Microsoft Power BI Reviews

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.

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 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 is mostly used for monthly cost reports for our department. We are also using it as a dashboard for giving some overview for management purposes. We are using the latest version.

Its seamless integration with Microsoft products, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Excel, is the most valuable.

They can provide a user-friendly and easy way to use this tool for people who don't know about programming or technical things. It will be quite good if they can improve the look and feel and make it simpler to operate. 

They can make it easier to create some of the reports. They can also include predefined templates that you can directly use.

I have been using Microsoft BI for almost two and a half years.

Stability is quite good as long as you have proper sizing from the beginnings. If you do the right sizing keeping in mind the current usage as well as future growth, it is good.

It is scalable. We have around 65 seniors managers who use it on a weekly or monthly basis. Some reports are done weekly and some monthly.

I have not contacted them so far. I am from the user side. We contact our centralized IT department for any issues. If they have a technical issue that requires further escalation, they will directly contact Microsoft technical support.

The initial setup is quite simple, but for the product use, you need to have people who have got experience of at least three to six months in using these applications. It took us two months to deploy across the company.

We have a core team that gets training from a Microsoft partner. We then deploy it ourselves. After six months of using this solution, some of the key users get advanced training. 

We also maintain it ourselves. We have around ten people for its maintenance.

It is somewhere in the middle in terms of price. Licensing is quite clear.

We reviewed some other intelligence tools, and we just used them for trials.

I would recommend this solution, especially for the companies that mostly use Microsoft products and ecosystem. I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

I primarily use this for creating dashboards and reports for the oil and gas industry.

Power BI is always updating. I receive multi mail from Power BI with new visualizations, new analytics, new webinars and I'm going to Microsoft here locally in order to have a updated presentation about the new features of Power BI. For me it's very versatile. I can publish on my iPad. I have a Power BI application in order to manage the visualization of my report and my dashboard. Also I can speak to Power BI and ask about production and Q&A. But, I don't have compilation with other tools yet. For me, Power BI is the best.

I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect. 

It was straightforward. We had no problems with implementation.

The pricing is fine for our company. It is reasonably priced.

Because this solution is very easy, and very visual, you can have results in minutes. 

We use Microsoft BI to construct panels and analysis for the final users by themselves. We have all the units outside and analyses made by the final users. They can share their work with other colleagues and other teammates easily.

The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources.

Microsoft BI could improve by allowing large-size data sources. We have large data sources, and we have problems loading them in Microsoft BI.

I would like to see in a future release the ability to create rules with no code. Similar to drag-and-drop solutions, or some other way with no code.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately two years.

The solution is reliable, we do not have a problem with the availability.

Microsoft BI is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 500 users using this solution in my organization. We have plans to increase the use of the solution. Our employees are getting better with the ability to use the solution.

The support from Microsoft is satisfactory.

The initial setup of Microsoft BI was straightforward.

I would encourage others to use Microsoft BI, it is a good solution.

I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for reporting around data migration.

BI provides us with strong computing power and calculations with quality visibility which helps with the whole pipeline.

I like having the ability to connect Excel files as data inputs.

BI also allows us to make functional dashboards, perform queries, and display data in various ways. And, there are always new features being released.

I would like for the next release to have better desktop performance, especially for big databases. Additionally, I would like to have more integrations with programs like Salesforce in order to get more live data coming in.

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

Stability is very good.

This solution is scalable.

I have not needed to contact support.

Originally, we were only using Excel, trying out different dashboards for the data. This was not powerful enough for us. It was not easy to use or streamline so we made the switch.

The initial setup was straightforward and deployment took about a week plus another few weeks to do work within the BI.

Our deployment was performed by our in-house team of one.

There is a free version of the Power BI which may be worth looking into for small teams prior to purchasing a license. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.