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Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI

Overview

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in…

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Recent Reviews

Power Packed Microsoft Power BI

8 out of 10
October 04, 2023
I used Microsoft Power BI for regular data analysis and report generation.
I use to deal with a lot of financial data and Microsoft Power …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 29 features
  • Customizable dashboards (138)
    8.1
    81%
  • Drill-down analysis (138)
    7.3
    73%
  • Report sharing and collaboration (134)
    7.0
    70%
  • Formatting capabilities (137)
    6.5
    65%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerbi.microsoft.com/en…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $10 per month per user
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Product Demos

Microsoft Power BI Guided Tour

powerbi.microsoft.com
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.3
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7.1
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

7.8
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

7.6
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.2
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.9
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.4
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Power BI: Comprehensive Business Intelligence Platform


Capabilities:

  • Discover Insights with AI: Utilizes advanced data-analysis tools, AI features, and a report-creation tool to transform complex data into accessible visuals, making it easier to uncover valuable insights.

  • Consolidate Data with OneLake: Integrates datasets from diverse sources into OneLake, creating a centralized, reliable source of truth for data. This integration reduces data duplication and simplifies analysis.

  • Drive Decision-Making: Infuse actionable insights into everyday applications like Microsoft 365, enhancing decision-making processes across the organization.

  • Empower Data Teams with Microsoft Fabric: Revolutionizes organization's data management and usage by incorporating Microsoft Fabric into the Power BI experience.


Key Differentiators:

  • Scalability: Power BI offers exceptional scalability, capable of transforming petabytes of data and supporting thousands of users without compromising performance.

  • Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem: Seamlessly embed and share insights across Microsoft services like Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, and the Power Platform, ensuring coherent and unified data handling.

  • Advanced AI Capabilities: Features AI tools that automatically find patterns, generate reports, and provide insights, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

  • Robust Data Governance: Ensures data security and compliance with Microsoft's comprehensive governance and protection measures.


Copilot in Power BI:

  • Efficient Report Generation: Generates reports rapidly using conversational language. Copilot in Power BI enables quick creation of DAX calculations, summaries, and tailored reports.


Integration with Microsoft Fabric:

  • Enhanced Accessibility: Allows interaction with reports and data across Microsoft Fabric workloads, even for users without paid licenses.

  • OneLake Data Hub: Facilitates the connection and curation of data from varied sources, promoting efficient data engineering.


Power BI PRO:

  • Self-Service Analytics: License individuals for self-service analytics, enabling them to publish and share reports, fostering a culture of self-service BI.


Free Account Options:

  • Power BI Desktop & Free Trial: Offers a free app for data connection, modeling, and visualization, along with an easy-to-use report canvas.

  • Comprehensive Training: Access step-by-step Microsoft training courses to fully leverage Power BI capabilities.


Key Benefits:


  • Unified Data Management: Connect disparate data sources to establish a governed, unified source of truth.

  • Empower All Users: Ensures accessibility and ease of use for everyone, supported by free training resources and numerous accessibility features.

  • Immediate Start: Quickly begin with report creation, AI-generated reports, and a wide range of templates.

  • Customer Engagement: Enhance user engagement in apps by embedding Power BI reports.



Microsoft Power BI Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Windows App
  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer
  • Supported: ETL Capability

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: ParAccel
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Sage 500
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP
  • Supported: Google Analytics

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
  • Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: REST API
  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: Java API
  • Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)

Microsoft Power BI Screenshots

Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Turns insights into impact for business usersScreenshot of Power BI integrates easily with Microsoft 365Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - AI-Powered CapabilitiesScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Copilot can be used to create reportsScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data HubScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Scales as organizational needs growScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data Governance

Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Microsoft Power BI Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesAsia Pacific, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
Supported LanguagesArabic, Basque - Basque, Bulgarian - Български, Catalan - català, Chinese (Simplified) - 中文(简体), Chinese (Traditional) - 中文(繁體), Croatian - hrvatski, Czech - čeština, Danish - dansk, Dutch - Nederlands, English - English, Estonian - eesti, Finnish - suomi, French - français, Galician - galego, German - Deutsch, Greek - Ελληνικά, Hebrew, Hindi - हिंदी, Hungarian - magyar, Indonesian - Bahasa Indonesia, Italian - italiano, Japanese - 日本語, Kazakh - Қазақ, Korean - 한국어, Latvian - latviešu, Lithuanian - lietuvių, Malay - Bahasa Melayu, Norwegian (Bokmål) - norsk (bokmål), Polish - Polski, Portuguese (Brazil) - Português, Portuguese (Portugal) - português, Romanian - română, Russian - Русский, Serbian (Cyrillic) - српски, Serbian (Latin) - srpski, Slovak - slovenčina, Slovenian - slovenski, Spanish - español, Swedish - svenska, Thai - ไทย, Turkish - Türkçe, Ukrainian - українська, Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.

Microsoft Power BI starts at $10.

Tableau Cloud, Looker, and Domo are common alternatives for Microsoft Power BI.

Reviewers rate Javascript API highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of Microsoft Power BI are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(1796)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 140)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Power BI for our daily reporting visualization. We often use it for analyzing big data and creating impactful visuals from them. We are also using power BI for doing a comparative analysis of suppliers and their prices. Recently we used power bi to monitor our KPI, goals and action items
  • For big data like from the past 2-3 years, It will give you an easy visualization of that data with required fields
  • The competitive study between the two market cases for example past data of supplier and their costs
  • We can also review and visualize our sales with a particular Product ID and in which region it has the most demand
  • The query editor is the first thing that can be improved as sometimes it takes more time to show what the exact query is.
  • Many sudden bugs keep coming which should also avoid
  • An easy way for the formatting as it is somewhat critical...One within one set of commands
1. it is best suited when you want to represent your data in a more effective manner rather than boring excel worksheets and also with more critical formulas. It creates visuals in very less time you know the exact type of charts you what and what to represent against which field
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I used Microsoft Power BI for regular data analysis and report generation.
I use to deal with a lot of financial data and Microsoft Power BI does an amazing job handling Big complex data. The visualization, customization, filter and DAX options are really very flexible and helped me to prepare a great overall analysis.
The UI lags a bit sometimes as compared to other BI tools like Adobe Analytics, Tableau and others but the Microsoft Power BI is a powerhouse in terms of data processing and hence a great tool to have when you're dealing with Big data. Since Microsoft provides other integrations to its Cloud service Azure - it was fairly compatible for us to use Azure, Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server in sync. Overall a great product.
  • Report Generation: Flexible, Extensive, Customizable and accurate
  • Custom Filtering: Very much useful when you are dealing with a huge data and you need multiple filters in place. You apply a filter and all the worksheets connected are updated with the filters. Amazing.
  • Integration: Seamless integration with MS products such as SQL Server and Azure.
  • Fix the UI Please: The UI is far worse as compared to clean UI of Adobe Analytics and Tableau. It still feels like you're using a very old software
  • Make it more fast & quick: Still takes some time if there is a lot of data - sometime even makes some error.
  • Add more visualization: Still lacks some very niche visuals which we might require basis the data-type
Where it is well suited - If you want to do Big Data Analysis, want to do it extensively, want it on the cloud and data-base support. Microsoft Power BI can be the best option as it comes with seamless integrations of MS products such as SQL server and Azure. Also handles large data effectively.

