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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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Popular Features
- Customizable dashboards (138)8.080%
- Drill-down analysis (138)7.272%
- Report sharing and collaboration (134)7.070%
- Formatting capabilities (137)6.464%
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- 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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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
Microsoft Power BI Competitors
Microsoft Power BI Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mobile Web |
| Supported Countries | Asia Pacific, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States |
| Supported Languages | Arabic, 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.
Reviewers rate Javascript API highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of Microsoft Power BI are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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(1783)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(26-50 of 140)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Power BI is categorically the most advanced yet beginner-friendly business intelligence tool that I have come across. Because of its beautiful, user-friendly interface, automated onboarding, and a dedicated website for tutorials, the learning curve is flattened as much as possible, which gets the user going in no time. Even if something gets overwhelming for you, you can hop to their friendly and helpful user community forum, which is invariably ready to help you with alacrity.
- Using features like Power Query, which is in itself like a tool like Excel, you can clean and preview data before using it for analysis purposes. If you have used Excel in the past, Power Query will, for the most part, be a cakewalk for you.
- The predominant feature one comes to Power BI is the ability to create automated formidable dashboards that everyone refers to before or during meetings to encourage and substantiate decision-making.
- If required, based on specific data points, reports are triggered automatically to certain people as well.
- Off the top of my head, I don't have many areas of improvement to suggest. I have experienced it improving day by day, adding and fixing features.
- I have noticed that if you have data from many sources linked and a lot of data representing figures on the dashboard, it can feel a little bloated in terms of responsiveness. Inline data takes some time to pop up if you hover your mouse over a figure, and changing the data on any table/figure takes time to reflect on the other linked table/figures.
- The earlier they match the functionalities between the online and offline versions, the better. I would like to have a seamless experience irrespective of the platform or environment.
We are using PowerBI across our organization for sales, CSM's, as well as our finance leadership and product teams. Our entire company receives value from it, since we use it for revenue forecasting, understanding our customers' adoption and journeys. We also use it to review different data as it pertains to the customers' invoice processing and other valuable KPI [metrics]. We use data from it from the CSM team to create QBR business review decks which are very impactful.
- Very quick and easy to filter down and look [at] granular sets of data.
- Easy to switch between various tabs for quick ad-hoc reporting.
- Easy to read and analyze the charts that we set up.
- Real time, or near real time data, which allows us to make actionable insights easier.
- Since it's a complex system, need a technical team or administrator to manage.
- I don't like being locked out. Make it easier to stay log[ged] in and not fill in password.
- SSO login would be huge! This would save a lot of time and improve security.
May 12, 2021
Reporting Super Program
We needed a way to pull large amounts of data from our construction management software and create reports that we could use to set and measure expected metrics for project team performance. Being able to track these and create configurable reports that company executives could view from anywhere and see historical performance helped us set and track company performance goals.
- Configurable reporting figures that can be set and adjusted to meet your needs.
- Historical data comparisons and progress tracking.
- Ease of access. Being able to access the reports online is awesome.
- Being able to dive into the data and break it down from high levels to small is helpful as well.
- There is a bit of a learning curve to fully use the software.
- It requires a pretty strong data analysis background to be able to use.
- Troubleshooting data issues is not super easy.
I have used [Microsoft] Power BI Desktop with the Power BI Service on the cloud as a component of IT solutions for businesses and organizations[.] The main use of [Microsoft] Power BI is to create reports and share them on the web for embedding in websites and applications. The more advanced uses of [Microsoft] Power BI, like analytics for example, are less required by companies.
- Nice graphic reports
- Sharing reports on the web to be embedded with iFrames
- Friendly interface and simple steps to make a report and publish it on Power BI Service on the cloud
- Easy and simple integration with Microsoft Ecosystem
- Shared web reports (to external users via iFrame) are not really responsive, they can just resize automatically
- The integration with Azure is tricky to achieve some configurations (for example, security settings)
- Power Query is a waste of time and can be replaced by database queries and procedures
May 10, 2021
Bring most out of your data
We have suggested Power BI to multiple clients for visualization purposes and they found it is really useful to generate their daily insights. We have created numerous reports and dashboards showing a variety of data from various domains and industries.
