What needs improvement with Microsoft BI?

Some controls and integration capabilities of the product require configurations with the help of NoSQL databases, as it is one area where the product has certain shortcomings. At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool. At times, I see the product freeze in unexpected areas. Unknown exceptions appear in the tool for no reason. One problem with the tool arises from the fact that it does way too much monitoring, impacting areas like reports and performance. The aforementioned areas can be improved in the product. The tool should provide cloud support to help users deal with problems related to the frozen servers.

Areas of Power BI that could be improved are the learning curve for developers who come from non-technical backgrounds. While Power BI is a powerful tool, mastering its development aspects, including coding and formulas, can be challenging for those without a technical background. Additionally, some users find the default visualizations in Power BI Desktop to be outdated and prefer more modern and customizable options. One additional feature I would like to see in Power BI is tighter integration with Power Apps. This would allow for easier development without extensive coding, making it more accessible for users who aren't familiar with technical aspects like JSON files or Visual Studio Code. Simplifying the development process would streamline workflow and enhance overall usability.

Better mapping capabilities and easier administration access would be beneficial, especially for understanding who has viewed reports.

It should integrate with multiple enterprise applications. For instance, integrating CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and HCM (Human Capital Management) with Power BI can be a significant advantage. Because, organizations focus on and like software that can do multiple tasks. The user interface is good but it should have the ability to interact with multiple systems. I would like to see more AI capabilities in future releases. There's a strong interest in AI, including technologies like GPT, which facilitate real-time interactions. It's all about real-time interaction between customers and the system, automated to operate under specific scenarios. This ensures it functions in real-time, leveraging AI for more dynamic engagements without needing predefined projects or setups, much like how chatbots are designed for real-time use. In future releases, I would like to see more encrypted software, and there should be version control for Software. It will avoid pirated downloads. I would also like to see dynamic content. It should be an add-on in Power BI. It helps users understand reports more easily. For example, when a developer is building a report, they should consider using dynamic content to make the report more user-friendly.

When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot. It's not very fast to upload and refresh the real-time data that we use. The solution works fine for a dashboard that does not have much data, many levels, and breakdowns for different fields. When we build something a bit more complex, Microsoft Power BI takes a lot of time to upload. I don't know if that's the solution's fault or our system's. Sometimes, the solution doesn't work. You need to have a license, but we integrate it and make it part of our system so everyone can use it without a license. If I share a report in PowerPoint, it takes a while when you deploy it again. So, it's not always fast, and then I have to ask IT for help. When you export a file, it should be the export that you choose on a report rather than just the raw data. At the moment, it just gives you everything as raw data in a page without any filters.

The product’s on-premise reporting servers could support real-time data refreshing capabilities like its on-cloud version. It would be a very useful functionality.

Microsoft BI typically connects to a database, often SQL Server, but it's also capable of connecting to multiple databases, pulling data from them, and allowing for data consolidation. You can then aggregate and generate dashboards and reports from this combined data. Personally, I wouldn't claim to have the expertise to suggest significant changes or additional features, as it functions quite well as is.

Microsoft BI lacks integration capabilities, so it needs to consider increasing its integration capabilities. Microsoft BI needs to improve its mobile application compatibility so that people view their reports and dashboards through a mobile app since, nowadays, people move towards tools that are in the digital transformation phase.

There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution.

I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility. Additionally, changing styles and formatting options for numbers require external tools, which can be inconvenient and time-consuming. Ideally, Power BI should incorporate these features within its platform to enhance user experience and eliminate the need for external tools. I understand your frustration with the lack of automation and dynamic features in Power BI, particularly regarding the assignment of dynamic titles and content titles. While there are some options available for creating dynamic titles, they may not fully meet your specific requirements. It would be ideal to have more flexibility in manually assigning the desired typography for each call and dynamically setting content titles. Although it is possible to find workarounds for these limitations, I believe Microsoft will likely address these issues in future updates to improve the user experience. Despite these shortcomings, Power BI remains a powerful and highly capable application, and I would rate it an eight out of ten. I have a strong belief that within the next couple of years, or even sooner, significant advancements will be made in Power BI. These advancements will make it even more powerful and I am confident it will become truly exceptional. I have complete faith in the future development and potential of this platform.

