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December 30, 2020
MSBI is an excellent suite that is being currently used by my organization. We are using it across the various departments and also across whole organizations. It has so far proved to be one of the best data mining and business intelligence tools. Most of the information can be extracted at your fingertips. Historical trend analysis has been far easier than before. It mostly provides requisite data, their trend, and relevant interdependency on an interactive dashboard.
- Provides interactive dashboard.
- Provides relevant data (summarized) and their cross reference dependencies.
- Data analysis at your finger tips
- Great data gathering tool
- It often crashes the system; I wonder if it's a large data issue or an in-house system issue. Better speed/refresh rate.
- Most control and browsing around is a bit unintuitive. Might improve to be more user friendly.
- Easy data migration to and from MSBI to existing systems.
April 22, 2020
We use Microsoft PowerBI to analyze data from our CRM and invoicing system (Connectwise with a SQL backend). Connectwise has a large number of built-in reports and a custom report writer but it was falling short of our needs. We engaged an outside consultant to create a large set of reports and views using PowerBI. Our managment teams uses it weekly. The ability to view them online without any special software of "running" of reports make it so much easier to use than other platforms we've used.
- Easy to access the data and views you have created
- Simple filtering of data views
- Ability to view live or near live data
- It runs in a browser and some browsers work better than others
- Sometimes you start getting wacky results and you have to refresh the page to reset the views
March 14, 2020
We have deployed the Microsoft BI tool company-wide now. It is very simple to use and better than other tools available. You can easily create and share dashboards. It helps an organization in multiple ways by creating very interactive dashboards, and its possible to present complex data in a more presentable way.
- Creating amazing dashboards
- You can create a variety of reports and can be scheduled automatically.
- You can integrate big data in Microsoft BI.
- It gets hanged while developing complex report which hampers productivity
- You require pro version to do most of the task
April 25, 2020
We currently use Microsoft BI to power the dashboard and analytics behind our performance management platform. Previously, this was done manually by each division in their own silo, making it difficult for upper management to translate disparate information from different sources into useful business decisions. With the help of Microsoft BI, we were able to warehouse data from a variety of sources across different business units into a centralized location and extract powerful reports and dashboards to assist with strategic decision making.
- Powerful analytical and trending tools.
- Compatibility with different data sources (including non-Microsoft).
- Attractive dashboard visuals.
- Seamless integration into a Microsoft ecosystem.
- Pricing is not as competitive as alternatives.
- Online / Cloud versions are lacking in features.
- Desktop (free) version has limited features.
February 14, 2020
Microsoft BI is extensively used in my organization for making executive-level dashboards that draw on information from a number of sources to produce something that is precise and to the point. The fact that it is a living dashboard that can be updated in real-time is great. I also use Microsoft BI for a number of analyses as I find it easier to use than Excel.
- Data Analysis
- Data Modeling
- Technical support
- Speed is slow due to the cumbersome options
February 11, 2020
We use Microsoft BI to display and analyze admissions-related data in a user-friendly format. It is currently only being used by one department although we are exploring expanding this to other areas of our institution. The main problem this software addresses is the ability to analyze and display data in a meaningful way.
- The platform is fairly easy to use when compared to other data analytics solutions.
- Collaborating with other colleagues on data work is extremely simple.
- If your organization is not an Office365 organization, it becomes challenging to share/collaborate on data projects without creating new accounts and new subscriptions.
- Limited ability to change the options in your visuals.
Microsoft BI is being used for report generation to monitor ongoing technology projects and business initiatives. We have two users who generate reports but many consumers.
- Reporting
- Data analysis
- Intuitive use
January 28, 2020
We have a BI team that manages the applications and the resources and connects the multitude of data sources into its data warehouse for analytics and reporting. We create multiple dashboards for different departments as they need. One business need we use it for is wait times in clinics. We can determine what days of the year are the busiest to ensure we don't incur any staffing issues and then use the data to promote wait times on market billboards externally for potential patients.
- Able to connect to multiple data sources.
- Canned reports are great and custom reports are better.
- Can be costly to implement. Not cost effective for SMB. No mid-market tier pricing.
- Knowledge in programming a plus.
Microsoft BI has transformed the reporting process at JCT. It is being used across the whole organization due to ease of access to data and drilldowns. The company has created tools to give visibility of detailed level data to folks working at corporate as well as in the field.
- Ability to drill down.
- Automated refresh of data.
- Ability to visualize data on charts and maps.
- Need access to detailed map visuals.
- Use Python or R scripts.
- Need ability to input data.
September 05, 2019
We implement Microsoft BI solutions to clients across North America. Clients are constantly coming to us having issues gathering their data from disparate sources in order to make meaningful decisions with their information. Depending on the client and their licensing agreements, we will then evaluate options, and the Microsoft BI stack tends to be a leader of the pack to solve many client data issues.
