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.

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. 

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.

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 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.

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.