If you create too many pages, things can get heavy and slow down significantly. Once you create the dashboard, the data is updated at certain time intervals. I'd like to see more flexibility around those time options. It's difficult to easily share the dashboard with people outside the organization.

Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way.

I'm comparing this with other existing and newcomer BI tools. The look and feel of the tool has, only like a month back, undergone a major change. If not, for the last five years at least, last four years at least, the look and feel have been very, very similar all the time. It did not change much in the last four years. Barring a lot of functionalities and capabilities being added, it did not change much. The look and feel were pretty much the same. However, about a month back, the latest release of Power BI, they made some further, drastic changes to the way the buttons and the panels are set up. That said, they can do more. There are still better UI designs they can go through. I'm assuming they are focusing more on capabilities rather than look-and-feel designs.

Microsoft BI could improve by allowing large-size data sources. We have large data sources, and we have problems loading them in Microsoft BI. I would like to see in a future release the ability to create rules with no code. Similar to drag-and-drop solutions, or some other way with no code.

Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it. This is its area for improvement. First, you have to learn DAX (data analysis expressions), then you also have to learn Power Query M. You need to learn two languages simultaneously. If they can combine and make it just one language, it will be easier for nontechnical users.

The performance of Microsoft BI could improve for large datasets and it would be beneficial to have more visualization features.

The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on. They should make the graphs more user-friendly, because other parts of Microsoft Power BI are user-friendly, but the graphical representations aren't.

I'm not a heavy Power Bi user. I use it as my CRM, and it gives me all the information that I need. I haven't found anything that isn't useful for what I'm working on at the moment. Maybe later, I might think of something and find that Power BI doesn't have. It's quite an improvement compared to using Microsoft SQL for business intelligence.

Based on my experience, everything's good in Power BI. Consistently, it's being updated every month. There's a new feature that is being added to the platform, but I think one thing that can be improved is with regard to the error messages. When there is a problem, the error message is not specific about what's causing the problem. Maybe they intentionally generalize it because there could be a lot of causes. From an improvement perspective, I think if the Power BI developers of that platform would really focus on being more detailed and specific on the error messages, it would help a lot of developers troubleshoot and maintain the report ECT or the dashboard ECT. There needs to be more specific error messages. You encounter problems normally for the development part and maintainability part, and there are some issues that you or any developers would encounter. It's resolvable, but it would take some effort to really dig in and investigate. Some of the messages, for example, will say that the main package is missing, which could mean a lot of things. It could be a formatting error, it could be a file type error, it could be a transformation error on the helper file, et cetera. If there was a sub-description of what that is, it would be a great improvement on Power BI.

Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product. It's user friendly, but it does have its limitations. A designer cannot dream of anything they want to do and just go and do it. The dashboard has to look a specific way. If we can make the front end more flexible, that would be good because it's on the server. Clients are asking for a better UI, but it has its limitations.

You need to purchase upgraded support separately. The marketing will need to increase more now. Power BI is a good product, however, from Microsoft, and I'm not getting too much marketing information about new features or anything like that. People don't know the capabilities and they really should.