- Great traditional ETL data gathering tools.
- Large technical user community.
- Excellent data visualization tools.
- The race to perfect gathering of Non-Traditional datasets is on-going; with Microsoft arguably not the leader of the pack in this category.
- Licensing options for PowerBI visualizations may be a factor. I.e. if you need to implement B2C PowerBI visualizations, the cost is considerably high especially for startups.
- Some clients are still resistant putting their data on the cloud, which restricts lots of functionality to Power BI.
February 17, 2019
Microsoft BI is used across many departments within the organization. Due to the availability of other software tools, Microsoft BI is only used in certain parts of the business. Microsoft Power BI is used for automated data reporting and interactive visualizations. The software is also used for some analytics processes.
- As with most every other Microsoft product, Microsoft BI makes setting up and analyzing data about as easy as it gets.
- Creating graphics is very easy.
- Connecting to multiple data sources works just fine.
- Simple reporting and integration with other Microsoft products is great.
- Microsoft BI is not top of the for advanced analysis and modeling.
- Reshaping and restructuring data is doable, but not super simple.
- Customizing visualizations is sometimes difficult to impossible.
January 23, 2019
We use Microsoft BI primarily just within our lab group and department due to its very specific and powerful data visualization capabilities. While it is applicable to almost any work involving data analytics, it might seem like overkill for some people. We have found that it does an excellent job in preparing and displaying the more complex data that we deal with.
- Data display in graphs and tables
- Compatibility with other Microsoft products
- User-friendly and informative reporting
- Data compatibility with non-Microsoft products
- Data sourcing functionality is poor
- Offline server functionality impedes out of country work
March 19, 2019
Microsoft BI is used by a few data teams in my organisation in conjunction with other business intelligence tools. One of the primary reasons for using Microsoft BI is its simplicity, user friendliness, and good palate of visualisation options. Unlike most other standard BI tools in the market, Microsoft BI does provide a good array of graphical representations - thereby making it a good choice for reporting purposes.
- Good range of visualisation features.
- Very easy to setup and get onboard.
- Handles data integration from multiple sources decently well.
- Not advisable to use Microsoft BI as a standalone primary tool for data management.
- The process of moulding or repurposing data is not easy.
- Integrating Microsoft BI with non-Microsoft tools is a huge pain.
We have been using a number of Microsoft products in our company and decided to go with the Microsoft BI platform due to its easy integration with Microsoft Office suite. We wanted to incorporate a business intelligence tool into our enterprise to get a full 360 view of our mission-critical data. Microsoft BI helped fill that role.
- Report generation from our back end data warehouse has become way more streamlined using this tool.
- By using the Power Pivot and Power View it has enabled us to access and mash up data from a variety of sources. Plus it can easily be shared with other users through simple Office applications.
- The implementation time for Microsoft BI can be fairly lengthy. It's definitely longer than some of the other products we evaluated.
- The upfront investment in terms of capital and time is fairly large with this tool. It requires a compliant Microsoft SQL server in the back end to leverage most of its functionality.
January 23, 2019
We use it in various pockets across our organization. We use trend analytics, reports, and interactive dashboards all the time, but the real workhorse is the Marketing cost data aggregation toolkit. We also connect PowerBI with SQL integrated OLAP databases, enabling us to leverage data housed within SAP with extracted data to create visual dashboards to track various KPI metrics on a daily basis.
- Microsoft BI allows us to combine data from multiple sources, build data models, create visualizations, and share the results.
- Cloud Interactive charts in a cloud that can be easily shared
- Connectors to popular data sources, allowing us to integrate with almost any system
- More authentication methods to allow power users to connect directly to Web APIs.
- It can be quite difficult to setup without guided assistance from experienced users
- Limits on dataset size.
January 23, 2019
My company deals with a lot of data, and it is extremely important that we have an efficient, easy to use program with visually appealing outputs. Microsoft BI can do it all. We collect a lot of data in the field and have to look at trends in that data through time. After our own analysis, that all has to be presented to our clients who generally need self-explanatory figures. Microsoft BI has been a great program for us.
- It is a very user-friendly interface! Doesn't take long to learn and be able to make some great graphs.
- The accessibility and sharing capabilities are beyond wonderful-- it has made it easy to share between employees before sending out final reports and it is easy to share with clients who need something to look at before the full report is finished.
- There are a lot of options for data display and they can be as complex or simple as you want and still look amazing.
- They have a great online resource for help and tutorials. If you don't catch on quickly on your own, it is quite easy to do some reading online and teach yourself.
- The Microsoft BI app can be finicky at times and it would be great for that to be more streamlined. We sometimes require data to be shown during fieldwork, and a functional app makes a big difference.