Where it can be a problem - If you want elegant looks graphs, white label reports, budget issues, then, in my opinion, don't go for it.
Mohamed Adil Shaikh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Power BI is a great tool for Visualization and reporting.
We basically use this tool as a means of analyzing the maintenance data base in SAP.
Because of this tool we can easily be able to find out the insights and bottle necks in the SAP Data.
With Certain filters and query this dashboard can be easily shared to the higher management and can be able to find out where to improve by quickly analyzing the data.
  • Visualization
  • Charts
  • Dynamic Charts
  • Queries and filters
  • Dashboard should be easily sharable
  • Online Editing should be possible without downloading the app.
For finding insights of huge data sets, where automatic cleaning and processing of data is required before creating charts and dashboards, there the software is well suited.
Where data keeps uploading on a regular basis and it needs to be shared with a team and all the team members are involved in updating the datasets and charts, so it becomes difficult to manage.
Subhodeep Chandra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI helps in building various visuals from different sources like databases such as Excel and Azure. Currently, we are working on data visuals for one of our clients using the Azure database.
  • Great visualization
  • Can be opened from mobile and desktop and anywhere
  • Can be linked with many sources
  • User friendly UI and its AI is very helpful
  • Can allow data upload more than 2GB
  • Can allow data export for unlimited number of rows in Excel
It's very much suited for data analytics and not suited for support projects.
David Shi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft] Power BI is currently used as an alternative to Tableau, with its lower cost and more robust built in modelling, ETL functionality and familiarity for users used to the Microsoft stack. As an alternative to Tableau in the organization, it is currently deployed on a very limited basis as Tableau is still the preferred platform for creating dashboards across the majority of the organization.
  • Excel integration, allowing users more familiar with Excel to transition over with relative ease.
  • Inexpensive license model, compared to Tableau which can get very expensive depending on your needs.
  • Updates, by far Power BI is one of the most updated apps currently. With monthly releases of new features and fixes.
  • Poor interface, not as intuitive as Tableau and very typical of Microsoft where it can easily get you 80% of the way there, while getting the last 20% is seemingly impossible.
  • Not enough flexibility in formatting, whereas in Tableau getting something to look 'pixel perfect' takes a lot of effort, in Power BI in a lot instances 'pixel perfect' is not even an option given the lack of controls in formatting.
  • Reliance on Excel means data related best practices are naturally hindered by the kind of 'dirty' data that is typically used in Excel as opposed to cleaned up tables sitting in data warehouses.
For any instance where Tableau is too expensive as an option, [Microsoft] Power BI is the natural choice. Also in cases where the end user is operating in a Microsoft stack heavy environment where they're expected to perform both the data modelling and wrangling as a data engineer type role, along with the actual creation of dashboards in a data vis and dashboard reporting developer type role.
Scott Kennedy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The entire organization is using Power BI. Depending on your technical ability, any one person could be leveraging the technology differently. For example, we have folks using Power BI desktop (who know how to use DAX) and others using the Power BI online service exclusively. For online users, that would include report consumers and builders.
  • Ability to crunch large volumes of data
  • It has a ton (and growing) number of data source connections
  • The visualization opportunities get better each month
  • The cost model could improve for the premium tier
  • Power BI desktop of a VM is pretty cumbersome
  • Power BI desktop doesn't work for Macs
Power BI desktop originally started as a simple tool to pull minimal amounts of data and do rudimentary visualizations. Over the last few years, it has grown into a robust business intelligence solution that can be scaled to thousands of users at a company. The cost model works well for smaller companies too.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Reporting BI tool for the entire organization for Intact. In the past, many Power BI dev. didn't have unique and secure workspaces to share and collaborate their reports and data. It was also stored in an unsecured manner and its location is many. Power BI gateway services and power bi web services with a premier license model provided us the solution to separate, secure, and manage the reports and their data governance around them.
  • Create workspaces for the assigned data source with security
  • Publish and share data across team members
  • Publish embedded reports within a given URL or web portal.
  • The new UI should be simpler to view from an admin side of view.
  • The gateway servers within power bi gateway management should be moved to the previous view for better administration. However, the current new view is different but better enhanced
Microsoft Power BI Premium License is an excellent model for companies requiring multi-geo locations to keep their data and workspace separate due to regulatory reasons. In addition, the licensing model - Power Bi also has a great feature to connect to on-prem databases and cloud-based PaaS data sources.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
There are a lot of manual reports with the same activities in daily, weekly, and monthly frequency of various reports. It can automate the reports to reduce TAT In this have benefits of both ETL tool and visualization with more than 200 plus visuals in store. We are using SQL server for database and later connect to Microsoft Power BI after development publishing to service for clients. Will connect gateway for automatic refresh.
  • ETL tool query editor gives one of the best data cleansing tools inbuilt into the Microsoft Power BI desktop.
  • It has more than 200 plus visuals in store and use.
  • It has great user community.
  • It has ample amount of training videos for users to learn.
  • It is very cheap BI tool in Market.
  • Visual Formatting should increase by giving more easy to use option like Excel.
  • Page level security should be expected.
  • Cell merge is required to show heading in visuals.
Query editor is best in all parts of this tool. It has more than 200 plus visuals to impress the clients with that. Microsoft Power BI service has 10 GB of data storage for pro users this will give developers can store more reports and data. It has an ample amount of data sources that can connect and develop the reports.
April 25, 2022