There's a lot of room for improvement because Power BI is a new tool and hasn't really been in the market for that long, especially considering alternative tools such as MicroStrategy or Tableau which have been around for more than a decade. Because Power BI is younger than those tools, I feel it hasn't reached a certain level of maturity that comes with time and it is lacking in quite a few areas which I'm hoping will be seen to in the future, given how it has been progressing so far with its new releases. There is no specific area that I have a problem with. It's just that, with whatever feature you come across, every visual has its own formatting and behavior. What you get in one visual for a feature, you don't seem to get in another. When it comes to the feature's functionality, that's all fine, but, say, for instance, that you want to go ahead and turn off only the sub totals and not the grand totals. This might not be immediately possible, especially if you are working in a project where your technical solution is the backend site which the users don't quite care about. What they care about is what they see and interact with, and the visuals and formatting (and visual settings) at hand are what really matter to them. This is where I think standardization really needs to come in. Basic stuff like being able to selectively turn on or off only the sub totals or grand totals. There should be certain formatting options which should be standard across every visual. What options you get here, you should also get over there, for example. These are simple things, but many a time it's something the end user takes very seriously. They generally do not care about what's happening in the background with regard to the calculations and everything else. In essence, the standard visualizations should have features and options in common with one another, even when it comes to other visualization tools such as bar charts and line charts. These are all pretty basic visualization features, and giving them some standard way to be customized will make them as capable and competitive as what other tools allow you to do. Of course, you can do this if you add your own custom visuals from the library, but when it comes to basic default stuff, they should at least be deep enough in terms of standard customization to compete. Right now it seems like they're trying to add a lot of features, but at the expense of losing out on the essence of the basics. The basics in Power BI should be equally as good as the basics in any other tool, and in this case I believe it to be a problem of adding more depth to certain features. The width, and variety, of features is not a problem for me. Whatever features are already available need to be deep enough to work with comfortably, and I feel this is where Microsoft needs to direct its focus.

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.

There needs to be more flexibility in terms of handling the data. Data computation is not very good in PowerBI. It's a little bit of a heavier tool. There are some limitations with the data models needed to build the report. I can't use multiple data models. You can handle lots of data, with higher volume in other tools. We need some kind of flexibility with the objects, the graphs. We need more control over the data manipulations and data designing parts. That is a big thing from my side. Some sort of SMS feature that could send alerts would be great for teams that work in the field. It would help, for example, if you forget to access the report. If it was over SMS it would be a game-changer.

The performance, the ETL, is not so good. Also, I believe Power BI could improve how to add filters to the visualization dashboard because we don't see an easier way how to apply them. We can't filter the table directly, so we always have to do separate filtering for parts of the dashboard. In the next release, I'd like to see the option to share personalized validation of the users, let them see one another. I'd also like to see the capacity to get filters in the table.

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

Power BI's drillthrough feature could be improved. I didn't like drillthrough and those options much, but I did like it in MicroStrategy. As for additional features, I think Power BI could have better interactive features for the end user and scalable drillthrough options.

Not yet assessed. A final assessement will be realized once the system has achieved 1 year of operational results.

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 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.

For managing the business, it's okay, however, as a product management tool, it's lacking. I would like to use BI to provide services for the customers eventually. Microsoft's solution is not good for improving the product for the customers. It's just good for managing the business, and not supporting the customers. The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools. I'd like them to add to the knowledge base, or at least to offer more documentation about how to use the solution. It would be helpful if more AI was integrated into the solution.

It is an evolving solution. So, it still has some rough edges. As compared to Tableau or QlikView, there are some things that you can't do when you want to. For example, giving specific access to some reports for users. You can get it up and running very fast, but some things are a bit trickier, and for some of the things, you need to actually write code. It is sort of a work in progress. They're catching up on the competition, but it still takes time. Other solutions are more mature, and they have been in the market much longer, but it is catching up. It has come a long way in terms of how it was working two years ago, but there are some things that you still can't do with it. For example, permission management and user access management are still a bit limited. It is basically based on the idea that everybody from the organization can see everything or limit the type of data they can see. If I want you to see only one report and the other guy to see another report, I can't do it. There should be a better way to manage permissions and users. It should also support external users much better. There should be the ability to export to PowerPoint or PDF. It should be more efficient. It's rather clunky right now. Sometimes, the system is inconsistent in the way it does things.

Microsoft BI's visualization could be better. Though Power BI's visualization has steadily improved over the years, it's not on the level tools like Tableau and SAS or some of the more expensive products on the market.

