries. It has its limitations. For example, you can only pull a number of columns. So, there is room for optimization on its ability to integrate multiple data sources. 

The desktop tool is very memory-intensive, and again, this is not documented clearly. It requires a heavy CPU and memory use, and it causes your operating systems to become unstable.

I would like to see the ability to create datasets within Power BI. Microsoft is promoting Azure as a cloud solution, but it is dependent upon a desktop component, which seems a little bit deceptive. Data set is the basic element that you report from, but it has to be created on the desktop and then published to the cloud. So, you're in the cloud, and you create a data structure or the data flow, but you can't report from that. You have to leave the cloud, go to your desktop, create the data set on your desktop, and publish it to the cloud. You go back to the cloud and create your report by using that published data set, which is very non-intuitive. If you go to the Microsoft Power BI community, this is a common complaint across the entire community.

I have been using this solution for about 18 months.

It is pretty stable. I haven't determined any major issues.

It is very scalable. It fits perfectly with the larger Azure Data Lake reference architecture. Power BI platform is a fundamental piece, and it becomes scalable to use with other components within that reference architecture.

We're in the process of laying out a three-phase approach. Over the next year, its usage will increase from 50% to 75%. In terms of the number of users, we have around 150 users who are data scientists and data analysts. We have around 5,500 desktop users, and it is a part of 365, which is on every desktop. 

There is a lot of online support. We also have Microsoft consultants on contract, and the support comes through them. Their support is very good.

We also have IBM Cognos. We haven't switched. They're being used in tandem. There are different sets of requirements for two different solutions. 

I wasn't part of the deployment, but my understanding is that it was pretty straightforward.

We used a Microsoft consultant for implementation. Our experience was good. We don't have any maintenance crew.

I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases for this product are monitoring and reporting. I have some dashboards for the sales department and a little bit for operations. I'm going to create a new dashboard for marketing. 

What I like about Power BI compared to Tableau, for example, is that Tableau is mostly a visualization program, but Power BI is a more complete solution, because it has DAX, Power Query, and a presentation and graphic layer. So, I use it not only for reporting and graphic purposes on the frontend, but also for doing things like modeling. It is very flexible, a lot more flexible for than Tableau for what I need.

One of the things that I appreciate is that premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month. I'm investigating in that because I think the price is good. 

I would like to be able to use more predicting data science features without having to use R. If I were able to do most of the data science that I normally do inside Power BI without using R, I would decrease my use of R and mostly use Power BI. 

I have been using Microsoft Power BI for four and a half to five years. I have been using it since they created in basically. I started using it when it was Power Pivot in Excel and as soon as they created Power BI, I started using it. 

I recommend easing into Microsoft Power BI gradually. I started by creating models and graphics in Excel first. Then, when I learned a little bit about modeling, I started moving to Power BI and working there. 

So, I recommend starting with Excel and practicing there first. Power Pivot is the app that you can use in Excel for this kind of work. Before switching to Power BI, learn about data modeling and dashboarding in Power Pivot in Excel first. 

Before switching to Microsoft Power BI, I evaluated Tableau. It's a lot cheaper to use Power BI. The cost per user in Power BI is around $10 per month, while the cost per user for Tableau is a lot more expensive. That was a deciding factor for me. 

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. 

We mostly use this solution for dashboards and reporting.

There are roughly 2000 people in our office. At the least, 100 people use Power BI. We have around 10 super users who use it a lot. A lot of people just use it to look at dashboards. A lot of managers look at Power BI for their dashboards.

It has centralized our organization. It has democratized dashboard and report building and provides a centralized format. Without Microsoft BI, people would otherwise develop and manage their spreadsheets in Excel, which is just a lot harder than what Power BI enables us to do.

The standard BI visualization capabilities are great. It makes all the visualizations and has a drag and drop builder. It also has a power query data modeling capability that's excellent.

We're a big organization. We're looking at standardizing. Anybody can just pick it up and use it because it's easy. We want to be able to standardize what Power BI is and I think that's a challenge that we're encountering now.

Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution.

I have been using Microsoft BI for roughly two years.

It has crashed, but it's pretty stable. I haven't had any problems where a published dashboard was not working. Once a dashboard is published, I haven't seen any problems with it.

I think it depends a lot on the data access. As long as the data backend can get into Power BI, then everything works. If there are any data connection issues, that's when there will be problems.

I get tech support from my admin. I've never contacted support.

We have a Power BI admin administrator that helped us with the initial setup. From the user's perspective, it's pretty easy.

I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools. It comes in lower. I've heard no complaints about the pricing.

Our company did evaluate Tableau and a couple of other tools. We ended up promoting Power BI for everyone because it was licensed and we were already using Office 365. It integrates well with all of our existing environments.

From a user's perspective, I'd advise people to really try to understand the data sources and have a good data environment in place, beforehand. That makes the Power BI environment much better.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. I think it's the best BI tool that I've used. I know it has a really good rating. It accomplishes a lot for us in terms of data manipulation and BI in the reporting.

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.

We primarily use the product for running the reports and all data extraction in our organization.

