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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 8.0

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

(1795)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 140)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is a powerful tool to visualize data sets and provide easy deep dive analysis into your data. It is a great extension to Excel and easy to pick up with minimal training. It is able to address many of the business challenges faced by CPG organizations from financial analysis, supply chain management, factory optimization, and so forth.
  • Load large volumes of data quickly and efficiently.
  • Great visualizations to provide insights into your data.
  • Table view provides quick at a glance to trouble shoot issues with data.
  • Sharing and publishing can be done in minutes.
  • Overlay objects or being able to insert an object into another object.
  • Make it easier so different groups of people have access to different tabs.
  • Improve connections to data source when accessing via Sharepoint.
Power BI is well suited for flat file databases, although the pivot column feature can help other types. Particularly great where visualizations can provide better insights than data tables so great for deep insights into trend evolution. Can be challenging to build profit & loss statements with subtotals and percentages based on sales as one single neat statement.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft] Power BI is a natural choice for Microsoft shops looking to modernize dashboard development utilizing data management technologies likely already in place in the organization. I have used it at several companies I have worked for that were either SQL Server or Azure driven, to standardize development and presentation of dashboards for management and executives.
  • Dashboards
  • Step-based data preparation
  • Metrics
  • Calculated fields
  • Widgets
  • Responsive design
  • What-if functionality
[Microsoft] Power BI is well suited in Microsoft based shops that are either SQL Server or Azure based. Although disparate data sources can be used, In order to take full advantage of it you should also be using Analysis Services either via SSAS or Cloud by preparing data in tabular models. With well prepared data, it is a breeze to develop dashboards and visualizations that will dazzle. For other data sources, the step-based preparation within Power BI itself is essential, rather than relying on having to write complex SQL statements to prepare your data. For organizations that are based in AWS, Oracle, or other database backends, [Microsoft] Power BI may not be an obvious choice as there are similar offerings for those platforms.
April 07, 2021

Powerful Power BI

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's being used across our organization...we have it used by three groups logically. One is the power users, two is the supporting staff and the third is the solution group who build solutions. We also have it for the R&D team for pulling out reports making it work against the power BI gateway from where we can pull data from out on-prem workloads. They evaluate the software.
  • Ease of pulling data which was otherwise a tedious job earlier.
  • Best possible screen presentation in terms of charts and dashboards.
  • Connect to other line of business applications like SAP.
  • Ease of usage.
  • Excel friendly formula and transforming the data.
  • It does not show errors as precise as it should, most of the time the errors while loading data are vague.
  • Takes a lot of time if you have lengthy formulas for calculations.
  • Power BI file itself is a very heavy one, has huge size.
  • Has version compatibility issues.
It can be used for high management level reviews for showcasing high level statistics. Can be used within the teams for better collaboration and work management, visually showcasing the progress. Can be used as a dashboard which can embedded onto a SharePoint page and can be shared to larger audience. No, it can't be used for sharing reports individually as the other party viewing reports should also have power BI viewer or the access to the report.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Power BI to support multiple areas within our organization. We have created personnel dashboards for our HR team and recruiting teams. We have financial dashboards for our Finance and AR teams. We have analytics dashboards for our operations teams. It solves so many issues and is so user friendly. The main area of improvement has been getting consistent data into the hands of our employees company wide rather than relying on spreadsheets that business units would keep internally.
  • The ability to provide consistent and standard reporting
  • The ability to incorporate multiple data sources into a single source.
  • The analytics within Power BI are incredibly powerful
  • More options for external sharing of dashboards would be great.
  • Steep learning curve depending on your background.
Microsoft Power BI has been an amazing service for our organization. The ability for any of our users to see a single dashboard at any time, even from mobile devices, is head and shoulders above where we were before. Now we can send consistent analytics and reporting out throughout our business units, from executives all the way down to our field personnel.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft] Power BI is being used by our BI team (developers) and business analysts in selected Departments. It is a tool of choice for a quick data analysis and dashboard creation primary for 311 city services (service requests), Health/Vaccination (COVID) public facing analysis and purchasing improvement process.
  • Ability to connect to many different data sources
  • Ease of access (basic version is free)
  • Integration with office modules
  • Cloud based (Azure) architecture
  • Confusing licensing for Pro and Premium
  • Steep learning curve
  • Too many features are hard to find
Since virtually all organizations are using Microsoft's products, Power BI comes "baked in" with your Office 365 licensing. To end users, it is free, and you can do a lot with this free desktop version. Analysts and developers with data source knowledge can very quickly create pretty advances and interactive visualizations - with zero additional costs. You can even share your output with another Power BI desktop user, or via free Power BI viewer tool.