The solution could improve the extraction and transformation of data. For example, you transform the data and then send it to Microsoft BI without having to use your own API. We are only providing the API to Power BI, and then Power BI is doing the job. In an upcoming release, Microsoft BI should increase the functionality of the solution.

I would like to see a change in the premium capacity. It is very costly, particularly for the Egyptian market, amounting to $5,000 per month. Perhaps in the Gulf this would work well. The data flow should be enhanced from OnPrem-Gateways, which we find to be somewhat complicated and which does not always work. Regional pricing is the main issue. The stability is okay, although there can sometimes be an issue with the connection when it comes to data OnPrem and the need to manage gateway communication and do troubleshooting. In brief, there are certain issues with OnPrem stability. 'Although we feel the solution to be a dream, it would be great to see everything on Power BI services, obviating the need for Power BI desktop. I hope to see such Power BI implementation. I feel like we don't have a very powerful ELT or ETL tool when it comes to power and data cleansing. The solution compares unfavorably with such products as Informatica in this regard.

The Microsoft BI interface should be simpler and more user-friendly. I find it very difficult to move between their data sources and their analytics section. It's probably designed by data analysts that typically get the data from somewhere else. So, one person logs into Power BI, moves the data around and puts it in the proper form then somebody else goes in from the dashboard. What I'm finding more and more is that the person playing with the data is also going to be the person building the dashboard, so the interface needs to be more seamless and dumbed down for the average user. Tableau is much better at that, which is probably why it's more expensive. The days where one person works on the data and someone else does the analytics are coming to an end. In the past, larger organizations usually had a dedicated analytics team and a dedicated data team. Now we buy data as a service, so we got rid of our data team and we don't have analysts per se. Instead, we have smart users. So I think Microsoft BI needs to move on to the next iteration of truly user-friendly solutions.

I have a couple of dashboards that are weekly and monthly. I was able to download the dashboard, but I cannot paste any images into PowerPoint. There are also visuals based on the brand that should automatically pop up in the graph and which should be a toggling option. And I'm having performance issues if I want to add two or three tables at a time, which I could easily do in Tableau. Copy-pasting data to PowerPoint for presentation to the executive level should be easy but we're only able to copy the visual, not the underlying data.

At the enterprise level, it is a little expensive. To get the full capacity of integrations, you need to go premium. It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table. The premium level is going to be more applicable for the higher transaction-level databases.

The solution is somewhat costly in comparison with MSBI tools. In MSBI, when it comes to mobile and maps-related applications, we are always looking for some support with the reporting tools. Once we click on the region, then automatically it goes to the two area maps. Based on the map, it will reinforce our data values. There is constant change involved and new updates and enhancements are coming out as needed in new versions.

The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version. Additionally, we have experienced a problem when attempting to update the desktop application. When we click to update we are unable to open the file to update.

The on-premises version lacks some technical features that are available with the Cloud version. There is definitely room for improvement. The visualization is lacking, it needs improvement.

It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use. For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that. Suppose you want to code a plot, Python available. You can code the plot you want, and you don't have to use a predefined one. But when you want to plot it and you want to import like five or ten packages in Python, there are limitations. It doesn't support all the libraries that Python has. Microsoft BI only supports a few, like three or four libraries at most. When I want to use my old code in Power BI, it doesn't handle it, and that was also annoying. In the next release, it'll help if they added a coding area where you are more open to make custom things. Especially for a developer, it needs to be improved. For a Power BI person, it's fine, I think, because it doesn't require much technical knowledge, but a developer will need it. Maybe they should create a space for that.

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.

They can improve it in terms of rule-based security. Currently, it has very limited rules. They can improve the user interface a little bit to make it more user-friendly. When creating a dashboard, it is not very user-friendly. You have to click on a certain style and use your keyboard keys to move it. You cannot drag and drop it. Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case.

There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution and there are certain features that Microsoft should include in the MSBA solution. One is the connective level problem that we currently face from the different data sources. It provides about 80% connectivity to all the data sources, but there is the remaining 20%. They could provide some kind of additional functionality which would make it a great solution.

