Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Pros

Microsoft Power BI has offered me a wide range of visualizations, as it has charts that help present data or information accurately. Additionally, its ease of use has made it easy for me to adopt this tool quickly.

Cons

I have found the subscription to be a bit expensive; however, it does have a free version, which I find impressive.

Pros

Coming from a business background I found Power Bi easy to access, learn and ultimately master. It combines the best of both worlds: easy access and powerful capabilities.

Cons

There’s a few (isolated) things where competitive solutions may have a better capabilities : maps are one of them.

Alternatives Considered

Qlik Sense, Tableau, Alteryx Designer and SAP Analytics Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

Integration with Microsoft office and ease of data integration

Switched From

Qlik Sense and SAP Analytics Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

Cost, simplicity, functionality, Integration with Microsoft office and ease of data integration

Pros

pretty visuals
Power Query
On-premises Data Gateway
responsible Pro Support

Cons

lack of data sources
pretty useless for 3rd Party Web Sources

Pros

1. User-friendly interface: Its intuitive design makes it accessible to users with varying technical expertise.
2. Interactive visualizations: Creates engaging and interactive dashboards and reports.
3. Customizable reports: Enables users to tailor reports to their specific needs.

Cons

Dependency on Microsoft ecosystem: Relies heavily on Microsoft products and services.

Pros

With the right data backing it, the dashboards can be adjusted and augmented quickly, sometimes right in the browser, to glean new insights.

Cons

When manipulating data, the language and structures needed are clunky and proprietary. For example, to display a date in a new format conditionally, a new measure needs to be built, written with functions and syntax specific to Power Bi.

Alternatives Considered

Mode and Tableau

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

Cost of entry was much lower, and with a small team of users made more sense.

Pros

Being able to look at everything I need at a quick glance.

Cons

The numbers shown are highly sensitive to errors and the raw data must be uploaded carefully to ensure there won't be issues with the reports

Pros

It's a strong product, it's easy to get started, and pull in data from Excel and SQL DB's (especially Microsoft SQL server)

Cons

The pricing structure and licensing understanding is a bit tough to get your head around.

Pros

Microsoft Power BI has top-notch tools for analyzing business data which help gain deep insights about our business performance. It has simple visualization boards making it easy to visualize insights in a more easier to understand way. Microsoft Power BI allows customization which allows us to use it to analyze different types of data.

Cons

Nothing has ever gone wrong with Microsoft Power BI so no cons to comment on.

Pros

Power BI combines the abilities of power query and data modelling to create beautiful visualizations. It's easy to use and quite powerful, does not take much reasources/

Cons

DAX is something that is not very easy to learn and its quite essential to make custom measures and columns

Pros

Power BI is very robust! There's no report that we cannot get out of it with the right integrations.
I love that its customizable and integrates with a lot of other programs.

Cons

Steep learning curve especially if you have to create dashboards from scratch.
We also sometimes experience problems with the way data translates across different platforms.

Pros

High end accurate data visualization and its easy and comprehensive reporting to management AI and ML driven data insights for better business decision making in holistic manner. The quick and accurate data insights helps businesses to scale and expand with good operating efficiency.It is available for both web and Mobile data visualization work and is quite comprehensive in providing output.We have recently started with Data Discovery and predictive and embedded analytics for high end data analysis of complex data inputs in easy and flawless way.

Cons

No hassle with the software as its one of the best and keep improving their features time to time. Also, we would only request for slight reduction of sign up and annual renewal costing as its on higher end and bit difficult for small and marginal organizations to continue with long term engagement due to burden of expense

Alternatives Considered

Power BI Connector for Shopify, Power BI Connector for ServiceNow, Power BI Connector for Zendesk and Power BI Connector for Jira

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

Well, the best and most reliable data analysis and visualization software with strong utilities and features in the current market. No competition can beat them as they are versatile and brings the best on the table time to time and stay absolutely relevant in the market and satisfy customers at its best.

Pros

For a tool to be this powerful and complete at this price level really does make it almost impossible to beat. If you have any experience with the Microsoft Power Query platform such as in Excel then Power BI is a natural next step for upping your BI and reporting game. The integration with the Microsoft Office system is seamless and it makes querying external data sources a doddle.

Cons

It can feel a bit clunky and slow if you do not have a high powered client - but the deployed dashboards take this issue away from everything except development. The only other issue I have encountered is in deploying this to a non-Microsoft environment but the tools are available to make it work, it just adds an overhead that you need to be aware of when evaluating the tool. Even with this overhead we have found Power BI to still be preferable to other options native to our non-Microsoft infrastructure and that is really impressive!

Alternatives Considered

Trevor.io, Tableau, Amazon QuickSight and Google Data Studio

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

It is the only option that gives us the complete package and it is astonishingly cheap in comparison to many other options that come closer.

Pros

We used to be on Excel which was pretty good by itself, but Power BI takes it to a whole another level. It has tons of advanced features like better data connectors, embedded reports, better dashboards and worklows, the ability to handle bigger data, and more.

Cons

It would be good to have more dashboard and report templates to work off of, and we've had issues with cloud syncing in the past that caused us a lot of headache.

