Microsoft Power BI Reviews

The primary use case is to generate BI reports. 

Power BI could be improved by implementing more options for data integration. Nowadays, the cloud takes care of scalability and security. As we all know, data sources are increasing, so we get data from a variety of streams. But if we could get the downstream data into the database and update the reports more easily, Power BI would be better. 

My company has been working with Power BI for five to ten years. 

It seems stable. I haven't heard of any difficulties from my clients that utilize Power BI. 

This solution is scalable. 

I have never contacted technical support. 

I didn't install this solution, our IT team took care of it. 

Our in-house team took care of implementation. It should take a team of two to three to deploy and maintain Power BI. 

I don't own the licenses — our clients do, and we work for them as engineering partners. 

Tableau is another option. 

I would recommend Power BI, but it depends on one's business requirements. Tableau is another option, as well as a few other tools. My recommendation depends on business needs, budget, and the exact type of reports they need. 

I would rate Power BI an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for Microsoft BI is reporting. It comes with the Microsoft 365 E5 license. Then you just need to secure and harden it. That took a bit of time, but you can open it up and let people use it after that. There is a desktop component that they can work on that's independent of the Microsoft license. In that case, they can create files that are like dashboards.

I like Microsoft BI's drill-down feature and its overall ease of use.

I've been using Microsoft BI for about eight months.

Microsoft BI has been stable so far.

Microsoft's support is pretty good. 

Installing Microsoft BI was relatively straightforward. It just took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff.

I rate Microsoft Power BI nine out of 10. If you plan to implement it, ensure that you harden it, so you do not leave it wide open. Otherwise, you're vulnerable to data leakage.

The most valuable feature would be the abundance of connectors. It is also easy to use.

It is a very powerful platform for BI. It has everything that you want from BI. 

It is easy enough. I don't see any real substantial improvements that are needed. It is great as it is, but its interface could be a bit modern.

I have been using this solution for six years. I am using the online version. So, it is the latest one.

It has improved over the years. There were problems a few years ago, but now, it is way better.

Their support is fine. I had to reach technical support a few times, and they have been very good in the last two years.

Compared to others, I think it is reasonable.

I tested a few other similar products before deciding on Power BI.

I would advise others to just try it. I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

It depends on what the client needs. I've got multiple use cases for Power BI. There's no single one that stands out. But generally speaking, my clients primarily use Power BI for financial and sales reporting.

Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful.

Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users. Microsoft could add some more features to its normal reporting capabilities.

I've been using Microsoft BI for about 18 months.

Microsoft BI is stable. 

There are limitations and license restrictions. So if you're an enterprise that needs to increase the volume of data and users, you normally have to go to higher license models.

Microsoft BI is mostly easy to set up. 

At the entry level, it's affordable, but as you scale up and have more needs, it becomes expensive because you get tied into the whole Microsoft stack.

I also work with MicroStrategy. Out of the two, I would recommend MicroStrategy. They have what they call the Semantic Graph and Enterprise-Grade Semantic Graph. I think the technology is fantastic. However, doing business with MicroStrategy is fairly difficult and complex because of all processes involved, but the technology is probably the best in the market.

I rate Microsoft BI seven out of 10. 

In our sector, we're dealing with lots of FinDocs and routine FinDoc activities. So all these things are managed locally, with data coming from some secondary source. By that, I mean our in-house technicians provide a data service that is locally developed on our end, and we analyze data in Microsoft Power BI. We have about 10 to 12 users working with it.

Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it.

Microsoft needs to do some more research and development to make it more stable.

We've been using Microsoft BI for about six months.

I think Microsoft BI is scalable.

We have some technical partners from Microsoft, so we contact them for any issues.

Installing Microsoft BI is fast and easy. We just downloaded it from Microsoft. That's it. It only takes about half an hour. It takes a little longer for the overall deployment, depending on the data volume. If we're getting the data from a secondary source, it depends upon both the source and volume. The greater the volume, the greater the time. Usually, we can manage to get it done in one or two hours plus the testing. It takes around four people to deploy and manage the solution.

We haven't thought much about licensing because we're still dealing with some administrative hang-ups. Once all these things are resolved, then we go for the license. It is in process.

I rate Microsoft BI six out of 10. I would recommend it.

Our primary use case of this product was for financial reporting and dashboard reporting. I'm a business development executive and our company is based in Belgium. 

The solution is stable with reasonable performance. The initial setup is relatively easy. 

The quality of the performance is dependent on the data source. If you have to pull multiple data sources performance is somewhat lacking. 

I've been using this solution for over a year. 

The solution is stable. 

The initial setup was straightforward and we had around 25 users in the company. 

We are fading out the use of this solution and we're switching to Tableau. 

I would recommend this solution if you have good knowledge of DAX. 

As a consultant, I propose something appropriate for my client companies. Mostly, it's some type of ERP, warehouse management, or BI software. It depends on the size of the companies and their requirements.