- The program doesn't always remember my settings. This may just be a glitch with the program on my computer, but it would be a huge timesaver if I didn't have to reset my preferences every week.
Several people that I know use Microsoft PowerBI. It is mainly used for reporting for several teams, then I am able to access those reports for my own use. When I use it I import Excel sheets in, and use PowerBI to make them more visually appealing and easier to filter. It works like a charm. I have not seen any issues other than the occasional drag with data sets.
- Makes reports more visually appealing
- Very good variety of formats for charting information
- Good cloud connectivity (most of the time)
- Need to be proficient with Excel before diving into PowerBI
- Only available with a monthly subscription
- Steep learning curve for many users (including me)
January 16, 2019
Data modeling, visualization, and analytics.
Microsoft BI is currently only used for dashboarding (descriptive analytics), where data relationship is simple, while most of the predictive analytics are done in other tools.
Microsoft BI is currently only used for dashboarding (descriptive analytics), where data relationship is simple, while most of the predictive analytics are done in other tools.
- Easy integration with other Microsoft products.
- Great integration with R/Python.
- Map visualization limit on data count
- Inability to model data relationship with multiple non unique keys
January 09, 2019
Microsoft BI is being used by specific departments, providing analysis of different types of data, how resources are being used and even showing how well Support Departments are doing, responding to tickets that are eventually fed to Microsoft BI. There are many problems being addressed, including allowing several types of connections to our data.
- Allow many types of connections to our data
- Makes impressive graphics from the data collected
- Provides interactive resources and dashboards
- Should have support for other operating systems
- Prices could be a bit better for organizations with more users
We currently have limited use of Power BI within our IT and accounting departments for relaying reporting information. We use Power BI to create an efficient interface for our executive team to gain access to vital sales information from our restaurants in a concise, detailed manner as opposed to our traditional Excel spreadsheets. IT uses Power BI to track purchasing as well as within our help desk department.
- Great for translating numbers in graphics that are easy to understand and manipulate for anyone with no technical expertise
- Additional training and tutorials that exist with Power BI as users are working with it would be beneficial.
October 19, 2018
Microsoft BI is a great tool to allow for the visualization and communication of data to my whole team. Microsoft BI is being used in conjunction with many operational KPI's to better drive action and responses to improve or address issues that arise. The main problem solved by BI is the ability to gather and bring together information from multiple sources and unify this data.
- Bringing data together from multiple sources
- Allows for graphical representation of data to improve communication up and down the management chain.
- Tracking of data for use in the future
- Could be more user friendly
- Improve the learning curve for new users
- Allow for better integration with mobile app.
June 19, 2018
It is currently being used at a program level by project controls to provide project performance data to the project team. Engagement with Power BI allows the different stakeholders for the project to engage with performance data providing them the opportunity to be more responsive to issues and opportunities. It keeps everyone that is a part of the project on course and helps drive collaboration with the team members.
- The layout of Power BI is very intuitive. Someone that is familiar with Excel and working with Charts and Graphs in that environment will find the learning curve a rather short one to start using Power BI.
- I like the way Power BI fits an assortment of users and how the functionality that you engage is replicated in Excel, that being Power Query and Power Pivot. So what you learn in one tool can be readily applied towards the other which allows you to more effectively apply your training.
- I appreciate how Microsoft is working to develop tools that go a long ways to empowering the end user. Prior to Power BI I would have had to consult with a "BI" professional to develop a dashboard. With Power BI I don't have to consult with anyone, I can work to put together the dash board I want and using a tool set that is really robust and allows me to engage an enormous amount of data. It's provides a great deal of flexibility and the types of data I can connect to.
- Updates...Microsoft is working diligently to keep Power BI current with monthly updates. They do a really good job of listening to the end user, if there is functionality not currently present just give them a month or so.
- Just to be clear, even though it's easy to get going right out of the gate with Power BI it provides plenty of opportunities to create some really sophisticated reporting solutions. With DAX in Power Pivot and M language in Power Query, you are provided with plenty of head room to do some really amazing things in Power BI.
- Training...there are resources across the web for learning and growing your skills and Power BI. And what's even better is the majority of those resources are free.
- Data engagement, when presenting the data to the end user Power BI goes a long way to allowing that end user to engage the data and begin to identify root cause by simply interacting with the graph/chart/data set. It allows for really fluid engagement. Prior to Power BI so many times during the presentation of data we often times ended the engagement with that data with more questions than what were answered. With Power BI, more often than not, the end user is able to get answers to the questions by simply clicking on the data in the graph/chart/dataset to see the details. This tool really does have the capacity to make you look like a rock star.
- The desktop version is free, monthly updates, free training resources...what's not to love. I'm sure that someone with a higher degree of technical learning will be able to better articulate some negatives for Power BI, I'm just not that guy. I have nothing but appreciation for Power BI.