Highlights:
Rich UI
Data accuracy
Intensive data modeling
Data compression and optimization
- Data modeling
- Rich data visualizations
- Great community
- Complex pricing model
- Complex data modeling
- Less intuitive than other BI tools
May 08, 2021
Power BI- More powerful reports and dashboards
Microsoft Power BI is used by the entire organization for basic analytics and data visualization purposes. It enables the functional users without technical background to quickly customize their reports as per the requirements and even share the reports as well as the insights from the reports with other users in the organization. Also, the information can be analyzed and visualized in the real-time making sure that actions can be taken based on insights in due time.
- Data from multiple sources can easily be imported and processed using in-built connectors in Power BI.
- Auto ML capabilities are inbuilt helping people create predictive models without an in-depth knowledge of coding and algorithms.
- Reports and dashboards can be accessed on the go via mobile apps.
- Learning to create dashboard on Power BI is a bit intimidating for a new user and takes a long time to learn different functionalities.
- Documentation is not great and links are broken at times.
- No support Mac based devices.
May 04, 2021
Microsoft Power BI - Gets the Job Done
[Microsoft] Power BI was used at Conga mainly as a data visualization tool, while also using it as a repository for data from multiple systems. We used Snowflake to combine data from different systems and then housed everything in [Microsoft] Power BI. We could use data pulls to put together our weekly board deck, as well as to simply provide simple charts for all different teams throughout the entire sales process.
- It's ability to store massive amounts of data allowed it to be a useful resource for multiple teams
- Multiple different charts and graphs were available, making it far more visually stimulating than Salesforce native functionality
- Data pulls are seamless and show up in easy formatting
- A slightly clunky user interface, makes most end users fear building anything themselves
- 3rd party api syncs seem to be a pretty heavy lift to set up
- The overall set up when building a report is intimidating, and some buttons aren't clear, so hovering over all of them to see their labels can be time consuming and annoying
May 02, 2021
Power BI: The change reporting needed
Microsoft Power BI is being used by the Finance and Administration Team. This solution helped us to improve our data analysis and reporting, bringing it to the next level. We moved from plain spreadsheets to interactive dashboards where every stakeholder can review it and interact/filter based on their specific needs.
- Data analysis.
- KPI reporting.
- Data interaction.
- Data extraction from different sources.
- Data refreshing/updating.
- Steep learning curve.
- Need for a Microsoft account.
April 30, 2021
The Industry Standard
Microsoft Power BI is used by various teams across our organization to compile data into easy to read reports and metrics. Specifically, my use with it is related to portfolio and project management. We use it to create a 'placemat' type report to show the full technology portfolio to our most senior leaders at the organization.
- Dashboards
- Summarizing Data
- C-Level Ready Reports
- Requires some training
- Not very user friendly on the input side
- Requires developer skills
April 28, 2021
Power BI Saves Analysts Time
Power BI is available across the enterprise. Our department uses Power BI to make cost and repair data easily digestible for account managers, who then use it to report and sell to customers. Before Power BI, analysts received dozens of data pull and process requests weekly. Since these requests were often very similar, we realized that AMs could self-serve through Power BI dashboards.
- Filters.
- UI design.
- Easy to plug into database.
- Not exactly intuitive for users unfamiliar with BI tools.
- Big learning curve to set up dashboard.
We are currently using Power BI for all reporting and analysis across multiple functions, including Finance, Commercial, Clinical and Operations. There are several other groups that use Power BI with a more adhoc approach, focused on ensuring prompt resolution of ongoing issues and rapid remediation. Visibility to real-time or close to real-time data are the primary business problems solved by Power BI, particularly across multiple disparate systems.
- Adhoc analysis.
- Seamless user experience with the O365 environment.
- Features and capabilities that are best in class.
- Learning curve is greater than other (less-robust) platforms.
April 27, 2021
Easy to use inexpensive analytics tool
- It is used by cognitive solutions team (AI/ML, Data Science and Analytics).