Review for Power BI

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Power BI for data presentation and Visualization of the data as we know raw data is nothing we use Power BI to clean and present data and derive meaningful information. It is very easy to use and if you are using Excel then the user interface is very similar to it.
  • Data Visualization
  • Integration with other Microsoft office app i.e Excel
  • User Interface is Easy
  • Sometime it is hard to work with non Microsoft Applications
  • Compatibility issues With Mac
  • Leaning curve
When we are cleaning data and making reports and creating meaningful data from raw data and generating report, visualization of data to other stakeholders it is very useful application but some time using with non Microsoft apps it is not supported i.e Desktop version on Mac so not recommended for Mac.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Instead of using one big Excel file that gathers different types of data from various sources we decided to switch to using Power BI, which we found could be integrated easily with our existing business environment, while providing advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, enabling us to create customized dashboards. The old approach with Excel files was not reliable and very time-consuming when it comes to maintenance.
  • Data analysis.
  • Access levels management.
  • Graphical display possibilities.
  • Very often desktop app works slow.
  • More edit possibilities while using the model in web browser.
Definitely well suited for areas like Finance and Operational KPIs. I really can't think of any department that could not benefit from it. Probably less appropriate when you have many categories like customers or products and want to show all of them in a detailed way on one graph. Possibly the view in the report can be not clear enough.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Microsoft Power BI widely in the Company, together with more than 80 associates were are the Gurus of Power BI, we help people to develop their own reports. Using Microsoft Power BI really facilitate and make the data showing easier, in the old days we used to create a report on Excel and they send this to a lot of people or copy and paste the info on PowerPoint and then share it across many teams. But now we use Microsoft Power BI to load a lot of different source data points (CSV, Excel, DB, etc), combine and enrich this data and then publish the report into Microsoft Power BI Services and from there we share the list across the teams. We have some reports that are being used by more than 800 people. Microsoft Power BI definitely was a step up on how the data is consumed. The only big problem that I see is that some users don´t have the full knowledge about it making it now well developed or organized resulting in a heavy Report that takes longer to load.
  • Deal with different sources at the same report (CSV, Excel, SQL, etc).
  • Easy to load and refresh the Data.
  • How that data is displayed in a visual, is super easy and fast to do it.
  • Easy to add new visuals other than the built-in ones.
  • Make a way for multiple people to collaborate in the same file.
  • Create a tool that you can design and create your own visual.
I believe Microsoft Power BI is one of the best tools in the market and because is from Microsoft it fit in all the other applications from Microsoft. Every application has room to improve but the built-in feature and all the possibilities that open make it one of the best for sure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is a perfect platform for us in order to display the data in an useful and interactive way.
Before starting to use Power BI, there were a lot of work needed for some meetings (as you had to do same slide for all the possible scenarios) and there were not much flexibility during the discussions.
Now all the flexibility can be addapted during the conversations, making faster and clearer decissions as you can visualize everything with a couple of clicks.
Also it is superflexible in terms of connection to different data providers, so you can combine a lot of information from various places in just one dashboard.
  • Data visualization
  • Flexibility
  • Different data connectors
  • Speed when big volumes of data
  • Selflearning from the data
In operations we use the tool for many different topics, from factory quality systems to high level reviews.
We have created kind of an internal "App Store" based on Power BI where you have a lot of different dashboards for different solutions (cost, cash, health and safety, sales, factories, distribution centers...) and you as an user just need to get in that "App Store" and enter in whatever tool can be useful for you. It is open to all the operations employees and can use on demand.
Also it has raised the imagination of our colleagues, as they are not only working by themselves creating new reports, but also raising fantastic ideas that can be extended for the usage of all the community.
Afia Tamanna | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We deployed Microsoft Power BI in every department at our company, including sales, customer service managers (CSMs), and product and finance departments. Essentially, this is the essential function of the Power BI Desktop. We can share reports via the internet and embed them into websites and applications. We use it to analyze customer invoice processing data and other KPIs. Presentations for QBR business reviews based on the information provided by the CSM team have a great deal of impact. With Microsoft Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service in the cloud, we’ve helped businesses and organizations develop their IT infrastructures. Also, we could track and customize notifications so company executives could see them from anywhere. That helps us track and set company targets. Organizations don’t require the more advanced features, such as analytics, that are available.
