What are Microsoft Power BI users saying about the software?

A great and friendly BI tool... if you use the Microsoft suite

Pros

Doing basic stuff is really easy, the connectors it has let you pull data very easily. As long as you don't need to do a lot of transformations, most beginner users will be able to generate a report without much hassle. For advanced Excel users, DAX will feel like a logical next step and they should be able to do stuff without having to suffer a lot in the process.

Cons

It is very memory intensive. This is to be expected as it consumes data from multiple sources, but at times it feels a bit sloppy when the PC starts crashing a lot of applications. Seems to be closely tied with Edge, which will always crash at the same time as Power BI.

Great Tool for Data Visualization

Pros

I've been using Power BI for the last ~5 years. It is a great reporting that allows the user to interact with the report and drill in and out of data to get the answers they seek. Once the report is set-up is very easy to refresh for ongoing reporting. The dashboards provide an option to centralize all of the reports. It is a great too, I highly recommend this

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve to learning Power BI, Power Query and Dax.

Ugly numbers to pretty pictures

Management loves it, I love developing with it but getting certain others to adopt it can be a bit of a challenge.

Pros

As the title says, it turns ugly numbers into pretty pictures. It is easy enough for a non-developer to use and turn a mess of data into an intelligent and understandable story.

Cons

It literally changes every three months. You just get used to it and with the next update a lot has changed. I don't really see this as a con though because this is more like a Christmas present waiting to see what they will have made better this go around.

Reporting with Power BI

I have been working with this tool for a couple of years now, daily. It is great for the reporting, and we have created amazing reports for Management and the team in general. Very easy to explain metrics, with the reports created.

Pros

It's free version is very powerful. We can create any report we need, has a lot of data sources and even can create subscription for sending the reports automatically.

Cons

So far, the only issue I have found is when there are relation on different conditons for the same visual. It can separate and is hard to achive the result.

Moderate cost for a moderate experience for medium sized enterprises

So so. The dashboards and reports are limited in visual design, so they all look the same and quite ugly. Because of the difficulty sharing reports/dashboards to external individuals and the lack of a Google sheets connector I couldn't use PowerBI for most of the solutions we need, but will use it for some since it integrates well with the rest of the MS office ecosystem.

Pros

The thing that most sets PowerBI apart from comparable business intelligence solutions is the lower cost of multi-user deployment within an organization. PowerBI is part of a Microsoft Office 365 subscription package for businesses and you only need to pay an additional 15USD/month for each additional admin/analyst account you add. This is a stark contrast to similar solutions like Tableau, which charge a monthly fee for each user and has a minimum user count that equates to roughly a 15,000USD/year license cost as minimum. If your organisation is already invested in the Microsoft Office ecosystem this could be the ideal solution for you if you need to keep costs down.

Cons

It can't connect to google sheets and every other business intelligence platform can. This can be really limiting if your business uses a variety of SaaS solutions since many offer the simplest data integration options via Google sheets. PowerBI also has real issues with external sharing of dashboards/reports. You only have the option of publishing internally (visible to your organization's users) or publishing publically (indexed in search engines). There is no option of sharing dashboards and reports to individuals outside your organization via a login, like what is done with Google Data Studio. PowerBI also has a steep learning curve and uses 3 coding languages (DAX, M, and SQL). It's more complicated than it needs to be but it's relational database modeling has proven a good one and competitors have copied PowerBI's approach in recent years (Tableau).

A pretty reporting tool for some (!) Microsoft Products, but pretty much useless outside of the Microsoft Landscape