Problems start if you want to distribute and share your work on a broader scale. You need to purchase additional licenses, which to us was kind of confusing (pro vs premium) and expensive. If you are not a Microsoft shop, this can be a showstopper.
James Anderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Power BI in our Medical Economics department to help visualize the contracts that we negotiate with the health insurance companies. We use it to understand how those negotiated rates perform over time. We compare the insurance companies' rates to each other in various ways with different metrics.
  • Data organization.
  • Ease of data conversion.
  • The relational database only allows one true join so you have to get creative.
  • I want more positional controls.
Microsoft Power BI has been well suited in 3 main areas for us. First, it does really well at organizing disparate data and combining it all together. The second thing it does well is that it has the capability to modify or transform your data based on logic. Finally, the out of the box visuals cover pretty much everything you need for reporting.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I personally use Microsoft Power BI to build monthly reporting dashboards and show system usage analytics & metrics to our leadership team.
  • Allowing various datatypes/sources
  • Simple and intuitive UI
Microsoft Power BI works well if you are able to connect to your data sources as an automated data feed. It is more challenging to use if you have to manually import your data sources every time you want refreshed data.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is used across the whole organization. In my department, I developed a Power BI based solution to better visualize the workload allocation for the engineering team in Brazil.
There is also a dashboard for observing the ongoing projects status and stages. Every department uses Power BI with different data sources but all solutions are targeting data visualization and ease of implementation.
Microsoft Power BI is a quick-to-implement software that makes it easier to deal with large datasets and create relationships between different data sources.
  • Importing data sources: Very intuitive way to import data, with pop-up wizards to guide the process.
  • Creating charts and graphs: It is possible to create charts and graphs just by dragging data fields, no programming required.
  • Power BI online is still very limited and also requires that every user has a pro license to see published dashboards.
  • If you need to make advanced changes to the imported data, it is required to learn the M-Query, which is a Power BI programming language.
Best Suited: Visualization of data that is not easily accessible through Excel, data which are not yet treated and not refined. Microsoft Power BI makes it easier to showcase this data. Power BI is best used to display analytical information for untreated data, it has visuals that do statistical analysis and can be used with Artificial Intelligence to obtain more valuable information from different datasources.

