Microsoft Power BI Reviews

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

In general, we use it to have access to the data that we have processed from the HCM system and also to deploy it to the teams. Because it has low-level security features, I can guarantee that only selected people have access to the information seamlessly. We don't take a lot of steps to create, for example, different profiles and ensure the data security that I need.

It is on the cloud because we have pro accounts. Usually, we have the desktop version for designing and using ourselves here, but when we deploy this, it is usually on the Microsoft cloud; it is not on-premises. We are using the most updated version because they release monthly updates.

The querying capabilities are the most valuable because they allow me to build many automations. We have many workflows and many databases that we work on a daily basis. They need to be updated quite quickly. In order to not to take much of our time doing these updates manually, I have set up these automations using the systems. The process is just to ingest the data and reprocess it. Every time I click a button, everything is updated in almost real time.

It is by far the easiest system not only for querying but also for data modeling, data visualization, and deployment. It is light years ahead of Tableau and even Microsoft Excel to do these kinds of things. It is very easy to use and set up, and it has a lot of videos on the internet.

I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that.

Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has.

I have been using this solution for around two and a half years. I am currently using it, and I have also used it in the previous company.

It is very stable and very reliable. It is by far the most reliable system I have used for deploying many things.

It is very scalable, especially because the pricing was great. Right now, they are integrating a lot with Microsoft Power Apps and the Power Platform as a whole. Power Ultimate and other things are being integrated into the system as well.

In my previous company, more than 200 to 300 people were using it on a daily basis. In my current company, we have less than ten people using it because we are still a very confined team.

The technical assistance is great, and I have never had any problems with them. Their support to communities is also great. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup was very easy. It took a little bit less than a month to get everything designed, tested, and deployed after we got the licenses.

Its pricing is great.

The first piece of advice is to become very clear about licensing and the data governors. Always get the licenses and get them right. You must also be clear about who is going to control these accesses. The second piece of advice is to understand a lot about the low-level security to create profiles and data access features to allow the specific data to be seen only by a specific public.

Currently, in my organization, the greatest challenge is getting proper licensing. We have a little bit of resistance from our IT department who would like us to use Tableau more. It is not Microsoft's problem. It has more to do with the vendor of choice of the company, and they say that we have to use Tableau, but I don't want to use Tableau.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. It deserves this rating.

We use this solution to analyze financial statements from our partners.

We build dashboards to see information on a product that is offered by one of our local telcos.

The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members. If you want to build a dashboard then you can publish it to the cloud, and then add people. This will give them access to the dashboard where they can review it, and modify it as well.

They have a mobile option that allows you to see the dashboard from your mobile phone, rather than having to look at your laptop.

I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited.

I would like to see an option for adding audio to the visualizations. 

They need to add support for putting emojis into the dashboards.

We have been using Power BI for the past two or three years.

In terms of stability, this product has never failed me. I have not experienced any bugs or glitches.

The scalability is good. They allow for multiple types of data sources, so if you grow your databases or you change your data sources, it's easy to add them to the tool visually.

We are a startup with four people, and everybody is using it. We are proposing it to our clients in cases where we are selling analytics because it's a good option for them.

I have not had a reason to speak with technical support, although I've looked at the community. They do have additional features that you can download from the site, as well. I have not a problem in terms of support.

I used Tableau in 2016, but I decided not to use it in this startup company because they don't have a free option. They do have a trial version, but that expires and I would have to then look for another solution.

With Microsoft BI, they have a free desktop version. 

I have also used Cognos BI before, although it was a bit complicated. This is another reason that I settled on Microsoft BI.

The installation is direct and quite easy to do. The instructions are available online and they are easy to follow.`

I completed the deployment myself.

We are using the free desktop version of this product.

Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable.

My advice for anybody interested in using Microsoft BI is to set up the desktop version. It's good to start off with, it's easy to learn, and they get the trial period for the BI service. Then, once they're done with the trial period, I think the licensing per month is quite affordable.

In summary, this is a good solution. It is not perfect, although if they added audio, emojis, and more types of graphs, then it would be.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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.