In Power BI, it would be ideal if we had the capability to import data with forms or similar methods. It would be nice to have the ability to have a service price to offer customers of Power BI, without having the customer be part of Power BI, I would say. Maybe that could help us consult the suppliers. The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards. It can sometimes get a bit slow.

The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire.

When you go to the cloud, its licensing is not intuitive. It is a little bit complex. When you have to purchase a new license, it is difficult to understand on their website what exactly you need to pay and how you can group. It is something that is applicable to all Microsoft products. They're not always so simple and clear when it comes to licensing. Their support can also be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. They are able to resolve the issue, but they can be better at explaining the approach they took to resolve the issue. It could have something in the direction of machine learning. It can have some kind of integration with machine learning where you can ask for some reports with natural language.

They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features.

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.

We're a big organization. We're looking at standardizing. Anybody can just pick it up and use it because it's easy. We want to be able to standardize what Power BI is and I think that's a challenge that we're encountering now. Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution.

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 can't say that anything glaring is missing from the offering at this time. Microsoft is doing a lot of research on it and they're coming up with a lot of good release items. I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint. I'd like to have more time with the solution to evaluate it to see if there's really anything missing. We don't really go in-depth with the product.

The capacity of the solution could be improved. If you don't need all the data it offers then don't download it because the software slows down.

The only challenge I have found is that they do not have a Mac version of Power BI. They should have versions for both Apple and Unix because you cannot install the desktop version for these operating systems. In the future, I would like to see them add more AI and machine learning features, as well as self-service analytics. You can use R and Python, but it would be helpful if they had some no-code machine learning options that you find in other tools. The UI/UX can be improved. Products such as Tableau and QlikView are very good in terms of the user interface.

I think creating dashboards could be easier. Compared to other solutions, the cost of the license is expensive and that could be improved.

We have yet to implement the solution completely. We're still exploring features and capabilities. It's too early to discuss items that may be lacking. It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that.

The solution's stability could be improved. In the retail industry, due to issues with information updating and data uploading. Clients may end up pricing items wrong as they could accidentally base their choices on old or wrong data. The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions. It could also be less expensive.

I don't know if I can pinpoint any specific items that I don't like. However, the more connectors that they provide the better. I don't use it day in, day out to tell you if it has any kind of functionality items that may be open up for improvement opportunities. The solution could probably beef up items related to statistics and things to cover the gap between the advanced things that you can do with Tableau. Any kind of advanced statistical analysis would be very helpful in future releases. The solution could be quicker at rendering data.

The dashboard could be simplified. The service is currently good, but it could be better. If you compare it to Tableau and Qlik Sense, they are doing much better work. The ability of their dashboards is much better. The technical part is easy in Qlik Sense, where we can do some coding. It isn't easy in Power-BI. Microsoft BI can be more user-friendly. Scalability is also a challenge for us because it's difficult to handle Power BI's dashboard.

The integration with third-party products could be more stable.

It should be more scalable for an enterprise-level implementation. When you deploy large data sets, the response has to be faster in Power BI. This is one thing that needs to be improved in it.

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.

The paginated report functionality, which was intended to replace SPSS, is not yet up to the mark. We would like improvements made to the paginated reports so that it produces quality similarly to SSRS. There is no automation for paginated reports, so then need to make it automated. Ultimately, I would like to see all of the features from SSRS that are missing. That's ideally what I would like to have.

It's not even fair for me to respond on that as that's not my wheelhouse. I don't know how easy it is as I'm not doing any of the designs. Therefore, I have not had any real training on it. I don't think that's fair for me to criticize anything that they're doing. The initial setup is a little bit technical and what an end user wants to see is always a moving target. The solution needs better technical support.