  • Quickly filter and view granular data sets with easily configurable reporting figures.
  • The ability to quickly switch between tabs allows for historical data comparisons and progress tracking.
  • It's helpful to dive into the data and break it down from high levels to small.
  • Achieve actionable insights faster by using real-time data. It's incredible to have online access to reports.
  • The pricing model for the premium tier has room for improvement and a learning curve.
  • One must have a solid data analysis background to use Azure integration in some configurations.
  • Power Query is unnecessary and can be replaced by database queries and procedures.
Using Microsoft Power BI is the best way to analyze data at a very reasonable cost. [Microsoft] Power BI desktop started as a simple tool for data extraction and basic visualization. As a powerful business intelligence solution, they quickly scaled the device to thousands of users within a company. Depending on how the business is measured, finance or CSM teams can gain a lot of insight. Using it as a user allows us to save time and focus on other tasks. The dashboard looks like a renaissance painting because of all the beautiful charts and figures that are available. Importing data and relating them is straightforward.
Colin Sebastian | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Power BI for any number of tasks, mainly synthesizing data down and making easily to read and use charts. It's also used to view lots of data in a reasonable manner and view changes quickly. Additionally, we use it for management presentations to executives for business status updates.
  • Manage data
  • Import data
  • Publish to Teams
  • Aggregate information from many sources
  • The load time could be shorter
  • Better connections to non Microsoft sources of data
  • Easier to use and manipulate data already in BI
It is best suited for taking lots of data (spreadsheets or other) and producing visually appealing content. It is also helpful for coming up with visualizations that can be regularly updated and used for executive status presentations and other management reports. Finally, it is good for functions where excel can not keep up such as intricate drop down, selections menus, sliders, etc.
Suryaprakash Mishra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Currently, the product is used by [a] few teams including my team. The organization is developing [a] Data Analytics platform and then [Microsoft] Power BI will [be] used [in the] organization moving forward.
  • Quick real-time information
  • Streamlined publications and distribution
  • Row level security and element of machine learning and AI
  • Ability to connect to SAS datasets
Data visualization and insights via [Microsoft] Power BI for [the] public version of Dashboard.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS Power BI has been used in my company as a visualization tool along with QuickSight and Tableau. They all serve the same function that is interactive plots that can be saved and shared with others. Depending on which department it is, the team choose one of these options based on the data sources.
  • interactive
  • connectivity
  • easy to learn
  • costly
  • analytic
  • pipeline
I would recommend the MS power BI to colleagues who don't have coding skillset or to someone who wants to have interactive graphs to share with other colleagues. For people with strong coding ability, some python/ R packages can do that trick easily without the need for the premium fee.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The platform is easy to use and has a quick learning curve. Easy to create reports and bring in different data sources. It gives you the ability to export to cloud quickly and easily.
  • Analysis and presentation of data
  • Report generation
  • Simple and effective GUI; easy to learn
  • Few customization options
  • Icons are small and hard to read at times
  • Handling of complex relationships between tables could be improved
Microsoft Power BI allows you to manage, organize, and visualize data in a more efficient way. Microsoft Power BI's integrated tools make it easier to create models, analyses, reports, and predictions. Microsoft Power BI gives you a more attractive visual appearance.
Blake Baron | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, it's only being used by our division for internal reporting usage on our sixteen members to leadership. Leadership can view progress and be alerted to new activities our team has to work on. We use it for weekly reporting on the status of various analyses and how much value is at risk as a result of them.
  • Easy to slice and dice data.
  • Familiar theme for those familiar with other Microsoft products.
  • Integrates with SharePoint & OneDrive to easily share intelligence across the team.
  • It's intimidating for first time users.
  • It's "heavy" in that it takes up a lot of processing power.
  • Of course, it's only as good as the underlying data.
It's good to use if you have at least one power user (pun not intended) and the enterprise resources to back it up. It's not as visually appealing as something like Tableau, but it allows an audience to filter complex data sets based on pre-set criteria in a controlled environment.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We have different uses cases for [Microsoft] Power BI (Desktop and Pro), from the Desktop side, we have many vendor exported CSV financial data, this data is generated every month with tens of thousands of rows and hundreds of columns, this data needs to be crunched and converted into human readable reports.
We import these CSVs to a central data source (SQL Server) and then use Power BI Desktop to transform this data into phenomenal interactive drilldown reports for the executive and financial departments to easily review and take immediate decisions, the transformation is fairly easily and intuitive and the outcomes are very satisfying.