In light of the hype around this "Tableau destroyer" in recent months, I want to highlight some fundamental flaws in data connectivity and reports maintenance of Power BI, which the Product Team so far has turned down as "not in scope". In practice, though, this renders Power BI pretty useless for getting dara from any 3rd party products, in the cloud in particular. This review reflects Power BI as of mid March 2017. I have gathered my knowledge from testing, community interaction and a dozen tickets with Power BI Pro Support. The focus lies on getting data via Web Services, much aligned with Microsoft’s «Cloud First» Strategy. 1) Power BI Online is in the cloud, but does not allow for HTTP calls. Power BI Desktop allows for HTTP calls, but only with static authentication parameters. First of all, a distinction needs to be made between Power BI Online and Power BI Desktop. While Power BI Online is the "master" that ultimately allows you to share and publish your reports, user experience in design is diminished by HTML limitations (you may know from Word or Excel Online) and more importantly, data connectivity (Get Data) is limited to SQL Servers on Azure and about 20 to 30 plugins from 3rd party solutions at present. Take note that on Power BI Online, you cannot select or manage your Gateways, either. This brings the attention to the Power BI Desktop client. Updated every one to two months, the Desktop client brings data connectors necessary to connect to a larger number of data sources. With the Web connector, HTTP calls been configured, although with just static headers and parameters and Basic and Windows authentication only. Importantly, though, Power BI Desktop includes Microsoft Power Query, which you may know from Excel 2016 already. With M Scripts, you can script and customise in many ways and most interestingly, convert it into table form quickly. This is where Power Query shines. However, Power Query does not seem to call on methods for nonces and timestamps required in token based authentication (OAuth for example). (Should this be incorrect, please please let me know. I have been browsing the fora and nagging Support too long already.) What’s really amusing here is that Microsoft Azure uses OAuth 2.0 themselves. So, you cannot run any reporting on Microsoft’s Azure AD or Resource Manager database for example, a notorious blackbox. Back to Powershell. (Power BI does not accept Powershell feeds.) In short, while Power BI Online does not allow to get any data out of the web (except for those 20 to 30 plugins, mostly Microsoft Products), Power BI Desktop allows for Web calls, but only with static parameters and thus, basically with your user credentials. That’s a big limitation in Data Connectivity. 2) With Power BI Online being the master, the HTTP calls cannot be scheduled or refreshed in the cloud. Now that you have configured your HTTP call (with risky user credentials), you want to publish your report and have it refreshed on a scheduled basis, say every day. Tough luck. While you can publish your Report to Power BI Online and subsequently a broader audience, it’s a static image of your Desktop data. You cannot schedule a data refresh in Power BI Online (because there is no Web feature anyway) and you cannot even refresh the data manually as this requires republishing the Report anew. You risk your management looking at outdated data whenever you forgot to republish your report and sneak the new URL into your dashboards and iframes. 3) The On-Premises Data Gateway is pretty useless for Web Services. Yes, there is the On-Premises Data Gateway. Yes, you can configure Web Services in the gateway, although it’s pretty ironic to route web calls via on-premises infrastructure. But did you ever try it? That is, you cannot specify any HTTP headers fort he calls at all, lest writing a Power Query script. And thus, we are back at authentication via Basic and Windows only and writing REST scripts in the data source for every single HTTP call because with no Headers and Body, all parameters need to be coded in the URI. Will you do that? At the end of the day, Power BI is Microsoft's long overdue acknowledgement that Excel and some Dynamics Reports do not cut it for Reporting purposes. Indeed, for reporting on SQL Server, Dynamics 365 (if you want to afford it), and Excel and Access databases stored in your OneDrive, Microsoft Power BI does a neat job. However, as soon as you want to integrate with 3rd party systems or via web services in particular, Power BI presents so many limitations in authentication, Header and Body configuration, scripting, and scheduling that you need to configure an entire SQL Server environment (on Azure or On-Premises via feature poor Gateway) and write a SQL CRL interface or buy Azure Data Factory to get that data in. For some pretty reports, do you really want to buy and customise all that BI infrastructure on Azure? My advice to Microsoft: Work on Data Connectivity, especially in Power BI Online, rather than more visuals for those limited data sources. Your Microsoft clients will consider Power BI a given for the utter lack of reporting in Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics 365 (yes, pushing it there). My advice to Users: If the connectors are not listed, look somewhere else. (And make sure it’s your use case that is listed. Power BI announced an Azure AD connector, but rather than reporting on Users, Groups, or Enterprise Apps, you can only see on a nice map where the last logins happened.) Is it a Tableau destroyer? No. It’s a long overdue acknowledgement for necessary reporting with the potential of being a solid Business Intelligence solution ONCE focus comes to lie more on data.

Pros

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

Cons

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

All in one handy and swift tool

One of the main features that helped me to address my problem is that all the files I have analyzed so far, I can find them in one software in the form of different dashboards and present them anywhere required. Also, two show the interdependency of multiple visualizations, this tool has been a savior.