Less Appropriate: Small data sources, which do not require a second software to display information in a visual way. Using/buying Power BI for small data sources is overkill and is going to generate unnecessary expenditures.
Marco De Angelis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is used by the entire IT department and by other users with personal objectives, like Excel. Power BI is used on top of other software to create business models where the software standard reports do not cover our needs and to integrate diverse data source coming from diverse software.
  • Create data models.
  • Use dax language.
  • Manage production and test environments.
  • Build and share model incrementally.
Microsoft Power BI is easy to learn and use. With a little effort, you can integrate a lot of different data sources and, very importantly, you don't need to have a big infrastructure, thanks to Microsoft Cloud. It is also well suited for personal use, to extend Excel functionalities and analyze big amount of data.
Shreshthi Mehta, PMP®, PHR® | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is being used by HR and IT departments. We use it typically to run weekly and monthly reports and for data analytics. It is hugely helpful in saving time as we can build in formats within the tool and schedule the metrics to run weekly/monthly. Weekly/ monthly data cuts are not required.
  • Saves time as regular reports do not need to be created every time.
  • The tool has several grafts and charts that can be created by the click of a button.
  • It is easy to analyze data by dwelling deeper in each data set.
  • Can be interfaced with several systems.
  • The system is useful in data analytics but there is a learning curve.
  • It is difficult to understand the linking of datasets while organizing data in the beginning.
  • You need to work with an IT person to interface Power BI with existing systems.
  • While the tool runs the required metrics, it does not tell a story to connect all the metrics. Human intervention is required in this phase.
Within the HR department we receive report requests from other departments on a regular basis. We have used Power BI to create a process where the reports are automatically delivered to our clients. This saves a lot of time for both of us.
Like I mentioned before, there is a learning curve to understanding this tool. It needs practice. Microsoft organizes free in house training for Power BI. Anyone can sign up and learn. The training materials are very useful and the staff is very knowledgeable and polite. The information can be obtained within the tool updates.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is used for 2 main reasons. First, the software is used for data visualization. Second, the software is used for analytics, including some minor advanced analytics. The software helps provide real-time information on time series and other data to ease the process of making decisions. It is also used for communicating data with colleagues.
  • Integration with other Microsoft products.
  • Easy to use interface.
  • Calculations are easier than most other BI tools.
  • Functionality is limited.
  • Is clunky to use with R.
  • Graphics are not top of the line.
Power BI is well suited for first-time users of BI software who like the Microsoft look and feel. It’s relatively easy to make work for small projects. The software is not suited for advanced analytics projects where the user cares about speed and accuracy of real-time model performance.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI has enabled people at all levels to have easy access to data and analytics across the organization. It increases visibility to live and historic data and helps people make better decisions
  • Drill down to lower-level data
  • Visualize performance trends
  • Ability to join data from different sources
  • Improve geographic map visuals
  • Need SQL query editor
  • Write custom python code
Well suited for exploratory analysis and visualization. Less suited to created advanced predictive modeling and fast high volume data.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used Microsoft Power BI to create automated reports, dashboards for our clients finance department. The reports were consisting of financial targets, actual and forecasts. Along with the reports, we used formula generation functionalities and made auto calculations. It is a good reporting dashboard when it comes to display most current values along with auto calculations. Before Power BI, excel reports or ppt presentations would be distributed within the organization. With Power BI, the dashboards and data visualization became more professional looking.
  • It has a free version offered with Microsoft Office 365. So businesses with this type of license can enjoy it free.
  • Good dashboards, auto calculation and database connection capabilities.
  • Easy to learn and use when you have familiarity with Excel. You can reach free training material on many platforms.
  • Well integrated with other Microsoft programs (Excel, Access)
  • Expensive if you want on premise version. Choose the best fitting license.
  • There are some functionalities that require detailed learning. You need to have good experience with Excel, database connections, DAX.
  • Data quality matters. If you have uncleaned data, then your work on Power BI can be frustrating as it is poor on providing suggestions.
  • You may encounter with performance issues when your data is big.
It actually depends on the size of the organization and person who will work with Power BI. If you have a big organization, need many reports and need dashboard visualization. Choose it. But be sure the user has good knowledge on Excel, database connections and DAX. If you are a small business you may want to stay on Excel. In any case you can try.
Rick Botha | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is used primarily by the Project Management department at the company to keep track of all the project metrics within the whole company, covering everything from capital expenditure projects, to customer orders, and product development projects.The different departments that aren't authoring the data and reports have access to the reports to use within their planning and departmental reports. The problem that Microsoft Power BI addresses is that everyone has clear and easy access to well displayed dashboards that display key metrics on a per project basis.
  • Engaging dashboard displays with drag and drop modules to convey data in a meaningful ways.
  • Familiar Microsoft "Ribbon" type interface that creates an integral feel with the rest of the Microsoft suite of products.
  • Built-in mobile optimization window and associated Mobile applications that allow viewing from any location connected to the server.
  • Initial creation of reports, even from processed data sets is not simple.
  • The on-premises reporting (crucial for a defense industry company) is extremely expensive, as it is only included in the Power BI Premium package.
  • User training is usually required to ensure that full functionality of the dashboards and their built in features are utilized.
Microsoft Power BI is well suited to the following scenarios:
  • Where a lot of data is available and, if processed, and displayed well, it will benefit efficiency and productivity across the organisation.
  • Where the results of processed data are used to convince clients of completed work.
Microsoft Power BI is not well suited to the following scenarios:
  • Where small organisations need to display their data for internal use, using a self-administered solution.
Steffany Winkelmann | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Previously, we had no real business intelligence. We had all sorts of data in our database, but we had no way to make sense of it aside of downloading and manipulating it in Excel, but this proved difficult to process many hundreds of thousands of rows of data. Microsoft Power BI has helped us make this process so much easier by connecting to our database directly and run queries directly in the system and make beautiful charts based on that data, to make sense of what's going on.
  • Beautiful graphical models of your data
  • Fast processing whether you're working with local data or pulling it from your database
  • Very easy to share reports within your organization
  • Surprisingly fairly easy to learn
  • It is such a powerful system that it can come across as intimidating for some without some Excel knowledge
  • I'm not a database analyst or administrator, so calling the data in can be difficult (not necessary the fault of the software, but something that could be difficult for teams without someone with database knowledge)
  • It can come across as confusing, when there is both a local Power BI and online Power BI components. They don't necessarily do the same functions. You'll definitely want to know how to use the online version as this is how you'll publish and share the results of your findings, but the local one has a lot of capabilities that don't appear to be directly available in the online version (and if so, it's not immediately apparent).
Well suited for organizations that have a lot of client data. It doesn't necessarily mean you have a lot of clients, but rather that you've collected a large set of data-points that you can analyze, cross-compare, and report on and need higher functions than Excel. It would also be better-suited for organizations that have someone (preferably in-house) who can import & process that data into meaningful reports for other teams to use and build off of.