January 12, 2019
In my organization, we are using MSBI to create, maintain and deploy reposts. We use all three component of MSBI like SSIS, SSRS, SSAS. We use ETL packages to maintain Dataware hosts using SSIS. We create reports using SSRS and analyze the data using the SSAS tool
- Create packages to move data and perform different data related tasks using SSIS
- Create reports to summarize the data in an understandable form using SSRS
- Analyze the data provided by teams and create data cubes and reports to understand the data properly using SSAS.
- It should be an open source tool for a vast variety of implementation.
- You need to buy a licensed server to maintain MSBI
- Need a proper course or content to learn concepts, which sometimes creates difficulty.
September 07, 2018
Power BI is a dashboard, data query and, data modeling tool. You can report your data as quickly and easily as with other competitors. With machine learning ability you can easily query, model and report your data. With the AI supported insight ability, you can drill down to the problems. If you want more analyzing tools, you can do it with the R scripts in Power BI.
- User experience (UX) is the top priority for Microsoft in Power BI. It has incredible abilities to query data from the source, such as machine learning. Query, design, and reporting is in one tool. There is no need for additional tools.
- It can get data from all resources, even in the reporting frame structure. There is no need for a table structure anymore. If you have unstructured data in any resource, machine learning can recognize/learn how to capture it and get data as you wish. If a data requires editing with some Excel operator (mid, left, find, etc), you no longer need to write any command. Power BI is doing it for you with machine learning technology. You just give some example about what you need in data and it recognizes/ learns how to get it and then populate it.
- Power BI has a lot of dashboard charts, very different range, very different purpose and you can find what you need. Charts look so pretty and configuration is so easy too. If you want to create a report (using a chart), you can type what you need while you are talking to a friend. Power BI creates it simultaneously as you are writing.
- Actually, there is one thing I can say. If you are working with huge data, depending on your computer configuration and only with the desktop (free) version, it is a little bit slow.
July 14, 2018
We use Microsoft Power BI for one of our client's project data management. He has a database of mobile app users who sign up for the premium account and Power BI is used to analyze the data and build a graphical representation of the given data, which is very convenient when you need to create a presentation or something (or simply want to see your data presented visually.)
- Data analytics features - you can filter the data according to a billion (it feels like) ways and make sure your data is just what you need.
- Graphs, charts, and everything else visual - not only you can analyze your data according to filters and everything, you can also make it look good and understandable without having to look through a ton of numbers.
- It can handle quite large amounts of data input, so this makes it a good addition for the projects that require big data.
- Works well with other Microsoft products (including .NET projects).
- It's not very user-friendly (at least, not if you use it every single day and can tell where a feature is located when you wake up in the middle of the night). It takes some time to get the hang of it.
- Sometimes it feels like there is just a bit TOO MANY features. I mean, they are all awesome, but it's easy to get lost.
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?
Microsoft BI (MSBI) benefits from the ubiquity of SQL server and the set of tools built around the database, including an ETL layer, master data management, data cleansing, report and reporting.
The reporting engine is SQL Server Reporting Services which does not have the visualization capabilities of visualization tools like Tableau or Qlik. Excel has historically been the platform visualization tool. Power BI for Office 365 has done much to improve the discovery and visualization capabilities of Excel.
Microsoft now offers Power BI cloud as the visualization platform with geospatial 3D, natural-language query generation, and self-service ETL along with charting and other data visualizations that can be uploaded and shared through the Power BI service.
The Power BI platform also provides live access to on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances, and self-service access to third-party cloud sources including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and GitHub. Mobility is supported through a native iPad app, an iPhone app.
This new platform is viewed by Microsoft as a visualization layer sitting on top of their earlier generation of installed SQL-based technology.
The reporting engine is SQL Server Reporting Services which does not have the visualization capabilities of visualization tools like Tableau or Qlik. Excel has historically been the platform visualization tool. Power BI for Office 365 has done much to improve the discovery and visualization capabilities of Excel.
Microsoft now offers Power BI cloud as the visualization platform with geospatial 3D, natural-language query generation, and self-service ETL along with charting and other data visualizations that can be uploaded and shared through the Power BI service.
The Power BI platform also provides live access to on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances, and self-service access to third-party cloud sources including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and GitHub. Mobility is supported through a native iPad app, an iPhone app.
This new platform is viewed by Microsoft as a visualization layer sitting on top of their earlier generation of installed SQL-based technology.
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Competitors
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Pricing
- Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
- Has featureFree or Freemium Version Available?Yes
- Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
- Entry-level set up fee?No
| Edition | Pricing Details | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI Pro | 9.99 | per user/per month |
| Power BI Premium | 4,995 | per month |
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application: | No |