The solution is a wonderful tool overall. 

Power BI is very powerful and very easy to use. Its user-friendliness is one of its most valuable aspects. It has a very nice user interface that makes everything easy to navigate.

The product can go easily go and extract data and it can put it into any format.

It's a very good data analytic tool.

The initial setup is pretty easy. It's pretty straightforward in general.

I can't say that anything glaring is missing from the offering at this time.

Microsoft is doing a lot of research on it and they're coming up with a lot of good release items.

I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint.

I'd like to have more time with the solution to evaluate it to see if there's really anything missing. We don't really go in-depth with the product.

I've been using the solution since about 2017. It's been a few years now.

The stability is very good. It's a Microsoft product and therefore they wouldn't put anything out that wasn't tested and worthy of release. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite reliable and offers good performance. 

While the scalability is there, the cost is what you have to factor in. It has to scale as if there's more data, it needs to meet that demand and be able to extract and analyze it.  

Technical support for the most part has been very good. They are helpful and responsive. We are satisfied with the level of support we receive. On a scale of one to 25, I would give it a mark of 20.

We've found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward. It's not complex. A company shouldn't have too much trouble getting everything up and running.

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution. It's not an aspect of the product I need to worry about.

I am aware that we currently have an enterprise license.

I personally haven't evaluated or compared any other solutions. I don't have any knowledge in terms of how it compares to other options.

We are customers and end-users. We don't have a specific business relationship with Microsoft.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten overall. We've been pretty satisfied with the product.

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 primarily use the solution to run our industry reports. We get the data from data warehouse we are creating. I use it to export the data.

We have been using Microsoft BI for one of the customers. That was completely in the customer environment. That's all. We did not have that solution for us in-house. However, we are working towards introducing it for our own purposes in the near future.

The product is very user-friendly.

The solution can be used with any BI tool you have.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The solution has been very stable for our customers.

It appears the solution has the capability to scale, although we have yet to try to do so.

We have yet to implement the solution completely. We're still exploring features and capabilities. It's too early to discuss items that may be lacking.

It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that.

I've been using the solution for the past five years now. It's been a while.

The product has been quite stable so far. The performance is good. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

 We have not attempted to scale the solution yet. We are in the initial stage of exploring different features on it. We believe it to be a scalable product, however, we have not attempted it ourselves yet. We might in the future.

We don't have any customers on the solution right now as we are just trying to figure things out.

We haven't used technical support. I wouldn't be able to speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We are also using Tableau. We use Tableau right now, and we are likely introducing Microsoft BI in-house in the near future. For now, we just have customers that use it.

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. It's not a difficult implementation and I wouldn't describe it as complex. A company setting up the solution for the first time shouldn't have any problem doing so.

We're still in the process of licensing the model. We don't have it set up yet. My understanding is that we will pay for licensing on a yearly basis. I don't have the exact figures in terms of the costs.

Right now, I am looking to do a comparison between Tableau, Power BI, MicroStrategy, and Pyramid Analytics. I have not had a chance to really dig too deep into research.

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Microsoft.

We are using the most recent version of the solution at this time.

We're still exploring the solution and haven't fully implemented it yet.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's very user-friendly and so far I have had a good experience.

We primarily sell Power BI licenses. 

Mostly, we focus on the retail industry. Usually, we are using the Power BI reports for dashboards. We are also providing our customers with some data warehouse reporting. Basically, we do long-term categorization of stock and inventory numbers and sales figures so that they can compare the sales and stocks to the inventory numbers.

We tend to deal with physical inventory reports. We tend not to deal with the solution for financial operations.

The solution has different licensing tiers.

The product can scale if you need it to.

Technical support is quite good.

With the cloud deployment, there's no setup required.

The product works well for small or mid-level organizations.

The solution's stability could be improved. In the retail industry, due to issues with information updating and data uploading. Clients may end up pricing items wrong as they could accidentally base their choices on old or wrong data.

The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions. It could also be less expensive.

While we have experience with Microsoft tools for the past ten years, I personally have had experience with Microsoft BI for the past two or so years.

The solution is not really stable. I've faced a lot of limitations especially in terms of some data flows updates. We have faced some exceptions. Right now, we have created a case for Microsoft in order to solve some problems we've been having as, right now, there's some sort of system fault.

While the platform is a little more stable, the big problem is the latency issues around customer updates.

In a recent project, in Sweden, we faced an exception in Power BI from the update path. Whenever we refresh the animations and the fact tables, we faced something that said we couldn't upload the data. After 20 minutes we tried to refresh again. We didn't change anything with our reports or platform or anything related to infrastructure or schema. We didn't touch anything. An yet, the data is updated successfully. That leads us to ask the question: what was the problem 20 minutes ago? We still don't know the answer.

That is why we need some stability for the update service. We are deciding some business decisions based on this data. If this data is not updated, we may decide to take the wrong path. 

This is very important in the retail industry. For example in the grocery field, sometimes with vegetables or fruits or other products, customers need to decide to change the prices within lock days. They need to decide, based on demand, if they should increase or lower prices. They can't make the correct decisions if the numbers don't update.  