I would like them to provide a license that just allows us to see dashboards. What I don't like about this solution is that in order to just watch a dashboard, you need a license. Currently, you need to purchase a full license of Power BI Pro just to see something, which is not attractive. If you have a license, you can see a shared dashboard, but you can also build a dashboard or you can collaborate with other people. However, if you only want to see a dashboard, there is no license for that. I only want to see the dashboard, and I don't want to do anything more than watching the information on the dashboard. There is no license that allows you to see a shared dashboard. This is one of the areas of opportunity because I would like a lot of people to be able to see a shared dashboard, not to interact with it or to collaborate online with it. I would like to see more compatibility with non-Microsoft data sources. Given the fact that everything is related to Microsoft Azure and all services available on Microsoft Azure, I see that they're building more connections to Microsoft Azure services instead of other non-Microsoft services. I understand the strategy, but it would be good to have more compatibility with non-Microsoft data sources.

I think that there should be visuals for financial reporting videos. It should just be a plug and play because there is a lot of coding that goes into it with different clients. We should have a visual for income statements and other elements, this should be made easier. For example, suppose you are looking at an inventory report, it is all plug and play because you can just use a matrix or a table to summarize the information and the visuals. The systems are more adapted to that kind of area than for financial purposes. For the next release, I think they need to improve on getting more visuals that are related to the finance side of things. Like I mentioned before, the matrix now is more of an OLAP cube, we are looking into something more adapted to the finance field, such as a drag and drop where you can build an income statement very quickly without too much code. This would be a nice addition. As far as I understand Microsoft has two solutions that are similar, Power BI Report Builder and Power BI Desktop. The features that you get in Power BI Desktop are more advanced than the features that you get in Power BI Report Builder. They should just merge the two and move forward this way. There is no reason to have two different applications serving the same purpose.

Actionable insights could be better. I would like it to provide exceptional reports that you need to act upon to keep your operations or businesses going. That's something I would like to see. On the origination side, if there are better graphs and maps to visualize data like I've seen other tools like Tableau do, it might be useful. They need to have very different ways of presenting information. If it's eye-catching, better than a pie chart or a bar graph, that's even better.

I think that they should improve the mobile application that they have, it's very poor. We generally have a very huge area to cover, to move blocks and data. But sometimes I need a small set of data that I can see in my personal iPhone. But the iPhone solution, and the solution from any smartphone, tablet, etc., is so limited. It's particularly important now when so many people are working from home. Sometimes I need to reply to a call from my support or customer teams, they might be asking for a concession for a customer. I want to be able to look at the data on that customer. I take out my phone and I have no data. It's the worst. I think that if they improve the mobile solutions, it would help me and my team.

The solution could be more customizable and you do not have enough freedom on the code.

The upgrade process could be improved. Sometimes we miss information if we haven't kept up with the versions. It should be easy to migrate, but it does not provide enough information about what may be lost if you upgrade, especially if something goes wrong with the upgrade. Any current developments should be included in the upgrade so that it is a seamless process.

I need more time with the solution. Right now, I can't think of any features that are missing from the product. The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects. There are some reporting features in Tableau that we need access to and it would be ideal if there was a function between the two for data integration and data manipulation, with the final representation of the report available on Tableau.

When it comes to improvement, I would say there could be more tutorials for students in universities who are just learning it. And it wouldn't have to be just for students in universities. It might also be for the people who use it in the real world. The evidence that I see when I look into it is there's a lot of user group type of connections to the Power BI world. And many, many bloggers telling their stories and promoting themselves or small businesses promoting themselves to do it for you using Power BI. The claim being that they could help you get it done instead of you doing it yourself. That's what goes on in this industry. You see a lot of entrepreneurial people who want to work in the role of consultant and get paid for it. There's a lot of that. And the invitation to look into the websites comes from little mini tutorials, which can be very helpful. But the next step of those tutorials, if most of the people get what they want out of them, is a contract to do the work. I don't want to introduce those kinds of things to my students, because it's kind of promoting something that could be a distraction. I worked for years as an independent consultant. I even did a fairly long series of contracts up in the state of Washington at Microsoft and I had 38 years in the industry before I became an academic teacher. But I'm avant-garde when it comes to sales. I avoid salesman because I don't want to believe the hype. I don't want to be deceived. And I don't want to suggest that somebody go that way. The topic of sales is overdone. This is an opinion on my part. On a practical note, the process of importing data into a new environment that has recently been designed is always a major effort. And Power BI has some weaknesses when it comes to loading data into an otherwise good concept and a good design because if it's not seriously tested and all shortcomings noticed beforehand, the importing process will fail. Even a cool tool like Power BI cannot anticipate the complexity of the variety of sources of data. But they're not alone. That would not be a disqualifier. But because I don't have direct yet, hands-on, having done this, I don't really know how Microsoft would improve this area. I think they've got it handled on integration. Everything that you're working with is already a Microsoft environment or a Microsoft tool. It's integrated. But if you're using the desktop tools by Microsoft and you need to deploy into a backend of Oracle, there might be some things that a smart consultant has to help out with. So cross-platform integration could use some improvement in terms of ease-of-use.