Pros

The ease of use and wide range of data sources is fantastic, and allows for complete customisation.

Cons

Unless you're willing to pay the premium license, unfortunately you are restricted to a maximum of data refreshing every hour.

Alternatives Considered

BrightGauge

Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

We found PowerBI to offer more attractive features.

Switched From

BrightGauge

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

The fact that PowerBI licensing was included with our Office 365 package was the main reason.

Pros

Microsoft PowerBI is the most easy tool to use, an non IT personnel and not a well trained personnel can easily use this tool. This tool has an interactive Graphical user interface and if you have any problem you can just google it.

Cons

The frequent update sometimes will be much tricky to handle as if you have the newest version of the desktop and the old version of desktop so it may be tricky and the file may not upload to the server.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

As we have the SQL Server Enterprise license and we can deploy the reporting services of the powerbi onto the server so that we opt for Powerbi as it is cost effective rather than other products.

Pros

Capability to Extract, Transform data at the desktop level in a single package. (Others solutions like have Data transformation feature inbuilt)

Cons

On publishing your report online, it gets slightly cumbersome to configure through (like configuring gateways for auto-refresh)

Alternatives Considered

Tableau

Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

Ease of use, be it using it as an alternative for VBA or using it for analysing large amount of data (that excel cannot handle)

Switched From

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

Ease of deployment, cost and eased-up learning curve

Pros

1. Ease of Use: Unlike other BI software’s, Power BI's interface is friendlier especially to MS Excel users. You will not feel overwhelmed rather it will look familiar.
2. Powerful engine: Users who need to tackle very large datasets with thousands of entries know that MS excel gets horribly slow processing such a large file. Power BI is a God sent for these users. Its processing engine is super-fast and the speed is more noticeable when you let it handle such large datasets.
3. Excellent data presentation tools: For regular MS Excel users Power BI is a PowerPivot on steroid but a lot smarter one. Even those users who are not familiar with the complexities of PowerPivot feels less intimidated by its simple and user friendly design.
4. User friendly but powerful DAX language: To write formulas you have to use DAX language in Power BI which in my opinion is a fancy name of just natural language formula writing. However, DAX is super easy to learn and pretty much intuitive but at the same time very much powerful.
5. Schedule refresh option: Power BI has an option to auto update the report at fixed interval of time which is very helpful if you need to prepare and submit reports weekly or monthly.
6. Option to control users of the report: In Power BI you can share your reports with other users and also control how much of the report can they see. If you want you can allow only a part of the report to be seen by some user which is super convenient.

Cons

Honestly, in my opinion, Power BI is by far the best software made by Microsoft. But considering I am a heavy user of MS Excel, it is easier to me. I think learning curve of Power BI for a beginner with no prior skill in MS Excel will be a bit steep. Then again, BI is a complex thing itself. So master any kind of BI software will be tricky by its own merit.

Pros

Near-constant updates and feature additions. It's exceptionally easy to throw together a Power BI Report across a bunch of different data sources and then share it with 1 or 100 people. Tons of connectivity support - if you have data somewhere it can *probably* read it into a model for consumption. The "front end" development is pretty straightforward with the ability to get very fancy with custom visuals - although you need to be a real developer to build those yourself.

Cons

It feels like there are some (currently) missing enterprise features. We still haven't really figured out a holistic way of managing both the enterprise stuff, as well as the "power user" self service stuff that gets published around the org. To Microsoft's credit, there are pretty much monthly releases that add ne functionality and features. Some things I'd like to see include more API support and additional sources like Box, perhaps.

Pros

PowerBI enables users to connect to a wide range of data sources and generate visually beautiful visuals that bring data to life and make it easier to comprehend. The programme is also extremely customisable, allowing customers to design dashboards and reports that are tailored to their individual requirements. PowerBI's mobile capability and connection with Microsoft products like as Excel make it an excellent alternative for enterprises that require on-the-go data access and interaction. Furthermore, PowerBI's AI and machine learning features enable users to quickly uncover insights and trends in their data, making it a useful tool for businesses of all sizes.

Cons

PowerBI has a steep learning curve, making it difficult for new users to rapidly become acquainted with the product. For some users, particularly those new to business intelligence and data analysis, this might be a barrier to entrance. Because PowerBI lacks a powerful data preparation tool, users may find it difficult to clean, process, and prepare their data for analysis. This might be a disadvantage for those that require more complex data preparation operations.

