Microsoft Power BI Reviews

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

We use Microsoft BI for the visualization of data. We also hope to use it for machine learning as it's very powerful, but at the moment, we are trying to get authorized for reporting and analysis.

It's similar to Excel, but it's much more powerful than Excel. I love the unlimited number of rows that can be processed, the grant server application, and the strong security.

It produces a very nice picture — very nice graph managers that are very attractive.

The way you prepare your reports is very intelligent and intuitive. 

It's very easy to operate and the dashboard is great.

I have been using this solution for a few months now.

Microsoft BI is stable, but I cannot comment on the stability as we haven't yet used it for a big project.

The customer support is excellent. We get perfect support and it is regional — not only in our country, but there is also regional representation from Microsoft's so-called architects; they are very good professionals who help us with whatever we require.

Currently, we are in process of implementing this solution on my computer. I installed the Microsoft Power BI desktop application very easily and started my training. I didn't experience any difficulties.

I collected information from several sources and it's been working well — I am happy with this software.

I needed about 15 minutes to install the desktop application. The other portion is web-based, so I haven't gotten to that yet.

Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to other interested companies.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a rating of eight.

By building the multi-dimensional database with Analysis Services, we were able to improve the performance of our reporting system. Now, our end-users can see the data stories quickly through Excel, Power BI tools, etc.

It provides a full platform for our BI solution (database, ETL, reporting, analysis, and so on).

• Monitoring features: I need Microsoft to provide a set of tools to help me monitor Microsoft's products. For example, when I need to investigate the performance issues of SSIS packages, I do not have a tool, instead I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance.
• SSIS Connectors: Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way, which they are doing very well in Power BI, and that we can connect and process data from JSON, SOAP, SAP, Salesforce, and so on.

No.

No.

It is not excellent, but enough to resolve our issues.

It is quite easy to setup.

There are a lot of factors which we analyze and consider before we choose any product. In case we need a solution that we can develop, deploy quickly, and adapt to our business changes, Microsoft is the best candidate.

Microsoft offers us a full platform, which we use to develop and deploy our BI solution quickly and easily. It also provides both of these infrastructure for use: On-Premise and Azure Cloud. They are very flexible.

With the out-of-the-box Data Platform and Business Intelligence ecosystem, you get the entire platform with a single license.

Previously, I was working for a retail company and when I got there, there weren't any analytics implemented yet.

So, what I did was, firstly, I implemented an EDW solution so as to gather all the possible data in a single repository.

After that, I developed a self-service model so the company could take advantage of their ad hoc analysis.

Then, I implemented some standard reports to understand some basic indicators, together with the delivery subscriptions so that all the organization's levels could receive this valuable information, i.e., for more than 500 users.

Lastly, I connected this platform to the cloud (Power BI) together with a top BI solution (QlikView) so as to take full advantage of the second data insights' step journey.

The Windows OS dependency needs to improve. There are some bugs with the new features that have released.

It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency.

I have used this solution for 10 years and still counting.

There were no stability issues.

Technical support is very good.

I was using Oracle before, we switched to Microsoft because Oracle is very expensive for the benefits that they offer.

The setup was easy, actually, a single instance installation can be installed by clicking next and next. Maybe a cluster installation could be a little more complex, but it is still easy.

This is one of the best out-of-the-box solutions on the market. Microsoft has to improve their Data Governance solution, but for a data platform and BI solution, it is very good.

We evaluated products such as Oracle, MySQL, and Postgres.

It is very straightforward. Maybe you won't like the Windows OS dependency, but, in the 2017 version, you can install the engine on Linux.