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

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.

Microsoft BI comes under pressure when there is a lot of data to be crunched. It gets slower and slower, and the functionality becomes a bit of a problem. The performance goes down with data being fed into the system. The infrastructure requirement also increases if you have to increase the performance. This is the area that can be improved in my opinion. Initially, the product is good, but over the years, when data gets accumulated, it becomes a problem unless the old data is kind of archived and is no longer shown on the visualization. It has a feature by using which a user can query for a report through simple questions to a bot. So, if I want to look for the customer share of revenue by geography, I just simply state that in the chatbot. If I wanted it in a pie chart, then you say, "Please show it to me in a pie chart." It comes out well for basic charts. This feature should be improvised more so that people can very quickly get customized reports on the go.

I think that the product would benefit by increasing the range of visuals and graphics readily available, as opposed to using a third party included as part of the product. One way they could do that is for Microsoft to buy some of those third party companies, as they are specialists in visual creation, and they are making money from that. However, I understand that perhaps Microsoft maybe doesn't want to invest in that side of the business. Perhaps it is a financial decision. I would say that if we can have those additional visuals built into the product, it will be great. Alternatively, in the future, there should be an additional tool there that allows you to create your own visuals. That will give users more flexibility. It would also be useful for users with little experience in coding, or other Microsoft tools such as Excel. For example, let's say, you are a random user, and you're just looking at the computer for the first time. You open Power BI, but you know you can go to an Excel file and connect to that Excel file from Power BI. This is very simple and intuitive. So, once you have connected to the data, you can see your fields on the right-hand side, and all you need to do then is to drag and drop the fields you need. You can then select a relevant visual or graphic, and put the information alongside that visual, and then you have the visual and the data created as one item. This is very useful and dynamic. This would also have the other huge advantage, in that it would be a cheaper solution to use. I would like the ability to reuse connections. For example, if I created a connection to an SQL server, and I published my report using that connection, and then shared my report, it would be useful to be able to reuse the existing connection to the SQL server. In this way, I can reuse the existing dataset to create another report. I believe this is already the subject of a support ticket. Say I then wanted to reuse another connection from a different connection, say Oracle, to use in the same report, I could use the connections to those two sources and build the report. If I already have the sources online, and available for me, it would make sense that I could reuse them. At the moment, you can only reuse one data source. You cannot reuse more than one data source, at least if the data sources are online. One workaround would be to access each data source in turn, to obtain the data for the report. However, from October 2020, when using Excel driven reports, it is possible to reuse data flows or reuse the data component, from Power BI in Excel. So Microsoft has already implemented it for Excel, but it is still in the preview features. That will help a lot in financial areas. This could also impact company sales forecasts and sales.

It should work faster and have more common languages so that you can use it more in different types of connections. It doesn't work well on big data. It is too slow. I hope in future it will be a comparable big data tool, such as, for example, Data Lake. It uses the DAX language, which is not used widely. Maybe they should develop this part of the tool to improve access to people who don't know DAX. Sometimes it needs to have a special configuration and hardware to connect to a data warehouse. So, interoperability with other systems could be improved.