Small and medium-sized businesses usually need some operations software to cover all the daily necessities. In most cases, I propose some local or regional software for ERP and warehouse management solutions. But for business intelligence and reporting, I typically go with a Microsoft solution.

Microsoft BI's visualization could be better. Though Power BI's visualization has steadily improved over the years, it's not on the level tools like Tableau and SAS or some of the more expensive products on the market.

Power BI is as stable as every other Microsoft product. It depends on the environment and other factors — it's not just Power BI. But it's quite stable, I think. And it's also on a very high level.

Microsoft has a lot of partners that offer support and help you with implementation. So if you have some issues that can't be resolved by one level of support, you can find someone else in the same environment. I would say that from the partner level, Microsoft support is excellent. But, of course, it depends on how much you want to pay for it.

The complexity of the Power BI setup depends on how much integration you need, the number of different databases you have to connect, and whether you're automating the system. However, setup is relatively easy for a standard environment. For reporting alone, it was easy to set up. So it really depends on the complexity of the environment, not on the tool.

Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions. So in that regard, I would say Microsoft Power BI's price is appropriate.

I recommend Tableau to customers for some things and Power BI for others. But, overall, you can use Power BI in more ways, it's cheaper, and it has a better pricing model.

I rate Microsoft Power BI nine out of 10. It's widely used and incredibly practical. And it's a little easier to prepare, distribute, and automate reports or connect to databases. Power BI is also useful for warehouse management and data systems in data lakes. It's like a Swiss knife for reporting. So I generally recommend Microsoft Power BI for clients who don't have specific requirements for visualization. Tableau is better in that area. But at the same time, Power BI is also upgrading those features. 

Many of my customers already use Microsoft products like Office 365, so I often propose Microsoft Power BI because it integrates well with all the standard Microsoft business tools. And it's the quickest tool to implement and start using daily. You don't need much training. People can pick up this tool quickly and start using it right away. So I think that's the biggest advantage of Power BI. 

I have used the solution primarily for building models for different verticals. It doesn't matter which industry you are in. I do some modeling and presentations for clients in different verticals.

The solution is flexible and works across industries.

I do love the way a user can flexibly design items. You can add and use Docs, for example.

The initial setup is pretty simple. 

We have found the solution to be stable.

Our team finds the solution to be scalable. 

The solution has a robust online and blog community that's great for troubleshooting.

It has Power Automate available, however, I have yet to try it out. It's something I'll look at next.

Using Docs with Microsoft BI can be difficult and hard to figure out. It has a steeper learning curve at first.

There are some other visuals that are available in the Microsoft marketplace, however, you need to use them via trial and error. There needs to be a write-up about how to use them with a quick guide about the basics of visuals. That way, you would get more of a sense of if it would work for your purposes. Right now, you need to add it to Microsoft BI and then just hope it works, or go back to the drawing board. 

I had one query that came in that didn't have a direct connection it was for Oracle 9 connecting to Power BI directly. They don't integrate directly. You need to do something different or look for something else that might connect them.

I've been working with the solution for five years now. It's been a while at this point.

The product is reliable and stable. There is not much downtime or anything. In terms of data, there will be more data related to or within your connection and with your set of data or gateway. 

The solution is scalable. It's not an issue.

We have about ten people using the solution currently.

I've used the help that's available online and within the blog community, however, in terms of going to Microsoft for support, I haven't used them so far. Therefore, I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are during direct interactions.

We are currently using IBM, Microsoft BI, and Qlik.

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

There's a bit of maintenance required as there is data coming in every month. There are just a few server updates and write-ups to keep up on.

We handled everything in-house. We did not need to get a consultant or integrator to assist us. It's pretty easy to do within your existing team.

We have an official enterprise license. We are not on any trial license, however, I did try out the trial which lasts for 30 days. It's nice that you can really dig into the features before you buy it. 

We're an IT consulting company. We're Gold Partners with Microsoft.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number we are currently working on.

I'm using both a desktop and a cloud version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I do work with also other software. What I recommend to clients will depend on the user as well as the scope or scoping he wants to do, how big or how small the company is, the number of users, et cetera. Making recommendations for software all depends on this analysis first.

I won't tell go directly to Power BI, however, I will study whatever the customer would require first. Based on his requirement, we'll do the recommendation of software. That said, mostly so far what happens is that people really like Power BI due to the fact that it's easy for them to navigate around and work with it.

We are using Microsoft BI for various reports, such as overall cost management, credit overview, and sales.

The solution is very intuitive, you do not need to have too much programming knowledge to use it. Advanced Excel users can use it very easily. 

The solution could improve by providing more free visuals. A lot of them are very nice but you have to purchase them. 

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately four years.

The solution has been stable. Everything has been running smoothly.

Microsoft BI is scalable.

The support has been good.

We previously used Cognos.

We used a consultant for the implementation of the solution.

The solution is affordable.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine 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.