- It is used as data analytics and visualisation tool.
- Nice custom visualisations.
- Seamless excel integration.
- Cheaper compared to the other options.
- Regular updates incorporating creativity, innovation & state-of-the-art approaches.
- Power BI has a very bulky user interface.
- Slow performance and time-outs while handling large data sources.
- Custom visuals are not configurable.
April 27, 2021
Empower your data through Power BI!
Power BI is used in my organization only in the analytics and biostatistics team, within the medical informatics department. We mainly use it to easily integrate our different databases information into a one-only report. As it's easy to use, it helps us deliver complex and clean metrics truly fast, and as we work in the health industry time is a big factor to take into account (especially during a pandemic).
- It's an excellent tool to integrate tables from different databases into one report.
- The visual indicators are mostly complete and easy to use.
- You can edit/manage/transform your tables to do almost whatever you want.
- The UX is clean and simple, but powerful enough to deliver great results.
- When you get too many tables, it might get a bit slow, it would be great if it could be more performant.
- There aren't as much statistic tools or add-ons as one would want. Now, you can only do descriptive analysis but if you wish to do statistical tests there aren't functions or integrations that help you easily do that.
- Formatting of some elements is a bit limited.
- Sharing a dynamic report is not as smooth as I would like (to do so you need to pay for a license for the visitor or give access to your information to Microsoft, which I legally can't do).
- The integration with R is not as good as I would like, it has many issues with the imports and the versioning of R and its packages.
April 27, 2021
Reporting made easy with Power BI
My company uses Microsoft Power BI throughout the organization for daily reporting tasks as well as analysis. One of the major projects we did using Power BI is to identify the services which are taking more than 2 days to complete (typically is should be done within 48 hours). This helped us to reduce the overall costs for business.
- It excellently manages the relationship connections between tables.
- It is easy to transform the data using power query.
- Power BI lets you connect to multiple data sources at the same time.
- Using DAX formulas helps you to create new measures using existing fields.
- Power BI could have more charts and visual representations.
- Easier way to manipulate the data.
April 27, 2021
Power BI Review for Construction Data
Power BI is being used across the whole organization to organize our data and show data in a way that is effective for decision making and helpful for upcoming projects and winning new work. The storytelling that PowerBI provides is very valuable, along with the ability to collaborate on dashboards with coworkers.
- Storytelling with data.
- Easy to use.
- Beautiful graphics.
- If you are not familiar with DAX it can be a bit difficult to create measures, but you can easily find solutions.
- It can sometimes take a while to refresh the data.
April 27, 2021
As a marketer I'd pass
Currently used heavily by finance and data management teams and used by marketing folks to understand customer behavior.
- Ability to consume data from multiple sources.
- Both mobile app and Teams connection available for quick views and collaboration.
- Difficult as a marketer to find data or create reports.
- Need additional training options to view capability and how to or where to find data.
- Search bar functionality not intuitive, at least keep it sticky rather than needing to hover over the bottom of a list.
April 27, 2021
Microsoft Power BI - a solid choice for data visualization and a great add to the Microsoft Suite
We currently use Microsoft Power BI across our whole organization to for visualization and trending of product data. It addresses the need for automated dashboarding of data and the ability to quickly filter and access trends that are occurring without the need to manually query and plot the data by interested individuals.
- Nice dashboarding capabilities.
- Can integrate well with other Microsoft products.
- Calculated fields.
- Connectivity to data sources.
- Some small bugs/constraints on how data visualization components.
- Some components of Power BI dashboards are a bit clunky and outdated.
- Iterating/versioning of dashboards not seamless.
April 27, 2021
Do try PowerBi !
I used [Microsoft] Power BI to create and share dashboards with analytics and graphs across different areas of the business. It makes sharing data easier and provides customizable visualizations that are easy to create even without technological background. Most importantly, it is easy to load great amounts of data as it is very easy to connect with azure data sources.
- Visualizations
- Data loading
- Data manipulation
- Can be slow
- Premium/pro licence required to share dashboards
- DAX language required for more complicated queries
April 27, 2021
It's POWERful. It's INTELLIGENT. It's POWER BI.