The charting tool could be improved. The product could have better analytics capabilities. The initial setup is not straightforward.

I would like to have the capability to schedule exports in different versions. For example, if I want to schedule a subscription and attach an Excel file, we don't have this capability right now. A lot of people work on Excel, so being able to export an Excel file as part of a subscription would be an improvement.

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.

In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization. By comparison, if you look at some other visualization tools, such as Tableau, for instance, the range of designs, or the range of graphics that you can create with Tableau is far greater than what you can do with Power BI. Of course, they do provide an option to download templates and use them, but every time, you have to go to the Power BI store, search for those templates, download them and then use them. I think it's a growing universe of visualizers that they have, so probably, they are also working on the same thing. I believe, in terms of the designs of the visualizations that the tool can create, there is some room for improvement. One more aspect that needs improvement is the formatting of visualizations that we create. Formatting in this context is the colors or the font style or font sizes. The formatting options, I believe, could be made a bit more user-friendly than the way things are right now. It's a little hard to figure out where to go and how to change the formatting of a particular chart or graph. So, I think the formatting options could be made a little bit more user-friendly.

A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution.

They can provide a user-friendly and easy way to use this tool for people who don't know about programming or technical things. It will be quite good if they can improve the look and feel and make it simpler to operate. They can make it easier to create some of the reports. They can also include predefined templates that you can directly use.

If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work. Even though it's supposed to connect seamlessly, it's a bit complicated to make it refresh automatically.

I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports. We want to condense some reports, so they work for all departments, and not have a version for every single department. Also, I would like to have formulas easier to complete and create. Having its own system means something new to learn, although saying that, it's not hard to pick up this information.

Real-time updating needs improvement.

This solution needs integration with SAS and more deep analysis functionality.

We would like to have better SQL support for queries. It means to have a kind of development environment trying to correct bad sintax in SQL query, or having an intellisense like style for code completion being aware of table's fields and having a preview of the query response without needing to run the whole procedure.

I think Power BI needs to focus more on the end-user (i.e. the business user). Solving things in DAX is not a nice approach to a user that has no knowledge of IT nor wants to get it. Some kind of expression wizard, where the user can build a complex expression without any knowledge of DAX, can be a good addition to the product. I see a lot of materials on how to go about doing things in Power BI, but Microsoft can add a "learning path". It would instruct users where to start, then what to learn next, etc, to sort out their learning journey.

Adding paginated reports to this tool could be of great help for users who want to move away from SSRS. I would like to see built-in Git support, incremental loading of data, and a machine learning model for predictive analysis. Custom colouring from the dashboard itself would be helpful.

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.

I haven't experienced any issues with it right now, so I can't really advise on that part. I think because I'm moving more into RPA, I'd definitely like to see integration across the RPA, Power BI, or Tableau platforms because that integration could then make automation and mundane reporting much faster. You'll always require some more complex reports that the analyst could work on, but the very standard sales reports could then be automated very quickly using Power BI and RPA together.

I would like to see the product offer more graphics to impact different audiences. Also, I would like more ease in connecting with the different database drives.

The only real need is a lower tier pricing plan around premium. It’s a big step-up unless you have a very large user base (1000).

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

I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect.

* Sharing reports with non-Power BI users * Use of ISO weeks (European) in relative date options.

It could have more of a hold on big data. Manipulating big data on this solution complicates things. This needs to be improved. Also, we post NGDP data and manipulating this kind of data could be better.

We were having trouble working with the icons.

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.

I've been working with connecting with the right platforms and we need to use other connectors to link with the data. This would be a nice feature for BI to add in the future. For example, we needed another connector in order to make our Wordpress functional. More options for the connectors are really important for us.

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

The reporting part of Microsoft BI is rather limited compared to other reporting tools.

They should add mobile access.

It should be easier to use when there are multiple system sources, and simplify the connections to it.

The look is simple, and could be a little more professional.

The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective.

Perhaps the inclusion of ETL functionality would help.