Pros

below are a few pros
• Sharing dashboard in a group
a. Sharing can be done once you have the Pro version of Power BI. Dashboard can be shared with the respective department members or your own team members.
b. Since you have prepared the dashboard you will be the owner and you can decide whether you want to give the other members only viewing rights or editing rights as well.
c. With this feature reports will always be on the cloud server and can be viewed as and when required
d. Reports can be downloaded as and when required.
• Viewing dashboard in Mobile/ tab and preparing phone layout
a. Once a dashboard has been prepared and saved, the same can be accessed on Power BI App with the same login.
b. Since the screen is small compared to laptop, all the dashboard elements can be redesigned to suit the phone screen.
c. The other features remain the same and the dashboard is interactive on the phone as well however it cannot be edited on phone.
• Export dashboard to PowerPoint, PDF
a. This is one of the most important features of Power BI. Reports or dashboards prepared can be exported on PowerPoint or PDF with a click of a button.
b. Hence Management reports and department reports can be automated on Power BI and once you refresh the data, the report will be ready to share.
c. One problem is that few images which are not compatible with PowerPoint don’t show post downloading.
• Narratives for dashboard
a. This is one of the recent features offered by Power BI. With the help of narratives you can get the insight of the dashboard in a story form.
b. Narrative uses its intelligence to study the data and give output in pointers, paragraphs etc which can be customised.
• Importing visuals to suit your need
a. Apart from the general visualizations available in Power BI, there are additional visualizations released by Power BI from time to time. These visualizations enhance the visual appearance as well as the adds to further analytics in different ways.
b. Visualizations which have downloaded and used in the dashboard are Infographic designer, Narratives for Business Intelligence, KPI Column chart, and Timeline.
• Edit interactions in dashboard
a. It is important to understand the interactions and groupings in power BI since with the help of these you can control which graphs you want to automatically change by clicking on the other.
b. With the help of grouping you can define groups and sub group which can be viewed together as a group if required.
• KPI Column Chart
a. This is a recent custom visual developed by Power BI. With the help of this visual you can put the KPI target against the actual on a monthly basis.
b. Forecasted revenue/ cost can also be put in this visual which will be shown in different colour.
c. Individual monthly targets can also be put which can be interchanged by putting variance.
d. Data can also been viewed in a table form along with graphical.

Cons

• One of the important features of exporting report in PowerPoint does not allow custom visual to be exported. Hence if there are custom visuals in your report then the same will show error once exported.
• Arranging dashboard is a bit tedious and takes a lot of time
• To share reports, we need to publish to MS Cloud. We cannot share report from Power BI Desktop
• For sharing a report even members to who report needs to be shared have to get Power BI Pro. Since the department to whom report is shared is just to view giving them a Pro license might not be useful.

Pros

The features and ease of creating visualizations are top notch. Also integration with all other Microsoft products as well as pre-built connectors to many of the most popular software is hard to beat.

Cons

There are many features not available unless you pay for expensive premium capacity.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau

Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

We needed more advanced analytic solution.

Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

Features, pricing, community support.

Pros

It is so easy to use once you understand the premise of it. We have super users that create functional dashboards so that anyone can go in and get real-time updates without having to rewrite queries. We use this for our daily sales reporting and it lets you drill down and really understand the numbers.

Cons

It was a little intimidating to use at the start as there is so much functionality. Once you get the hang of it, it makes perfect sense. Just take your time to learn and focus on one aspect at a time and it will all make perfect sense.

Pros

Power BI simplifies the process of combining different types of data sources to create a single data model. There are also many built-in Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) functions that help reduce the time required to prepare data. Creating reports and dashboards is as easy as drag and drop. The Power BI User Groups are strong and plentiful, so you can always read through blogs to get answers to questions that you may have. The Power BI Desktop application is used to perform ETL, create reports and is free. The reports are published to the Power BI cloud service for sharing, which is also free with limited capabilities. For more capabilities, such as security groups and scheduled data refreshing, there is a subscription fee. Microsoft will be releasing an on-premise solution for sharing Power BI content via an update to SQL Server 2016 hopefully within the next few months.

Cons

It's not always easy to speak directly with a MS Power BI expert, so that is a bummer. Also, you have to sign up to the Power BI service using an email address in order to share and view Power BI reports and dashboards, but Microsoft doesn't yet support personal (.cox, .gmail, et.) or government (.gov, .mil, etc.) email addresses which is a real bummer.

Pros

Power BI is great especially with data analytics and visualization. This is usually very informative especially to the senior management when creating dashboard and data summaries. For example, Its specifically important in monitoring budget and expenditure data. The most important advantage of Power Bi is how it can easily summarize, transform and visualize data through summaries and dash board reports. In addition Power BI delivers real-time reports especially when linked with production of the data. It both accessible on computer and mobile. It is also very easy to integrate with excel and other data storing softwares.

Cons

It is somehow technical especially when writing DAX scripts and when linking several tables for relationships. Since its mainly used for Dashboards and visualizations, the presentations can be crowded considering a lot of information is supposed to be squeezed on one page. Power BI also requires complex formulas in DAX which sometimes can give wrong results from expected. It also takes a lot of time to prepare data and create visuals.

Pros

I love everything about PowerBI! I like to think of it as a revamped version of MS Excel but with features that exceed all expectations. PowerBI lets you create data models, use DAX to manipulate and summarise and finally display these summaries in fancy (yet easy to understand) visualisations. The best feature might however be the ability to share and collaborate on dashboards. PowerBI can take data from almost all possible sources - text, excel, SQL databases etc etc and integrate it all together to form dashboards that can be shared online in the form of webpages as well as workspaces.

Cons

There is absolutely nothing to dislike about PowerBI. The free version of PowerBI is a great learning tool and lets you accomplish almost all your reporting tasks while the paid version lets you automate all your reporting.