Microsoft Power BI Reviews

I work in fraud analytics in the insurance industry and use Power BI for broader and high-level reports. We also do some fraud detection, and our output is sent to a Power BI dashboard for various clients to see. It's basically our visualization tool organization-wide.

The most valuable feature is the infinite possibilities when it comes to visualizations. If a particular visualization is not available as a default or in the market, you can just load in a Python nr script and get a visualization from that. It's very flexible in that respect and opens up a plethora of opportunities. The huge number of connectors that are available is also a big advantage - BI can connect to various things, even competitors like Google's Data Studio, and it is even able to connect to various Google data sources and be a powerful alternative to Data Studio. It's also a data modeling tool, so it keeps everything within the app, which is really convenient, allowing the pipeline to complete itself in a more fluid way.

In the next release, I would like Microsoft to include some inbuilt machine learning so that it becomes point-and-click, rather than us developing models out of API and BI connecting to that and getting the results. That process gets in the way of continuity.

I've been using this solution for two years.

Power BI's stability has improved in the last few years and now seems pretty good, especially with R.

I don't know if BI is directly scalable, but we used a lot of aggregated marks in order to make sure it is able to work with a huge number of roles in the data set. Microsoft demonstrated that they were able to achieve up to one trillion rows, and we haven't got there, but we did get close.

Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day.

If you're on Azure, Power BI is tightly integrated with many of the products. And even if you have a non-Azure solution, the family of connectors for data sources is wide, so you can fit it in many places. I would rate BI as nine out of ten.

Power BI is more powerful than other tools because it is new for us. Each new version has more capabilities, and we're expecting AI and ML features in the next version.

Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems.

We are using an embedded BI because we are using it to report a portal, and this portal includes some screens that come from Power BI, so the embedded BI needs to improve. It would also be helpful if Microsoft made AI and ML capabilities available for private cloud users.

We have been using Power BI for about one year.

Power BI is stable. 

Power BI has limited scalability. The modeling area needs to improve in this regard. 

We have a limited license, but if we use more time or have more reports, usage, and concurrency, then the license cost will go up.

I rate Microsoft BI eight out of 10. 

The product can be used to get all business insights from connected data, for example, whatever is on our system, which we are using for our business solutions. 

All the data can be connected and it can give you actionable insights.

There are also some AI capabilities.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability overall has been quite good.

We found the initial installation to be very straightforward.

The admin view could be improved by making it more simplified to manage a users' activity and other things. That would be quite helpful.

It could be more user-friendly in general.

I've been using the solution for three years at this point. It's been a while. 

The stability is great. There aren't issues around bugs or glitches. It doesn't freeze. I haven't experienced a crash. It's reliable. 

The scalability has been good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

Right now, we have 200 people using the solution.

I've dealt with technical support in the past. It's okay. I don't have any complaints at all. 

Before we had this solution, we used some internal software development using normal SQLs and JavaScripts. We also take advantage of our SQL Server. 

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's not a complex process. A company shouldn't face any issues handling it. 

We only needed two people to handle the deployment and maintenance aspects of the product. It's one manager and one developer.

We deal with both monthly and yearly licenses, which are coming due soon.

As it is cloud-based, this solution is always providing us with the latest version to use. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're mostly quite happy with its capabilities. 

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations. 

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.

We get a lot of chunks of data, especially production data and data based on education — performance-related data. We use BI to analyze the data so we can give feedback to our clients. If they're experiencing problems, we help them find trends, etc.

Within our organization, there are roughly six or seven people using this solution.

Microsoft BI allows us to connect to any database or any dataset. It automatically renders some of the information which makes things a lot easier for us.

Compared to other applications, like Tableau, Microsoft BI doesn't have as many functions that allow you to do a more in-depth analysis and represent the findings. I think they have a standard that they keep to.

As the UI experience is always changing, the interface and security can always be improved. 

I have been using this solution for roughly four years. 

Stability is quite good. It's reliable.

We haven't had to expand because usually we just wait for the data. However, we do have plans to expand.

On a scale from one to five, I would give their technical support a rating of four. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. 

I believe we pay on a monthly basis. Compared to what's available on the market, I think we pay a fair price.

I would recommend Microsoft BI to others. On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

I have used the solution for analytics which is displayed on the dashboard for my client.

The solution is easy to use.

There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated. They need to make it easier for developers because they could bring key components into the dashboard. I have found using scripting language in other competitor solutions easier.

Since I am new to using this solution I am not sure what should be in a future release. I probably do not need all of the features in this current version.

I have been using the solution for a couple of months.

The stability is good. 

The solution is scalable. We have a couple of people using the solution in my organization.

I have used Qlik Sense in the past and it is more functional than this solution. I prefer Qlik Sense and I will most likely be switching soon.

The solution is easy to install and it does not take long.

I did the implementation.

As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution.

Comparing this solution to others such as Tableau and Microstrategy, this solution is probably better. However, I think overall Qlik Sense is best for me.

I am not going to be using the solution in the future because I prefer Qlik Sense.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

Our primary use is real-time & batch analytics on Postgres databases in combination with MS Excel.

This solution has improved our ability in making decisions and explaining data.

The most valuable features are the automation of analysis and already prepared tools to do the analytic work rapidly.

We would like to have better SQL support for queries. It means to have a kind of development environment trying to correct bad sintax in SQL query, or having an intellisense like style for code completion being aware of table's fields and having a preview of the query response without needing to run the whole procedure. 

We have been using Microsoft BI for two months.

Previously we used MS Excel but continue using it mainly for prototyping.

Power BI free layer is attractive and second stage with Power BI online is not expensive.

Tableau.