Microsoft Power BI Reviews

My primary uses of this solution are BI reporting using SQL server reporting, Power BI online reports, and BI dashboards. We connect to SQL server databases plus other sources, including data warehouses in the cloud and on-premise.

There are areas where BI lags behind its competitors - for example, Qlik has an in-built data manipulation engine while BI does not. I also do not like transformation in BI, as we have to go back to the data for this process instead of being able to do things on the fly, as with Qlik. Other areas for improvement include the language that BI uses, the ability to do data manipulations, and the flexibility of the licensing models. In the next release, I would like to see manipulation and internal analytics, as well as some analytics features.

I've been using this solution for four years.

I've seen no issues with BI's stability.

BI is scalable, but there are some problems with limited online storage and always having to go back to the data warehouse.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

Microsoft BI can be used for business data visualization.

When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it.

In an upcoming release, there could be an associative experience, such as in Qlik.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The stability is good but as you add more data the stability decreases.

In my experience the scalability is good. You are able to increase users and add more data.

The initial setup can be easy if you have a small amount of data being used. I have found Qlik is better if you have large amounts of data.

We have a team of approximately 20 people that handle BI operations.

The solution is priced well for what they offer. However, the premium version is very expensive.

I have evaluated Tableau and Qlik.

I would recommend this solution to those that have smaller businesses where they have lower user numbers and not a lot of data points. If they have a larger business I would choose an alternative, such as Qlik.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

We use it for management reporting.

It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly.

One of the advantages of Microsoft BI is that it's easy to integrate it with any databases.

Another is that it doesn't need a lot of technical support because it's easy to use.

The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating.

I've been using it for 3 or 4 years.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable.

It's easy to install. It requires that you prepare some databases for installing this product, but it doesn't take too much time to do it.

We used a consultant.

Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Microsoft BI at ten.

My primary use case is for view of the dashboard. 

We did not previously have a BI platform before. This has helped us.

It has a nice integration with Office 365.

Once the report updated, we want the system to send a notification to user automatically. Especially if the email can imbed the dashboard data into the email, instead of a link. This does not necessarily happen.

In addition, importing the dashboard to a powerpoint is not available in the report server.  Even though we go to the public cloud service, the export is only the picture, or a snapshot of the dashboard. We cannot play the features or see the data we could change in a powerpoint. This is frustrating  because sometimes the finance manager needs to export the report to a powerpoint. Actually, we wanted to export because we wanted to do the presentation. We wanted to show the figures or something like that, but those figures are just static, and are only a picture.

Finally, an additional feature should be added to add a cost table.

Actually, it's a stable solution. But in some companies, based on my experience, my previous company, using the FAP solution for their IP solution. Then for our Powerband, the BI2, the data come from EIPCN, something like that, but actually it seems that the Powerband don't have very good integration with FAP interface. The integration from from FAP is not so convenient

The scalability is quite good. 

The technical support team is quite responsive and helpful. They are responsive to our questions in their forum.

I was not involed with the initial setup of the solution.

We always review:

• Scalability
• Price

It is a cheap solution for our needs. 

It is a solution that is easy for developers to be hands-on, even if they do not have prior experience with it. It is quite easy to learn.

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.

Pivoting is the most valuable feature.

It is good for users who have experience with Excel but are looking to work with larger than Excel data sets. For experienced users, it is more of a hassle because of its lack of usability; it is not very intuitive to find a given functionality.

Its ease of use feature is not very intuitive and needs to improve.

I have used this solution for six months.

We often experience stability issues.

There were scalability issues. It does half the work like any other product in the market.

This product was used during tests.

It is easy to set up.

We looked at Tableau and Qlik; we are using Qlik.

It seems to be good for extending the capabilities of Excel but I wouldn't recommend it as a standalone setup.

Power Query and Power Pivot are the most valuable features. You can easily manage your data on Excel. İf you have a professional version, you can do it. However, if you don't use Power Query and Power Pivot, then your raw number is limited. The Unpivot specialty is useful because you can't do it in the front-side of Excel.

