Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We use this data visualization tool for the business to understand data in a graphical manner. It is similar to Tableau, a tool also used for data visualization. A tool like this is used mostly by the leadership team to make decisions. 

Power BI allows you to create user-defined charts which is really useful. 

The Power Query button in the power tabs is a unique selling point and is very useful.

The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau. 

I have been using this solution for six months. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. We have 500 users. 

The initial setup was easy. 

The main difference between Power BI and Tableau is the cost. Power BI is much cheaper. Tableau is the best BI tool that I've worked on and is easier for developers to work with. However, there are many things that can be done in Power BI which can't be done in Tableau.

If you're starting working with Power BI, then I would suggest first getting experience with the free version of Tableau to understand and learn about data visualization. From there, moving to Power BI will be much easier as the tools are so similar. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Defining the most valuable features would take a long time. While I cannot point to a specific feature, I feel the solution provides a full range of implementation capabilities. This allows for integration and modeling, for carrying out good transformations within the same platform, as well as visualization. There are not many products included inside and one can start from scratch. 

In respect of the customer, one can quickly implement phases. A person can start out with creating his data set on a miniscule amount of the client's work and, working solely with a sales team, make it agile, only involving three or four dashboards. At this point, completion is possible and progress may be made to the next one very quickly. We like the solution's ease of use, functionality range and ability to be quickly implemented. 

I would like to see a change in the premium capacity. It is very costly, particularly for the Egyptian market, amounting to $5,000 per month. Perhaps in the Gulf this would work well. The data flow should be enhanced from OnPrem-Gateways, which we find to be somewhat complicated and which does not always work. Regional pricing is the main issue. 

The stability is okay, although there can sometimes be an issue with the connection when it comes to data OnPrem and the need to manage gateway communication and do troubleshooting. In brief, there are certain issues with OnPrem stability. 

'Although we feel the solution to be a dream, it would be great to see everything on Power BI services, obviating the need for Power BI desktop. I hope to see such Power BI implementation. 

I feel like we don't have a very powerful ELT or ETL tool when it comes to power and data cleansing. The solution compares unfavorably with such products as Informatica in this regard.

I have been using Microsoft BI for two years.

The stability is okay, although there are occasional connectivity problems when it comes to managed gateway communication of data OnPrem and troubleshooting. The OnPrem stability should be addressed. 

While the stability is okay, there is an occasional need to add extra products, such as those involving Azure data analysis and Azure Analytics Services. 

Big data would require the involvement of different products, Microsoft sign ups, for example. While we did not go for this, our technical teams are trying to get up to speed to have big data rediness. 

I feel like the solution has a comparatively inferior ELT or ETL tool when it comes to power and data cleansing and compares unfavorably with Informatica. There is occasionally a need to involve other solutions, such as Informatica and Alteryx. 

While we have not made much use of Microsoft support, I did previously work with Microsoft's premier support and found it to be very good, overall. 

The solution is easy to set up and implement. 

The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly. The regional pricing should be addressed. 

The solution has an edge over others in its quick implementation. It is also very helpful to consider Microsoft data platform on Azure. Doing a combination with Microsoft data plaform will give one a great edge over, say, Tableau. 

The combining of Power BI with Microsoft data platform on Azure provides one increased familiarity. We are talking about a great ecosystem. 

The solution is comparatively inferior to those offered by other companies in respect of the ETL and ELT as these relate to power and data cleansing. It is not the best. 

My advice to someone looking to implement Power BI for his own organization would be to take things step by step. He should initially refrain from taking on big projects, instead focusing on agility, starting with the most requisite dashboards, working on them and garnering experience. The person will improve from one time to the next. One should familiarize himself with the details and how to move data and big data. He should not remain stuck waiting for the implementation of a big project. 

I rate Microsoft BI as an eight 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 primary use case was mainly to create dashboards and present them for reporting purposes. We use Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards, provide insights, and use its various analytical and insight functions to send to either the departmental manager or the general manager of marketing and sales or retail ops.

In short, we had to create sales reports. The sales reports needed to be emailed to the different sales managers all across New Zealand. The Excel file data had to be filtered manually, whereas, in Power BI, you can set restrictions. For example, if you have North, South, East and West branches, you can set corresponding restrictions, while allowing the national sales manager to view the entire data without having to do a lot of filtering, because of the restrictions involved.

It is time-saving for the person who creates the report and also a lot of that is automated, whereas with Excel you've got to keep working on it and keep filtering it all the time.

Our most valuable features are the dashboard and the reporting feature because, before that, our organization used to only use Excel. There was a lot of manual work involved with Excel, whereas once we moved on to Microsoft Power BI, it was a cleaner dashboard and it was faster too. The end user also had an opportunity to alter the reporting as per requirements with Power BI.