The scalability potential actually depends on your licenses. Microsoft provides three licenses. One of them is absolutely free. Another is called Pro. Yet another is per user or Premium. There is a huge difference between the Pro license and the Premium license. There is no need to scale the Pro license or other license models.

When you put the on-premise reports, you can scale out or scale up. It depends on your existing resources. However, in the services as a software (SaaS) version, it actually comes with Microsoft's units or Microsoft resources. 

We have an ASFP agreement with Microsoft. As a Gold Partner, Microsoft is pretty good and responding automatically and helping us resolve issues.

If a partner does not have an ASFP agreement, they tend to have to go to forums or try to Google answers to their problems.

We are aware that sometimes when we make changes to BI, the solutions might be complex. There might be SQL involved, which needs to be taken into account, for example. We may have to look into other resources and other tools to see if there are interactions that are the issue. However, Microsoft is quite helpful as we work through issues. We're quite satisfied with their level of support.

We also work with and sell MicroStrategy in Turkey. 95% of the MicroStrategy projects have been completed with our company. It is a direct competitor with Power BI. My company commonly does consulting for some small and medium markets and for that we recommend Power BI. Whenever we talk about enterprise-level solutions, the company we will use is MicroStrategy.

There isn't much of an installation process, as the solution is on the cloud.

There is a free license, however, it is limited. The Premium license and the Pro license functionalities are very different. Whenever we talk with our customers, they ask "Should we chose the Premium?" We say that "No, you don't need to, as it's too expensive. It is much more expensive than the Pro license." However, the Pro license functionality is not enough for some customers. There is no middle between Pro and the Premium. We need something in between.

The Pro license is maybe suitable for SMBs, small and medium-sized businesses. The premium version is ideal for companies that need to scale up and out.  

There also may be some additional costs that can drive up the price.

I prefer this product and I suggest Power BI to all customers, however, we know that if Power BI is a new idea, we make sure to show company-specific data or analytics for analyzing the data and how this solution can analyze everything quickly. That said, it's not for everybody. If all companies tried to put all their reporting expectations in the Power BI, it would not fit their expectations.

It's not a standalone solution. You need other items in your toolbelt. You need, for example, something that can handle raw data, you need warehousing, et cetera.

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

We primarily use the solution for building dashboards, one-off analytics, and things of that nature that combine data.

The functions from a standpoint of generating analytics have been really helpful overall. That aspect has helped improve our organization.

In general, we are pretty pleased.

The ability to combine the data and to connect with pretty established platforms has been the solution's most valuable aspect to us. 

The fact that you can visualize items is great. The visualization power is very good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I don't know if I can pinpoint any specific items that I don't like. However, the more connectors that they provide the better. 

I don't use it day in, day out to tell you if it has any kind of functionality items that may be open up for improvement opportunities. 

The solution could probably beef up items related to statistics and things to cover the gap between the advanced things that you can do with Tableau. Any kind of advanced statistical analysis would be very helpful in future releases.  

The solution could be quicker at rendering data.

I've been using the solution for three years or so.

The solution is very stable. It's reliable. We've been happy with it. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale well if you need it to. That shouldn't be a problem for any organization.

I'm not sure how many people are actually using the solution in our organization. Everybody has been kind of encouraged to leverage the platform on an ongoing basis. However, obviously, those that are holding jobs related to any kind of analytics are probably more prone to using it.

I don't tend to deal with technical support. That's probably more on the IT team than on my plate and therefore I don't really know how their tech support works. I can't speak to their knowledgeability and response times.

With our company, there were probably those that needed to do advanced analytics that were using solutions like Tableau or Excel.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't run into any problems when it comes to setting it up.

We have a pretty strong partnership with Microsoft and we tend to help them develop their product as well.

We are using the latest version of the solution at this time.

I would advise other organizations that the product has a lot to offer and therefore it's worth the investment and the effort.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. Sometimes it could be quite at rendering data, however, overall, we've been happy with the results.

We use it mainly for Qlik Sense. We're using business interests analytics. Everyone from marketing to sales uses it. Microsoft BI is usually used for oversight.

Microsoft BI is easy and but not very user-friendly. But you can directly connect it to an Excel file. You can find out how many sites to look at and do it yourself directly. The Microsoft Power BI app is very good. It's also very flexible. 

The dashboard could be simplified. The service is currently good, but it could be better. If you compare it to Tableau and Qlik Sense, they are doing much better work. The ability of their dashboards is much better. The technical part is easy in Qlik Sense, where we can do some coding. It isn't easy in Power-BI.

Microsoft BI can be more user-friendly. Scalability is also a challenge for us because it's difficult to handle Power BI's dashboard.

I have been using Microsoft BI for the last four years.

Microsoft BI is a stable solution. We haven't had any issues yet.

It's not very scalable because it's difficult to manage the Microsoft BI dashboard.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup is very easy.

Their price is good.

I would recommend this product to potential users. But if they have options, I would recommend one of the others.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a six.