Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Pros
I have used Tableau and Google Data Studio - among other alternatives. Nothing has seemed to compare to the functionality that Power BI offers. Everything about the program is made with the full spectrum of analysis in mind - from the designer to the data 'wrangler' to the end consumer (ie. others within the enterprise). In this way, Power BI is extremely powerful because it can be used for so many different types of projects; the data-analysis intensive to the more visual 'data-presentation' dashboards.

Cons
Sharing dashboards and reports in Power BI is easy and it has a lot of options for doing so. However, the requirement that all users must have a Pro Account to view dashboards created in Pro is a bit of a hindrance in a global organization where it does not make economical sense for every employee to have a Pro account. It seems like it would be a great addition to allow limited sharing to everyone - even those without a Pro account, as most of my internal team does not have an account.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
The dashboard creation is amazing. Give it a data source, design how you want to see your data, and it shows it to you. I enjoy creating dashboards for our different departments. And once our staff sees the reports and dashboards they get from this, vs how they used to get it in an Excel spreadsheet or an Access Report, they are hooked.

Cons
Overwhelming in the back end. Sometimes you just cannot get the data to display the way you want. There are so many options, features, methods. It gets overwhelming. My biggest gripe is that the back end is not as user friendly as other programs. And, comparing it to something that one of my users would create in Excel, it's difficult for me to get the exact data reported that they want. I have to figure out how to display it, and because the Power Bi is just so robust, it's a little overwhelming in that respect.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It was a no brainer to use PowerBI after trying Tableau and Qlik Sense. It was almost as easy to use as Excel, fit right into our Microsoft stack, and we already have licenses with our Office 365 org.

Cons
Since PowerBI is the new tool around, they are releases features so quickly that it's hard to keep up and understand if the documentation you are looking for is still relevant.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 2/10

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The interface is beautiful and easy to navigate. Once data sources are all connected, it's pretty easy to create a new dashboard/layout if you know how to analyze your own data. Nearly every integration that we needed was already included.

Cons
It's hard to build some more complex reports. If you want to combine two different data sources into one view/metric, you will need some advanced skills.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
1. The wide and deep design and full support for upstream and downstream systems; 2. Excellent query engine with well design data modelling principals (which is better than Tableau); 3. Seamless integration with other Microsoft data integration products such as SSIS, SSRS, SSAS; 4. Excellent knowledgebase community and support; 5. Quick update to the Azure cloud support

Cons
1. UI design is a little bit inconvenient comparing to Tableau. 2. DAX is a bit complicated for power users.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
As is a Microsoft product you will be very familiar with it as it is like you grab like a mix of" Excel and powerpoint " it has very intuitive menus and drag and drop options, there are some license levels, the basic one is like an free trial that will last as long as you want to, So you have a lot of time to play with it and get some experience and have your reports to rock

Cons
The free perpetual trial has some limitations on data connectors so this is understandable as the pay version hast no limit on this. other than that, it is great.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
That it is like a Database that Understands you, and It Automatically, get Ideas to what you maybe need on terms of Reports, it is really great for real.

Cons
You Need a Trainning It is Not a Plug and Use system, you need to have some experience and Trainning to use it. But Thats Ok

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Power BI can be synced with our HRIS system Dayforce. Reports can automatically be updated in the tool. Power BI has all the features to create advanced graphs from the reports. Once the setup is done, it is easy to create regular dashboards.

Cons
The only think I found challenging about this software is that it is not very intuitive. I had to watch videos and attend training to learn the system. There is a learning curve but it was worth it, as it saved time later on.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Having been a user of the full range of Microsoft Office, it was only natural that PowerBI comes to mind when trying to create a live update dashboard. It is extremely easy to use - a plug and play approach comes to mind - and if you had worked with Microsoft Office before, some of the features are very intuitive to use. If the organisation that you are working with uses Microsoft Office, access issues are sorted and it becomes incredibly easy to drive adoption of this dashboard on a day to day basis

Cons
The design of the dashboard created with PowerBI can be found to be lacking at points, compared to some of the other BI softwares. The templates available seem great, but there aren't as many options as I would like when I am creating a specific type of dashboard.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I love how easy it is to make really powerful visualizations. The ease of use in order to basic visualizations is similar to Pivot tables in Excel. If you have a basic understanding of Pivot tables you will be able to open the software and get straight to visualizing. Once you take a deeper dive into the queries and data transformations you will uncover an entirely new world of analysis.