I haven't experienced any issues with it right now, so I can't really advise on that part.

I think because I'm moving more into RPA, I'd definitely like to see integration across the RPA, Power BI, or Tableau platforms because that integration could then make automation and mundane reporting much faster.

You'll always require some more complex reports that the analyst could work on, but the very standard sales reports could then be automated very quickly using Power BI and RPA together.

Stability is pretty good. I've been using other services from Microsoft and the support also has been really good so it's a very stable platform and the support services are excellent.

I've been using it for a year and it's only across my single department so I've not yet had to scale it to a very large level.

Across my department, there are two users. Across other departments at my company, there are many more. Most users are commercial or insights analysts.

Across our organization, Power BI is not extensively used, although I'm not privy to every department and their plans. I think it's being used moderately, but could be used more.

In terms of Microsoft Power BI, if there was ever a query, you can find support online. There's a lot of help available but what I generally meant was I have been using Microsoft Office products through the Office 365 subscription business and the support of Microsoft Office, in general, has always been really good. They usually come back on the very same day and try and solve the problem. This is not something I've experienced with other platforms in the past.

We hadn't previously used another solution. We were just using Excel and decided to go to a much better platform.

The setup was straightforward for me because as part of an organization, I didn't have to set it up myself. It was set up via the organization, through the IT department, so it was pretty straightforward.

I adopted it in my team, but it was already being implemented across other parts of the company. I just brought it into my department, so I wouldn't be able to tell the time frame for the actual implementation strategy. For my team alone, it probably took me around two months or so.

The other departments in my company were using Power BI, so it would not make sense to get another solution when they already had Power BI in other parts of the organization.

Microsoft Power BI is definitely a good product and Microsoft has a good integration of a good suite of products across the range. I think if you take UI parts recent release, for example, I'm not sure that does it with Power BI but it definitely integrates it across the Microsoft Office activities, so I think it's only a matter of time before a majority of the Microsoft Office products start integrating with UI parts. That would take analysis, reporting, and automation to the next level and we could free up time for the general reporter.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten because it's easy to use and there is a lot of support online. I think Microsoft Office itself has a lot of support being provided. In addition, I like its features and it's growing much faster than some of the other analytical tools out there, although it started off later.

• It is free. 
• SSAS and SSRS work great together. 
• There is a lot of help and documentation on the Internet, so no special training is needed to use the source code.

It has the most secured database that I have ever used, which is the most important part of Microsoft BI.

The reporting part of Microsoft BI is rather limited compared to other reporting tools.

It works perfectly so far.

The information which we are working on is not that deep.

We use information from the Internet everyday.

We previously used iFrame.

We did long studies about which tool to use in our company. We decided to use Microsoft BI because it was a complete product, and it is easier and cheaper than others.

In the beginning, it was a rather complex because all the documents are in English. If it is in French, it was really complex, so then we would have to read the English documents. That was the most difficult thing here. It made the product difficult to use, because of the language, so Microsoft did provide help.

In the beginning, we were about to choose Pentaho because it is an open source suite. The problem is that beyond the enterprise version of Pentaho, it is more expensive than Microsoft. We would always need to rely on an expert of Pentaho, instead of finding solutions on the Internet, and that was the reason why we did not choose it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Price
• Ability to go on the Internet and locate support information.
• Secure product
• Easy interface to use.

Using it, I receive financial information from the financial department.

It gives us accurate data and an easy way to navigate.

I get the information I need easily, and it's easy to read.

They should add mobile access.

Stability is okay.

For me it's okay, I don't have any issues with scalability.

The decision to use Microsoft BI was made by the financial department.

I don't have any advice as I am not in a position to recommend it. I am just an end-user, I do not develop, I do not maintain it.

It's primarily for reporting, and the performance has been very good.

Other people can access data much more easily than before. Its usability is the main advantage, people in the company are using it.

It works mostly with Excel, and it's a very good price.

The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective.

The stability is very good now; it was definitely really poor a year ago.

Because it's cloud-based, it's very scalable.

I haven't used tech support specifically for Power BI but, in general, for Office and Office 365, it has been very responsive.

Before, we just had a whole bunch of spreadsheets lying around all over the place. So we really needed to get things tightened up but we weren't ready to invest in a database. But with Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are usability and support.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

The shortlist was, obviously, Tableau because they're in everyone's face and a couple of other smaller tools.

I rate it a nine out of 10 because it's very cost-effective, so it's very accessible in that respect, and a lot of folks do use spreadsheets so it helps ease the transition from using just spreadsheets to a more mature reporting environment.

My advice is, speak to your users because, at the end of the day, if they don't use it, you've failed, which was the case with other reporting tools.