Pros

The best part about this software is that I can publish all the results after the data analysis and access it anywhere as long as the internet is working. I can even download the data set which I would have cleaned to create my visualizations.

Cons

I am still exploring it and have not found any significant limitations yet.

Best Self Service BI Solution to start with

Dashboard, Reports, Data extraction/Transformations from websites, PDF's and other sources, transformations and also as an alternative to vba)

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)

Powerfully Versatile BI Tool

Overall I am very happy with the POwer BI as a BI tool. Although it's cloud version is pretty costly, for large organizations it's totally worth it.

Pros

Power BI is a very feature rich tool. It provides large selection of data connectors. Its self service ability is unmatched. Power BI desktop version combined with their cloud version gives you unmatched flexibility to create BI reports and distribute within large number of teams/users. Creating visulaizations is pretty intuitive and thanks to it's inbuilt visual store you have lot of options for the visual elements to choose from.

Cons

one of the few points I find annoying is that the 'look and feel' is not that intuiive and take a lot of efforts to change look and feel settings of the elements and the dashboard. Becomes quite cumbersome quickly if you have lot of visuals and client asks for frequent changes to the look and feel of the dashbaord.

Power BI - One of the best Data Visualization tool

Overall experience has been amazing. Even after having multiple data sources, we were able to connect with all of them and create amazing insightful dashboards.

Pros

A lot of insightful charts with great visual experience can be created with ease.

Cons

Nothing as such, I have been mostly happy with the overall product

Microsoft Power BI is the game-changer to effective data analysis and BI.

Data discovery. Ease to explore and understand business data.

Pros

It's a reliable tool that let's me to analyze a s visualize big data. With this tool it's possible to make data-driven decisions.

Cons

I haven't encountered any constraints with Microsoft Power BI.

Great Product

Overal power BI has significantly improved our repeating process and allowed speed to insights from data within our org

Pros

Power BI is a dynamic reporting tool that serves the needs of many for budget reports with high to detailed data

Cons

The data transformation steps and learning Dax code intimates people in our org which prevents adoption. Would be great to have low code no code solutions

Power BI for daily use

Overall I’ve been very happy with Power BI and it’s ease-of-use. The real time data and multiple applications that interface with the programs is critical to our success as a company. It’s equally nice to be able to export information for quick presentations.

Pros

I enjoy the ease of use from my dashboard. The applications I use the most I keep front and center so I can open daily. The program itself is very self-explanatory and does not require much experience to get started.

Cons

It is difficult to use from my cell phone. The mobile application does not have the ease of use at the desktop application does.

Power Bi

Pros

Tiene muchas más funciones que Excel y es más fácil de realizar hipótesis y análisis

Cons

Es lento y la administración de datos es algo compleja

Power BI

Pros

All reports are in one screen. Clear picture of analyzing data. Graphs and table make easy to understand and represent the reports to clients

Cons

Sometimes it doesn’t support too many data and it freezes up excel when importing report from excel to BI.

The best option to start your data-driven journey

Despite the purchase journey and given the resources it deliver, I can say it's a great experience. You can definitely improve the data-driven skills of your organization with an affordable investment.

Pros

The tool is very cheap given the visualisation resources and data integration it gives to developers and users. You can deploy and release great visuals of your data fast and easy, as well as to develop in-depth visuals integrating with Python or R.

Cons

In my experience - a small business - I struggled a bit in the purchase journey. The website is not clear regarding pricing policies, so I had to access a third party channel to purchase a Power BI Pro license.

Best Reporting & Visualization Tool

Pros

I liked the connectivity which it provides through gateways, we can connect and create visuals easily with the power bi. Sharing with multiple people is also great.

Cons

It comes with the cost when we try to use the advance sharing , visualization creation features etc.

Must have if the excel is not enough for you

Very good tool if you want all of your data in one place visualized in one dashboard.

Pros

Many built in connectors for popular services so the download of the data is in most cases very easy. Data transformation/modification is easy to use thanks to the UI so most of the data transformation can be done without the coding in M language. Data visualization offers many charts/tables and also the option of importing 3rd party solutions (from which many are free of charge) Option to upload the report in Power BI web service so the report can be refreshed automatically and can be reached even by the mobile app Power BI.