Cons
The software is easy to use for basic functions but when you get into more detail it can be difficult. It is also really hard to share your work with someone that does not pay for the service. Without paying for a Power Bi Pro account it is basically impossible to share the visualizations that you have created. Also, the Arc GIS feature only works within the software. If you try to post a map visualization to a website through an embed it doesn't work.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
For the last 30 years I have been using Excel to work with Tables, Filters, Functions, Formulas, Conditional formatting, Graphs, Pivot tables, Segmentation and VBA to register data and analyze information. That was great. But now, with the huge amount of data, available from many sources and Excel limitations, we needed something more robust and Microsoft launched Power BI. I have been using it for more than a year. Now I don’t use pivot tables and graphs for analysis anymore, I use Power BI visualizations to represent and summarize the data. With it’s impressive tools including geolocalization, I have found more effective ways to convert, transform, represent, analyze and make better decisions and planning with Power BI. It’s ecosystem composed of Power Bi Desktop, Power BI Services (in the cloud) and Power Bi apps, has allowed me to find very innovative and productive ways to monitor the performance of my business and improve communication with my clients

Cons
It is in continuous development. The first week of each month, Microsoft releases a new version of Power Bi, so we have to keep us updated to use the program efficiently. But the pros outweigh the cons.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The visualizations you can make with minimal experience or effort are astounding. Like with many Microsoft products, the sky is the limit and you can definitely get by without formal training. But if you decide to learn more about it, there is very little you can't do visualization-wise. We can even connect our on-prem SQL database with ease.

Cons
While it is easy to get started, really mastering the program can take some time and trial-and-error. It can be frustrating at times to get it to do exactly what you want it to do.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The vast no.of data sources available means it has got all the bases covered. You can connect to SQL Server Database or an analysis service database which is vital for us. Apart from this, the ability to connect to excel and text files means we can make the legacy report more visual and fit it into our dashboard.The best of Power BI is the possibility of collaborating and sharing dashboards and dynamic reports so everyone is singing of the same hymn sheet. The large community of developers means there are constantly new visuals available which can used to awe the customers.

Cons
Power BI could involve steep learning curve for non-tech savvy people. It is difficult t convince managers to use Power BI over traditional pivot tables as it could be daunting to learn. Unless you can play around with DAX queries, Power BI could be limited to the insights it can provide.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It's a great way to link data together from multiple sources and create meaningful reports that would be difficult or impossible to put together in something like Excel. It's also very user friendly once past the initial learning curve

Cons
As with a lot of Microsoft products, direct customer support is lacking and you likely have to rely on other users in forums to help you with any issues/queries

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
I like Power BI because it offers a professional look to presentations. I am able to create and manage dashboards for my various projects. I can upload data from other tools like Excel and use the data to add to or update my dashboards.

Cons
The tool can be a little confusing making it difficult to learn and use.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Having all the necessary information at my fingertips already digested and analyzed for me has made my daily coaching easier. I am able to see a broad amount of information summed up into individual graphs that help me understand the current performance of a person and helps me identify the area i need to focus my coaching in.

Cons
At first when it was implemented it was hard for me to understand the logic of thw tool. It was difficult for me to not focus on the granularity and understand the big picture first and then start diving in.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Rapidly adding features and evolving quickly. Very good tools for visualizing all of our data and presenting it in a way that makes sense.

Cons
It is still a very new software package so there isnt a lot of documentation, and things change quickly.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Data preparation and connectivity with variety of data sources is very easy. The way user interface is created to create graphical representation of data is very good. Even a person with knowledge of Excel and charting can use it. Power BI is designed to handle large data sets which gives seamless data processing even if you have huge data sets. Types of charts and graphs, geographical charts all are amazingly great.

Cons
Being a fan of Power BI can't find as much. But when it comes to teaching to someone else I found that learning curve is long. Another issue I can mention here is frequent updates and installing updates of desktop Power BI. Many times I need to uninstall old version and install new one to keep it updated.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10