Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We primarily use the solution internally and also on our websites.

The interface is great.

The DAX function center and integration with Asia have been great. 

It's a powerful platform.

The product is robust and stable. 

You do not have to maintain the product. It's very low-maintenance.

Technical support is helpful. 

I can't speak to any missing features. It has everything we need.

The reporting could be a bit better. It would be nice if there was just a bit more flexibility.

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. It's not a product that crashes or freezes. There aren't bugs or glitches to deal with.

It's robust.

We've never attempted to scale. I'm not sure what the process is like. I can't speak to if it's easy or difficult to do.

We have five people in our department that directly use Microsoft BI. They are professors. 

While it is currently being used extensively, I cannot say that we have plans to increase usage. 

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. They've always been good and we are quite happy with the level of support that they offer us.

I have experience with IBM Cognos products before Power BI. It's very difficult to compare products as there are so many different functional, decent products.

I didn't handle the deployment process. I can't speak to what the deployment was like. 

The is no maintenance required. 

I'm not sure if we used consultants or integrators. I cannot recall what the process was like. 

I can't speak to the licensing. I don't have any information related to the exact costs.

We have looked at, for example, Tableau and QlikUp. At the moment, Power BI just seems to fit our needs the best.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

I'd advise people to use it, know their needs and understand what they want. Do the personal work well and make sure that Power BI is the right suite for your needs. It's important to do some research before jumping in. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

My primary use case is to turn data into analysis.

Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget.

The stability is good.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup was complex.

Licenses are available on a monthly basis.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We use Microsoft BI in out data warehouse for analytics. We use it for many purposes.

I like all the tools in Microsoft BI because they all have different purposes. There are a lot of people using Microsoft BI, and everybody is using it. The users have adapted well to the technology.

There are plenty of visualization tools, a lot of functionality, and documentation.

I have a little problem with Synapse Analytics because it's very new. It's a product that has many capabilities, but it is not very well developed. I have to see the list of permissions from one object. I can't do this in Synapse.  I have to search on the web for a solution because I don't have the tool for it.

The engine of Synapse Analytics and the ability to export the data that has been published to the web could improve.

I have used Microsoft BI within the past 12 months. I have been working with Microsoft BI tools for approximately 20 years.

Microsoft BI is stable.

We have approximately 30 people using the solution in my organization. This includes experts that make reports.

The support is good. We created approximately two or three cases, and they had the solution for us, or they had meetings with us to find a solution.

The initial setup of Microsoft BI is easy.

If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs.

Synapse Analytics is the engine of the data that Power BI consumes.

I would advise those that use the solution to check all the license modes that the tool has because it's very confusing sometimes. You cannot just buy the product, you need to know who needs the product, who will use it, and who will be publishing. There are many aspects to figure out that when you do it will be better for you. 

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We provide improved dashboards for our own customers by using Power BI.

There is a feature in Microsoft BI that allows JSON data to SQL on the dashboards effectively and quickly.

I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple.

If you like to use Microsoft BI as an embedded solution, you need to do many things in the Azure, BI, and 365 portals. it can be complicated. This whole procedure should be simplified.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately two months.

The stability of Microsoft BI is good.

I have not scaled the solution very much but I know it is highly scalable.

We have approximately five dashboard creators in my organization that is working on the solution.

The customer service was very nice and responsive, when I opened a ticket they called me and emailed me but they could not solve the problem we had.

We have three technicians and one of them is dedicated to the maintenance of Microsoft BI.

I have previously used another solution.

The initial setup is very complex.

I used a consultant company to help me do the implementation and it took approximately one month.

In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year.

My customers will increase their usage of the solution and they will be additional costs for their usage.

I have evaluated other solutions before choosing Microsoft BI, such as Tableau. I have found that Tableau does not have a solution that can be embedded. The dashboard should be inside of our applications.

If someone wants an embedded solution then Microsoft BI is very good because it works on many types of data, such as JSON.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

There were two systems that the client was looking at creating some BI visualizations for. There was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. They go into voicemail, however, if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long a client was on hold, if an agent actually took the call, if the person hung up, et cetera. There are all of these different statuses and it would take all of those statistics. The product was used primarily to take that data in that case.

The other system was an ITSM system, which was the ticketing system. It would

it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. But the one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features, I think they were stronger on the Tableau side. But the data preparation features, I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features, at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

 combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when the call volumes were and what the performance rate was and the nature of the calls and things like that.

As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools. 

The data preparation features were great. I much preferred the Power BI with the Power Query type features - at least for the datasets that we were working with. They were helpful in preparing the data.

The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side.

There are two areas where the solution can be enhanced. One is natural language, where you can have third parties, however, it would be nice to have it built-in within Power BI, where a graph could be automatically explained in whatever language so that somebody can just kind of read through and have the graphic as an extra for exploring. That's something that I was looking at.

The other is the explained data, which is more of a lineage-type feature. My understanding is Tableau has that feature and Power BI doesn't. I was looking at a graph of comparisons and I noticed Tableau had this explained data feature, which gives, some lineage where data has come from, and Power BI doesn't have that. Or, if it does, it's not as well developed as Tableau.

I used the solution a few months ago. I'm semi-retired, however, I did have a two-month contract and did some work with it. On the project, I did work a lot with Tableau, however, I also used Power BI, and would like to continue to use it more. 