Cons

For detailed reports it needs to be used M language or DAX formulas which takes time to learn.

Microsoft Power BI - Tool for reports

Pros

Microsoft Power BI is one of the greatest tool for reporting & data visualization. It has so many features which makes our work faster. It can do hours of tasks in minutes. It has made life easier during MEC.

Cons

Every tool has some area of improvement. With power BI it takes more time with non Microsoft applications.

One of the best data visualization services available in the market

MS Power BI allows you to make amazing interactive dashboards for your business or study purposes and so much more.

Pros

Power BI has a free desktop application, so everyone can use it. It als has dozens of charts that you cannot find in Excel. You can connect it with various other applications to get and analyze your data.

Cons

Some features are limited for free versions. Table relationships do not work properly sometimes.

Report and Dashboard Tool

Pros

Clean way to show your data, using graphic controls, tables, etc., customizing your data to show, from a lot of datasources, like databases, web resources and local files.

Cons

Scheduled data refresh is limited to 8 different hours

Power BI ; Affordable Data Visualization Tool

It is an affordable software that enables us to consolidate our data, generate reports while keeping track of all the key performance indicators.

Pros

It is a good data analytics and visualization software and its ability to import data from multiples sources is a great feature. What I like about Power BI is that from the dashboard, we are able to get a great overview of the organization including the market analysis, the status of our current deals, track the performance of each team member, view the gross income and company financials. The ability to filter to the specific metric we are interested in is an amazing feature. It enables us to review our marketing expenses and also see how each team member's activities contribute to the bottom line. It is also easy to forecast cash inflows and outflows. Power BI makes it possible to customize the visualizations and it also has the option to upload and view data from Excel. Frequent upgrades from Microsoft keep Power BI functioning well. It has both freemium and premium versions. You can try it out and have a feel of the software before you choose to purchase it.

Cons

It can be a bit complex due to the fact that it is a collection of various tools and you have to learn what each component does and how it relates to the rest of the structure. Working with large data sets causes lags especially when on the free version. The free version has very limited features and doesn't give you the true performance capability of the software. This can however be solved by upgrading to Pro or Premium. The user interface is a bit crowded with too many icons which hinders a clear view of the dashboard.

Enterprise Analytics - with some gotchas

We're using this as our enterprise analytics platform to supplement paginated reports in SSRS/PBIRS. Aside from the wrinkles mentioned, it's been a solid performer. If there was a little more "admin" capabilities around subscriptions and permissions, it'd be a home run.

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.

Simple and highly customizable

1. Dax query is highly reliable when comes to slice and dice the granular level data based on time trend. 2. Embedded report and dashboard in any kind of business applications easily and it becomes part of it.

Pros

1. Free desktop tool for development(Power BI Desktop) and simple installation process. 2. Almost, we can connect many source to fetch the data. Ex csv,web,excel,sql,odbc etc.., 3. Specialized ETL(Extract,transform,load) to clean the raw unstructured data into structured data with help of Power Query. 4. Powerful DAX query to customized measure and calculated column to get desirable business metrics and KPIs. 5. Top standard visuals, Custom visuals(visual market) and also we can create our own visuals using reactjs. 6. Publish in cloud(azure) to view report anywhere in the world with help Power BI service. 7. High availability and low latency to view report and dashboard with help of xVelocity engine. 8. Anyone can easily create basic charts with structured data.

Cons

1. Power BI Desktop consumes a huge amount of resource in system. 2. Service monitoring increases for larger report consumers. 3. While dealing with an enormous volume of data, constant optimization takes place.

The visualization and analytics product that is constantly evolving - for the better

With Power BI we identify patterns, issues and opportunities in sales, marketing, operations, supply chain, people management and finance data. The ways to look at the data and the drilling capabilities make this a wonderful tool

Pros

1. Improves with new releases every two weeks 2. Powerful insight management 3. Integration with MS products 4. Online forums and learning zones

Cons

1. Not as intuitive as packaged applications, but getting there 2. Not a good IDE for Python / R 3. Connectors to social media need to be improved