On the [Microsoft] Power BI Pro side, we have it connected to a few online data sources from the cloud, with its automated refresh functionality, we are getting fresh and up to date reports and analytics that help our management make decisions quickly and effectively, [Microsoft] Power BI is an amazing product!
  • Easy to setup and develop solid reports
  • Supports a substantial number of data sources to import from and connect to
  • Great reports designer with many chart types and customizations
  • Intuitive interface
  • Desktop and Pro versions are reasonably priced
  • The desktop app is great but needs a lot of performance improvements
  • No MacOS Version for the Desktop app, this is a big limitation for business since executives prefer Macs
  • Premium Cloud Version of Power BI is awfully expensive
  • On-Premise Version of the Power BI Reports Server is bundled only with SQL Server Enterprise License and cannot be purchased separately and requires Software Assurance Subscription
  • On-Premise Power BI Report Server doesn't support ADFS, AzureAD or any Claims-Based authentication platform, a sad disadvantage for enterprises
I would definately recommend [Microsoft] Power BI, its an amazing product, despite of the cons, the product is still remarkable and unique in the values that it provides.

If you have scattered data left undiscovered, or need solid reporting and analytics, or even just simply want to impress your management with detailed, beautiful and organized reports that are automatically refreshed with fresh content, Power BI is absolutely the tool to go for.
It can import data from an overwhelming amount of sources, such as Excel, SQL Server, Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, Sales Force, MySQL, Amazon Redshift and many others, and it allows you to quickly and easily build and publish beautiful reports that always impresses the executives and management.