If you don't have any analytical tool and you don't have any budget, then Power BI can be the best product in terms of the price-quality index. This is because you can work easily on big data; you can upload and model it.

Performance can be better; of course, it depends on your hardware but it can also be improved.

Once I tried to upload 5 million rows on Power Query from a CSV file but I got an error about my personal computer, i.e., my RAM was not enough for uploading. Also, sometimes this process takes a long time.

I have used this solution for about three years.

There were no stability issues.

The product is scalable.

Once I asked a question to the technical support team and they answered clearly. I would give them a 9/10 rating.

It is a user-friendly tool, but the data size is important, i.e., you have to check your data size and how you can use it effectively.

Since its integration into SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has made a number of improvements and added many new features. It had a big overhaul in 2008 and acquired a bunch of new features with 2008 R2: KPIs, maps, sparklines, new functions, published Report Parts, and more.

Let me highlight some of the advanced features that keep people on the platform:

1. Drill-through reports. These are ones where links in the data presented take a report viewer to related reports. Information Builders is another BI platform where this is available, but not as customizable as in SSRS.
2. Highly customizable charts. The data-driven custom colors. The fact that almost every attribute of a component of a chart can be tweaked. Try doing some of those customizations on your flashy new cloud BI platform. Reports within reports. Sub-reports within tables of data and sophisticated charts within tables within sub-reports within reports. Go as deep as you want. See as much detail as you want.
3. User-accessible parameters. Reports can offer report users parameters like no other platform. This makes linking to and from reports easy and allows you to integrate SSRS reports into other business applications. Try sending parameters to an Excel spreadsheet, a Power View report, or a cloud-based dashboard – impossible.
4. Extensible. Programmers can extend the tool’s functionality. Custom data sources can be coded. Custom delivery extensions can be built. External DLLs can be referenced from within reports. Many companies do take advantage of these features.

The few things I mention below constitute very strong reasons why Microsoft has essentially abandoned the platform and why I agree with them.

• Lack of mobile support. Reports look terrible on mobile screens. They don’t have the ability to redraw themselves as with responsive UIs. Security remains a hassle on mobile because SSRS relies heavily on Active Directory.
• Speed of development is too slow. To be fair, each SSRS report has the potential to be its own business application, aware of who is viewing the report and customizing the output accordingly. Those that take advantage of the advanced features are in for a surprise – developers will spend countless hours squinting at the screen getting every pixel to fall exactly where they want it. Setting up data sources is still a thing for advanced SQL developers. It’s not like other modern BI platforms where stores of data sets are easily converted to dashboards.
• Antiquated IDE for code developers extending it. I really wish that the custom code windows provided richer programming assistance (like auto-complete, object-oriented constructs, Intellisense…) and support for other programming languages.

I have used it for two years.

We have not encountered any deployment issues.

• Long-running queries could take your system down. The desire of "I Want It All In One Report" should be avoided. All users should tune their reports and use parameters to get their reports in a light way.
• Internet Explorer could be tricky sometimes.

Customer service is 7/10.

Technical support is 7/10.

I switched from 2005 to 2008 in order to get more features.

It is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting.

An in-house team implemented it.

The SQL Server Reporting Services works as a part of SQL Server license. If we have a licensed copy of SQL Server, we can run Reporting Services on the same server for no additional license fee. However, if we run Reporting Services on a separate machine that is not yet licensed for SQL Server, such as a Web server, we will need to purchase an additional SQL Server license.

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SQL Server Reporting Services is one of the most popular components of SQL Server, but it has always been surprisingly difficult to get from one place all the basic facts you need to get up and running from scratch, to the point of producing reports. My overall experience with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is that it is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting. Developing sophisticated reports, however, can be slow and tedious. Ultimately, getting information to business users is the name of the game. Doing it fast and doing it intuitively trumps fancy features.