It was a short project on the Power BI side. I didn't really identify any glitches. Certainly, over time things might've come out, however, I enjoy doing experimenting and playing around with things. The one definite thing that I noticed, as I do art with Tableau, is some really neat art stuff, so I tried to replicate that with Power BI and the quality just wasn't there.

With ITSM, there's a lot of data that they collect on that side. That could be an issue, scalability. It wasn't moved to production yet. I basically produced a report as there were some issues with the ICE data, the voicemail system, and data collection. They had some issues that they had to solve. However, they were collecting data on a daily basis. You get thousands and thousands of calls on a daily basis. It depends on how they want to store that data historically. There may be some performance issues and scalability issues, however, for me, I can't really address that, as I didn't see that side. There's always a potential for trouble.

It was a really short project for me. I was really there just to analyze those two data sources and produce a report for them, with some examples, using Power BI. I was able to do that without getting tech support involved.

I've used other solutions, such as Tableau and Power Query. Tableau from a graphical point of view is much better than Power BI, however, from a data manipulation standpoint and things like that, I prefer Power BI and Power Query to prep the data.

Tableau got bought out by Salesforce, which is a cloud-based company, so they're all going to push everything to the cloud. I'm sure they'll incorporate all these new features.

I downloaded the solution from their website. 

The server side was already set up, therefore, I don't know much about the initial setup process. As a contractor, I came in just on the development side, which was just downloading the Power BI tool as a client. It was fairly easy. That's the nice thing is it's easy to set up. It is similar to Tableau, in that Tableau is fairly easy to set up. It is all built towards this whole idea of self-service.

I'm just a customer.

As I downloaded the solution right off the website, I assume it was the latest version. I don't know the version number off-hand. 

I would do the development on-pre

There were two systems that they were looking at creating some BI visualizations for. So there was the system called ICE, which is a system that takes in automated calls, for service calls. And so goes into voicemail, but if there's not an agent to take the call, it'll track statistics like how long you were on hold, if an agent actually took your call, if you hung up. All of these different statuses would take all of those statistics. And so it was to take that data.

And the other system was the ITSM system, which is the ticketing system. And kind of combine those two data sets and reduce a merged analytical set of reports to just show when were the call volumes were, and what was the performance rate, and the nature of the calls and things like that.

It's easy to set up, however, regarding scalability and high-end analytical features, Tableau is still better on that. It's always important to keep up, as technology's changing all the time. They're always adding new features. There are no negatives in exploring these tools. In the end, you just want some visualizations that help you make decisions. Both Tableau and Power BI tools are great for that. However, if you want advanced stuff, then it's just about experimenting and seeing what will help you solve your problems.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are using Power BI Premium at the moment. It is an online solution, which always has the latest version.

It is for data visualization and data insights. BI means business intelligence, so it helps you understand the performance of your business better. It gives you deeper insight into the data so that you can draw meaningful conclusions from the data, and your decisions are based on data insights rather than a hunch. 

It is a good and very useful product. I find it to be extremely useful because it gives me a deeper insight into my business, and it lets me analyze things and make decisions based on the data.

The way data is presented is very valuable. The amount of information that we can get at a glance is also valuable. You can then drill-down and see data from many different angles in the same chart by selecting certain things. Based on the selection, everything changes automatically. If we have four parameters in a particular item, when you select a parameter, the remaining charts on that page automatically change for that particular parameter.

Its price could be better. Its licensing cost is very high.

We discovered it about two months ago, and we started using it.

It is very stable.

You can scale it to thousands of users. It is a cloud product. Microsoft Cloud is being used by people across the world. So, there is no limitation in terms of scalability.

At the moment, we have about five users, but the number of users will increase to 50. We are absolutely going to keep using it.

We generally don't approach Microsoft for support. We are able to handle things at our end.

We used simple Excel reports, but Excel reports are not as good as Power BI. Power BI is far ahead.

It is a cloud product. You can access it through a web browser. It takes no time. 

It takes time only when you have to prepare the reports because you need to know how to prepare the Power BI reports. There is an MIS team, and there are Power BI designers who design the reports, but for users, it doesn't take much effort because they just have to click and see.

Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten.

We have integrated this solution into the software that we created for a client specifically for reports and data consumption. It is a hybrid infrastructure project with hybrid integration. It has a lot of reports executed or created from the cloud.

It has helped us to have a really quick view of the most important indicators of the operational issues of our platform. It has enabled collaboration between different operational levels in the company.

The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable.

Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions.

It has good stability.

We haven't used it a lot, but it seems good so far. We have only three users. We may include two or three more users to the platform.

Their technical support is bad. I didn't like the technical support of Microsoft.

We also use Oracle and Tableau.

The initial setup was not complex, but we would like a more agile process. The initial deployment took about two months. The platform that we created was very robust.

We are a reseller of the solution. We did the deployment.

We were thinking of integrating Tableau instead of Microsoft BI, but the client chose Microsoft BI.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for data prediction. We use our predictive model index, and then express the data to Power BI.

It's user-friendly and provides data abstracting capabilities. We are also able to share reports with our colleagues very easily.

The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas.

The stability is good.

The setup was straightforward.

The most important criterion for me, when selecting a vendor, is that the product is cost-effective.

It depends on how you're going to use the reports, but when looking into this product or similar solutions, check the security side of things. If you don't want to share information with everyone, how does it deal with that?

So far, it's one of the best reporting tools I've found. They are improving the product every month. I would rate it at eight out of 10. The two missing points are to see what comes out in the future.