[Microsoft] Power BI is one of a few products that I would recommend to literally anyone who uses a computer, there is always a use case for Power BI, especially the desktop version, the moment you create your first report you realize how much time and effort it saves and how much insights it gives on your data, personally, Power BI is an essential part of my work and I truly enjoy building reports and gathering/transforming data using it.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is our visualization tool to make our data insightful and easy to digest. Power BI is nice because it builds on your Microsoft Suite of applications and is easy to use. Power BI helps create standard views for high-level insights, with the capability to drill down. A drill-down capability is a powerful tool for actionable insights.
  • Actionable insights
  • Subscriptions for scheduled reports to your email.
  • Easy to use with different types of data sources.
  • Manipulating standard views can be more challenging for less experienced users.
Since Power BI is a data visualization tool, it's useful anywhere a standard report or visualization is required. I like to use Power BI, especially where you want to avoid inconsistent manipulation of data to produce insights. Taking this process out of the analysts' hands ensures data consistency and avoids the question of whether data can be reliably used. It keeps one source of truth.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is being used In my organization by the executive team to view Sales and Inventory KPI and make important financial decisions.
Power BI reports and charts makes it easy to visualize problem areas in production and distribution and where to make necessary improvements in the future. It is great for collaborating with coworkers with dashboards.
  • Microsoft Power BI is great for creating reports and charts for data visualization
  • It can integrate very easily with excel and SQL server database
  • It is easy to learn and use
  • It is cheaper compared to other options
  • It can sometime take a long time to load the data
  • Not enough options to share dashboards externally
  • Custom visuals are not easy to configure and manage
  • DAX can be difficult to understand and write
Microsoft Power BI is great for SQL based data, which can be easily imported. It is great for visualizing and comparing data and create dashboards for every day use. Excel data can be easily imported and transformed for daily use.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With the implementation of reports through Microsoft Power BI Desktop, we are able to address the business problem of providing near real-time operational reports.
  • Easy Navigation
  • Statistical/ Analytical Analysis
  • Easy Data Modeling
  • Large volume data handling
  • DAX usability
Microsoft Power BI is well suited for the individual with low or no technical background also. It's the ease of loading, transforming, and visualizing data make it easier to analyse and deploy reports.
May 15, 2021

Microsoft Power BI

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Power BI across our organization to track many aspects of our product, performance, and sales. It is a great tool for accessing, combining and visualizing data from many different sources.
  • Data connects many other products
  • Easy to manipulate data to suit different uses
  • Very robust, yet still easy to navigate
  • Sometimes the web app version moves slowly or doesn't seem to update effectively
  • There is some functionality only available in desktop version
It is a great tool where metrics and data are crucial to your organization. Everything is accessible in one interface and allows you to get a better grasp on many different data sets. You are able to build reports, with many different filters, and customize them completely to suit your organization's needs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI was is being used as a data visualization tool and for creating dashboards across the complete organization. All stats based reporting is now being done through it as it is easy to slice and dice through it in an interactive and easy manner. It also allows to drill down to next level of analysis.
  • Interactive tool with great user interface
  • Different types of visualization possible
  • Custom reports can be created
  • Not self learning tool
  • A small change in one input file, can have huge impact on the report and it is very difficult to test it
  • Need to learn coding for advanced reporting
Suited when different type of visualizations is needed; need to be shared with multiple users including external users; need slicing and dicing; need drill down capability

Not suitable for simple visualization as MS Excel pivot tables are equally good with less hassle and effort.
Amr Saad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is used by the management [across] different departments to monitor our [team's] performance and feedback reports using very intuitive visualizations which gives us insights regarding managing our teams in a more efficient way. It provides very good Dashboards with [a] drill-down feature to go into more details. Also, it helped the Finance Department and gave us great predictive insights regarding the organization's financial health by analyzing different data collected.
  • Dashboard Reports
  • Drilldown Reports
  • Predictive Analysis and Charts
  • Scheduled Reports Feature
  • Needs some training to be able to use it
  • Can sometimes be slow if the report has large data
Microsoft Power BI is well suited for creating intuitive Dashboard Reports with different insightful Charts. I think this is one of the best tools in Data Visualization. Unfortunately, you will need to get away from Reports that need complex computations as it might slow the reports.
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