We have several departments across our organization that use [Microsoft] Power BI. It helps us aggregate data sources and better understand (visualize) the data when the source systems do not have these capabilities built in.
[Microsoft] Power BI allows us to easily create visuals and share findings with others across our organizations.
[Microsoft] Power BI allows us to easily create visuals and share findings with others across our organizations.
- Data aggregation
- Data visualization
- Data consolidation
- Initial user interface can be hard to navigate
- Would like to see more suggestive visualization recommendations, similar to how PPT provides design ideas
- More color schemes / options for design
April 27, 2021
Power BI Review
Power BI is an easy to use analytical tool. We are using this tool in the department of computer science and engineering for analytic purposes in research. When you have a large data set and you want to derive some meaningful results from it this tool will help you to convert your numbers into interactive charts from which you can derive the insights of data. I am working in the field of data analytics and everyone who is in the same field will love this tool.
- Convert your numbers into presentable charts.
- Low cost in comparison to other tools in the market.
- In dataset you can use JSON, XML, SQL and Excel files as a data source all on a single platform.
- Wide range of custom visualization available such as graph, map, charts, etc.
- GUI is definitely one of the areas they need to improve, lots of options on the desktop make it confusing.
- Free version can handle only 2GB data. If you want to upload more data you need to purchase the license which costs you $9.99.
- Complex relationship between the table is the problem to handle with Power BI.
April 27, 2021
Power BI great now and positioned well for the future
My company uses Power BI for our entire organizational reporting. We are a mid-size company with several different departments that each have their own unique ways of looking at things. Power BI enables us to provide that level of detail while at the same time being able to roll up data to be easily consumed by executives and management.
- Report distribution.
- Ease of setting up data models.
- Constantly improving.
- Dataset Management.
- Confusing Licensing models.
- Multiple programming languages used.
April 26, 2021
Power BI - Top of the Visualization Heap
The organization is currently shifting from Tableau to Power BI as its primary BI visualization tool. This began as parallel efforts both by IT to decide to make the switch due to the value proposition, as well as in some business units which had begun to use the tool for their own data needs.
- Very intuitive to use, particularly if you have a background in Excel and have leveraged Power Pivot.
- Excellent visuals with a wide variety of options.
- Great performance, driven by the same engine used by SSAS Tabular.
- For on-prem users of Power BI Report Server, it would be useful if Desktop included a compatibility level that could be set rather than having to manage desktop installs, particularly with the app-based installation option.
- Formatting options can be uneven between different visuals.
- Formatting for tables based on queries seem to randomly be reformatted to being difficult to read.
April 26, 2021
Microsoft Power BI does the job for analytical reporting and insights into your business
Microsoft Power BI is used by our sales, operations, and marketing department. Microsoft Power BI helped with outbreaks and occupancy levels.
- Easy to use tool
- Great integration
- Friendly interface
- More drag and drop features
April 23, 2021
Game changer for organizing sales data, identifying metrics, insights, and arriving at actionable outcomes
[We use it] to find insights within our company's data records. Microsoft Power BI helps connect disparate data sets, transform and clean the data into a data model and create charts or graphs to provide visuals of the data. Additionally, we partner with SEER interactive to build out our digital shelf dashboard and gain insights on our coverage across google SERPs and our retail partners.
- Data warehousing
- Dynamic data visualisations
- Robust reporting options
- Help Desk / Support
- Can sometimes be slow to load
- Ability to assign tasks
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Several departments use Power BI as part of Office 365. I use the Desktop Tool for offline creation of advanced BI reports which are later published as Apps for my stakeholders. Microsoft Power BI is allowing me to have real-time analytics and dashboards, instead of processing and distributing spreadsheet reports on an ongoing basis.
- Visualizations
- Calculated Fields
- Source Data Connectivity
- Data Refresh is not as Fluid and Automatic as I'd like
- There are limitations on visualizations, such as showing month names as labels in a trend line, rolling 12 month year-over year comparison of data. I get month numbers. There are dirty workarounds, but it's not clean, and it's certainly not intuitive.