Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We are a service provider and Microsoft BI is one of the tools that we implement for our clients. We do not use it ourselves.

My primary use case is integration, but it is also used for reporting and data analysis services.

The user interface is easy to work with.

More connections with other systems should be added, which would allow for other integrations.

I have been using Microsoft BI for between eight and nine months.

Microsoft BI is a stable product.

I do not have experience with technical support. In cases where I have found an issue, I Google it, spend time learning about the problem, and then resolve it.

I have also used Alteryx and Informatica. We still may use one of these other products, depending on our client's requirements. If the client wants us to work using a specific product then that is their choice.

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment will take an hour, or an hour and a half.

We deployed this product ourselves. It is easy to work on.

I primarily use Microsoft BI for integration, so it is difficult for me to say what needs to be improved. Overall, this is a good tool and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use it primarily to create visualizations, along with very light analytics of education performance data.

We cannot truly speak to improvements yet, as we are just exploring it. Potentially, it can provide instant access to a very current state of affairs for school performance.

• Dashboard functionality
• Ease of integration with various data sources

It is definitely a wonderful analytics tool. However, database ETL, data integration functionality would be absolutely perfect in many cases. Currently, it doesn't get the job done and we need to extract, transform, and load the data from faulty data sets into something more suitable for the deployment of the analytics tool.

No issues with the stability.

I can't speak about the scalability, but I can speak more towards the interoperability. There is a very rich capacity for sharing its functionality.

It is a very simple application so there was no real setup. Just download it.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• cost
• sustainability.

I would rate it at eight out of 10 because of its ease of use, simple setup, and excellent integration. I would rate it a 10 if they provided free training.

It's a wonderful application, it meets our needs.

I use it for budget analysis. I am in charge of budget analysis for the organization. I get figures from other units, and then I do a budget comparison with forecasting.

The performance is very good.

For a long time I had to do everything manually, and it took a long time. At the moment, I just have to refresh and I get my report. A few clicks are needed. Once I get the data in the right format, then I have the report as quickly as it is required.

It used to be stressful towards the month's end, to meet the deadline for reporting, especially when these reports are required by the board of the company. But now, as long as the other units give me my numbers on time, I don't waste a lot of time in preparing the numbers. I can now use my time in analyzing the outcome, rather than preparing the figures and cleaning up the data. It provides efficiency and saves time.

The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization.

They need to make it as user-friendly as possible. Make it as non-technical as possible. At the moment, if you are not a person who is familiar with modeling analysis, it might be a bit scary. So I think it should be a very simple user interface. It should be very easy to learn. 

It can be annoyingly slow at times, but I think it's because of the bandwidth, the connectivity we have. I've always believed if we had better connectivity, it would be perfect. Sometimes it's slow. But I really don't blame it on the solution. I blame it, but on my connectivity.

I always just try to Google if I have issues, and a lot of time that is perfectly good. I just need to know the basics.

I knew there must be a better way of doing what I was performing, so I searched. I did not have a previous solution, I just did things manually.

It was easy. The only thing I noticed was that it was so slow. It took a long time to download, but again, I think that was my connectivity.

At the moment I'm using a free version.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criterion for me is, it should be something that is really user-friendly. By that I mean, I don't need to go through specialized training to learn how to use it; not in this day and age, when the solution should be really a solution. I don't need to be an expert to know how to use it. Just user friendly, click and go. Also, I think it should be something that assures me of its stability.

For me, at the moment, it is the best thing that I've used. But I can't compare it to the other ones. It is the only one I know, apart from just normal financial modeling which I've used before. To me it is the best, but I can't really compared to any others because I don't know how the others work.

Do your research. For me, this is the only one I know. But I know there are others which are better.

I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool.

The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

I was satisfied with the technical support.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for revenue forecasting and other predictive analytic reports based on specific requirements.

I have found the quick reporting and the conductivity with all the data sources valuable.

I would like to see some AI incorporated into this solution in the future.

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

The stability of this solution is great.

The scalability at first was not the greatest but it has turned out it can be very good.

The support has been good.

I have found the installation straightforward compared to other competitors.

Having this solution on the could cloud allows for quick deployment. We could deliver the solution within four to eight weeks depending on the complexity.

There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

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.

We are using it for reporting ERP data, IT service data, financial data, and so on.

It has been helpful in getting insights. We weren't able to get insights at such a level. It is also helpful in getting an overview of different departments. We are able to do it much faster than before.

We are able to collaborate on things and get insightful data visualizations.

Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region.

Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources.

I have been using this solution for two years. In this company, I have been using it for two months.

It is not completely stable. Sometimes, it goes off for the whole North Europe region. Its stability should be improved.

It is scalable, and there are no issues with its scalability. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability. We have around 300 users of this solution.

We don't have any issues with their technical support. 

I have worked only with Power BI.

It is easy because documentation and a lot of tutorials are available. Its deployment took one month.

Power BI premium is really expensive for our market. A lot of small and medium companies would like to purchase it, but they can't afford it.

I would rate Power BI an eight out of ten.