Microsoft Power BI Reviews

I use Power BI primarily for generating reports, analyzing data, and supporting data-driven decisions across various functions within the organization.

The solution's data integration capabilities are beneficial because they allow us to seamlessly integrate data from multiple sources, simplifying the analysis process and providing a comprehensive view for better decision-making.

There is room for improvement in terms of customization and configuration options, particularly for more advanced users.

I have been using Power BI for quite some time now.

The product is scalable. Expanding its use across different teams within the organization has been relatively easy.

We are seeing a good return on investment with Power BI, particularly in terms of how it has streamlined our reporting and analytics.

The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided.

We receive real-time reporting with Power BI, which greatly impacts our decision-making process by allowing us to respond more quickly to changes in the data.

The data visualization tools particularly strong. The ability to create custom dashboards and reports tailored to different

It is highly user-friendly and cost-effective. However, it may lack certain advanced features present in other solutions.

Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten. 

We've used Microsoft BI for the general use cases around reporting and dashboarding. We used it once for Power Apps to develop a live application.

Microsoft BI’s integration and visualization could be improved.

I have been using Microsoft BI for four years.

Microsoft BI is a stable solution.

Between Microsoft BI and Tableau, I would go for Tableau because it's more powerful. Tableau could connect to a variety of databases, and the visualization is much, much better. I would always prefer Tableau because of the dimension picking you could do there. Speed-wise, the latency issues were much lesser in Tableau.

If you're using Azure in general as a cloud service provider, Power BI would be more integrative. If you need a stand-alone system and are not worried about the cloud setup, I recommend using Tableau.

Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it.

Overall, I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

In my project, I have an integration with Microsoft Power BI: I bring the lock from Azure Monitor to Microsoft Power BI, then create a dashboard from there. In the morning, we have a screenshot of the dashboard, and it can show you if there's a failure or not, based on the locking, so I combine the data which we get from the on-premises system, Azure Monitor, and other tools.

What I find most valuable in Microsoft Power BI is that it gives users detailed error messages. The lock I bring from Azure Monitor into Microsoft Power BI shows us detailed error messages which is helpful, and this is something you can't get from Azure Monitor, unless you do a custom query.

With Microsoft Power BI, I just need to put everything into a table, so people can filter the data, then they can see the error messages which they find useful. In the morning, if we see some failure in our solution, we can go to the "Detail" tab to see detailed error messages.

Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it. This is its area for improvement. First, you have to learn DAX (data analysis expressions), then you also have to learn Power Query M. You need to learn two languages simultaneously. If they can combine and make it just one language, it will be easier for nontechnical users.

We've dealt with Microsoft Power BI for six months.

Microsoft Power BI is very stable, and it's a nine out of ten for me.

I'm rating the scalability of Microsoft Power BI a nine out of ten. Its scalability is really good, because Microsoft has put in a lot of effort. They have a lot of connectors that let us bring in a lot of data, and even if we don't have enough data, we can use HTTP and REST API code to get data, so that's good.

The way Microsoft Power BI is used, particularly its Cleaner tool, should be improved. I just started using the solution and I use the PowerBI Cleaner with all the BI tools, and we need to have a dedicated data warehouse for that. PowerBI Cleaner would just be plugged directly to the data, and that's not good when you use your analytics solution, plugging it directly to the online transaction database.

We should have an OLAP (online analytical processing) software that's dedicated only for that solution, but we don't do that yet. If we have time, we should do that, but the PowerBI Cleaner would just stop at that stage, because it serves it purpose, e.g. it serves us what we need.

We are using Microsoft BI to generate point of sale reports.

The solution overall is very useful. The reports that are generated and the reporting functionality management are beneficial.

We have used other solutions and the reporting functionality should be user-friendly and have a drag and drop feature should be available, but Microsoft BI doesn't have these features. When you are creating reports and you can't change as a user. Every time you need one developer or one technical person to make the changes.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately six years.

Microsoft BI is highly stable.

The performance depends on the requirement. You have to complete your requirement which is a priority. After that, you understand your requirement and the performance could be better. The performance is the second.

I have found Microsoft BI to be scalable.

The installation difficulty depends on the integration, once integrated properly you can receive results. Microsoft BI can be very helpful to your business.

The implementation took us 15 to 20 days.

We use two Microsoft consultants to do the implementation of the solution.

I have evaluated other solutions.

I rate Microsoft BI a five out of ten.

If I compare Microsoft BI with other solutions, other solutions are much better, but because we have already invested in Microsoft BI. We are using this and maybe in one or two years, we will use something else. We will finalize the testing of other solutions and implement one of them.

We use it for taking data and turning it into intelligence.

I have been using the most recent version of it. It is deployed in a government cloud.

It saved time.

Its ease of use is most valuable.

The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team.

Its speed can also be improved. They should come up with a fix for the speed issue and give us some good parameters as to what would help with the speed. They should give us a good white paper that has a compatibility list, similar to what they provide with operating systems, and that describes what you should have before you use Microsoft BI.

There should also be a better way to possibly do things like geolocation, and where they do it, they should do it better. If you have a satellite, offices, and that sort of thing, it would be nice to see it in Tableau and different formats.

I have been using this solution since it came out. It was probably 2010. I'm a Microsoft engineer, so I'm on a lot of beta test teams. So, I would see these items a bit earlier than anybody else.

It is overall in mid-range. Sometimes, it works very well, and sometimes, it doesn't. If it is not working very well sometimes, that means it is not a hundred percent stable.

Its scalability is good. I've used it in very large major banks down to smaller entities, and it seems to not care about the scale.

Currently, we probably have 50 users. Its usage is moderate. We will increase its usage if they come up with a fix for the issues such as the speed.

There should be more timely support. I would rate them a two out of 10 because of the lack of availability. Sometimes, we can't fix what we don't know how to fix, and it causes us a lot of time and waiting and that sort of thing. We have to have a US citizen, and I'm sure that they're just not scaled up to that.

Negative

I have used other solutions but not in this cooperation.

Its initial setup is somewhere in the middle. Each deployment seems to be a little different. You have auto-updates all the time on PCs. When you image a PC, it doesn't always match. So, each deployment is different, and I'm not sure they can change that because most of the updates are for security, but it is very important to be sure that you test the environment first before you put it into production. I know a lot of people who just put it into production because of the ease of use, but sometimes, that can be problematic. In terms of maintenance, it is not terrible.

It was done in-house with the help of a Microsoft partner. Our experience with them was horrible. We ended up fixing it all ourselves. If five was the top, they were a zero.

I would advise others to just do their homework. You should check it out first, do the trial, get it into your test environment, and then make your decisions. Don't rush to production. Everybody is a bit different. If you have monster databases out there, the performance might be a little different.

I would rate it a six out of 10. If their support were better, it would get a higher rating. 

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. 

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. 

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.