Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Around 50% of our customers use this solution. We plan to extend our usage of this solution.

Our customers really like the dashboard. They can click on whatever they want for an in-depth view. Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use. 

In general, all the Microsoft programs are integrated quite well, but it could be improved. Also, integration with products that are not Microsoft could be more improved.

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

If implemented correctly, Microsoft BI is quite stable. 

It's quite scalable. 

I have never contacted customer support. 

I don't know much about the licensing because our customers pay for it. 

I would recommend this solution. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a rating of nine. 

The solution is a dashboard. We have the on-premises data gateway, which allows us from the Azure Cloud to get into Power BI. The dataset content comes from the on-premise data warehouses.

We have produced historical analytics and KPIs from ServiceNow for Incident management, performance, SLA coverage, trends, and identifying anomalies. Anomalies are, for example, if a ticket is reopened, that means it was closed incorrectly or the solution was not correct. If a ticket has been an incident or a request has been routed more than two times, that means somewhere in the processes it was not clear and the ticket is going in circles out to the anomalies data.

A lot of analytics based on ServiceNow and Gyra as ITSMs systems. There is also combined analytics between Salesforce and for example, Web analytics, Google Analytics, and so on. Allowing us to see how visits to the website translate into lead opportunities. This is done by combining the two, extracting them and combining the two sources of data, such as Google Analytics and Salesforce.

Some of the most valuable features of this solution are the ability to take your data and have the possibility to combine them into datasets and have synchronization. 

You are able to synchronize the data without additional cost eight times a day and you can set when you want to synchronize it. For example, during business hours, we synchronize the data once an hour and during the night I do not synchronize it at all. 

The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app.

Microsoft is open to suggestions for improvements in future releases. We requested to allow Python Notebooks to be displayed as visuals on top of the datasets, which now available and was not five versions ago.

The possibility to synchronize more often without having to pay more would be great. They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I have found the solution to have high performance and to be reliable.

The solution is highly scalable. We have approximately 100 people using the solution in my organization.

The solution is a service, which does not require a traditional installation. However, there is a large configuration portion. It can be very simple to configure minor operations but can become complex if you connect via Power BI, a lot of sources.  For example, from on-premise and from multiple clouds. It allows you to go from very simple, to very complex. It is up to your solution design in the end. 

You can create your first dataset in a matter of hours. This once again is dependent on your configuration.

The solution requires maintenance but not to the Power BI itself. The configuration is deployed on top of Power BI, you can set automatic alerts if, for example, the data is not synchronized or It not available.

The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

I have developed and deployed more than twenty separate customer solutions. I am a Business Intelligence Deployment Specialist. The most significant implementation was to reduce the Financial consolidation time for one hundred and twenty companies into one shareholder report, from thirty days to four minutes.

We help customers deploy and analyze sophisticated analytics models. These models have helped them all to get a better insight into their data and many of them have found very valuable insights that made them more profitable, more efficient, and in some cases changed the direction of the business.

The feature I find most valuable is the ability to publish Power Bi reports, using an embedded link, directly onto a website. Data that is not classified as confidential can very easily be exposed to customers, vendors, or even just visitors to the web site.

I would like to see Machine Learning for Power Bi Pro users or an intermediate license to enable Machine Learning if you don't have access to a Premium account.

The minimum embedded capacity for Machine learning is currently an A3 capacity, and this should be reduced to include A1 level licenses.

• Management BI/dashboard reporting
• Quick sharing of data from source to business users which is very useful.

• Giving visibility to management/business users about the business by mobility.
• Easy to develop and manage.

• Mobility.
• It's easy to use.
• Multiple data sourcing.
• Quick development and deployment.
• Mobility and ease of use.

• Dependency on data warehousing and pricing.
• Clarity on the Power BI (free) compared to Power BI (pro).

Visualization and minor analytics. It has performed quite well thus far.

We've not used it enough to be able to speak to organizational improvements.

• Low cost - it's a free application
• Ease of use - excellent user interface

Perhaps the inclusion of ETL functionality would help.

Flawless. Absolutely flawless. The stability is excellent.

Integrates really well.

We did not have a previous solution. And we did not choose this solution. We actually inherited it. 

There was no real set up, just install the application. No complications whatsoever.

On our short list, for future consideration: Oracle.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are cost, cost, and cost.

I rate Microsoft BI at seven out of 10 and that's because I have not utilized it as much as I would have liked to. However, it is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow.

Consider very carefully what your requirements are and plan your projects well. This is a wonderful tool but it will not get the work done for you.

MS SQL & SQL Server Analysis Services.

We provide BI solutions to the users at every level in order to monitor business. We can deploy DWH, cubes and reports from scratch within weeks of implementation.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is not user friendly, requires development. Power BI will surely provide a huge boost to MS BI in terms of self-service BI. Then again, SSRS developers are plenty, thus not so expensive.

Ten-plus years.

Stability issues are due to bad hardware sizing, bad forecast of volumes, or bad data modeling.

Only when data models were faulty of when the infrastructure was not compliant to MS recommendations.

Tech support from Microsoft, when needed, is as efficient as can be.

Worked in different technical environments but never saw a switch from MS BI.

Developers and architects are easily available for this technology.

MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution.

Watch your data model, use data marts when possible, set your archiving/purge policy from the beginning, size your hardware well (unless on cloud).

Data Integration and Cleansing & Warehousing are the most valuable

End-user tools such as Excel is not good enough for all business scenarios.

8 years

There are some issues with 2005/2008 releases, but most of them were fixed starting with 2012 release

Sometimes in the starting few months of every new release.

There are some problems with huge chunks of data. Some of these can be addressed with appropriate hardware appliances and a lot of tweaking.

I do work on projects to switch clients to MS BI usually due to its attractive pricing and tight integration with MS Office suite. Also the learning curve for users is flattened due to their fluency with Excel.

MS products are great but security is always a concern to make the whole ecosystem work smoothly. The latest BI suite is tightly integrated with SharePoint which is great; but the set-up process and deployment is still painful.

Have knowledgeable people to make the right choices for you.

We use it for BI analytics. I am a data scientist, so I model data and show the data through dashboards using this tool.

I think that the best feature of this solution is the way you can plan, communicate, and visualize all the knowledge you extract from the data for the customers. I like the way you can show or visualize the information a client needs to answer a business question.

I think that they can make the solution easy to use for people who are not experts in data because many clients try to use it, but they need to be prepared before using it.

Also, now we have another solution on the market that is more easy to use for those who are not trained in these kinds of tools.

I have been using Microsoft BI for more than five years.

I think the stability is good. I haven't had any problems yet with Power BI.

My experience with technical support has been good.

For me, the initial setup was easy, but I have been working for more than 20 years in data analytics. However, sometimes for end-users it's not as easy as another tool on the market.

A dashboard can be made in 30 minutes or two days, depending on the client, the information, and the quality of the data. I am also a teacher, so for my classes I can create a low plan dashboard in 30 minutes.

I used to recommend Microsoft BI, but the only issue is that you would need to know data analytics before using it. So it is not easy to use if you're not an expert. However, it is a good tool, and I think it's a good solution for many business problems.

Also, I would rate Microsoft BI at eight on a scale from one to ten.