Less appropriate for smaller organizations that don't have someone in-house or don't have the strong ability to learn how to maximize on the abilities of this tool set. It requires knowledge of interacting with databases and someone who understands how to analyze and interpret business intelligence data. Also not very appropriate for organizations that don't collect much data on their clients, even if they have many clients.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Power BI to visualize our transaction data and to generate real-time reports to better optimize our production.
  • Easy to use.
  • Well integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem
  • Share with anyone.
  • Bit pricey
  • Getting used to it and learning might be long for someone new to all the options.
Well, when you're database is running on an SQL server and you want the convenience of the Microsoft ecosystem.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is used by developers for data analysis by creating graphs and reports. This tool is used lightly for quick and easy data visualization when Excel isn't good enough.
  • Cost effective graphing and reports
  • Can create personal dashboards
  • Can export to Excel
  • Slicer tools for data filtering
  • Better built-in functions/formulas. Some are too limited.
  • UI is a little bulky and can be slow to load.
Doing data analysis for Database's data to Excel spreadsheets is appropriate when using Power BI. Excellent for things like comparing data across years/months/days, building aggregates, and/or finding trends in data. This is not for integrating any of this functionality into an application, this software runs on your machine only.
Che Odom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Power BI to gather data and present it from our project management software Procore. It is used by two people in our organization to present data to our upper management. It helps to let our leadership have a real up to date high level overview of where each of our projects stand in terms of budget, schedule and many other metrics.
  • Data retrieval/mining
  • Data presentation/visuals
  • customization
  • Ease of use - this tool could be much more intuitive in its design
We love the Power BI integration, so we have seen it built out for specific integrations with specific other software, like Procore, successfully, with little to no effort required by the end user. We feel that if you have data that you would like to dig through and present to a large group in a meaningful way, Power BI is for you.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have about 25 years of data. Microsoft Power BI is being used across the organization by various departments. Our accounts payables team uses it to monitor vendor activity, identify duplicate invoices, and ensure vendor compliance. Our internal audit team runs several reports to identify anomalies.
  • Microsoft Power BI is the best value for money, self-service business intelligence tool available in the market. It is intuitive to use and comes with a library of data connectors.
  • It has fantastic data visualization capabilities and simplified user interface.
  • We store most of our data on the Azure data lake and Power BI works seamlessly with it.
  • Most of our users prefer the desktop version compared to the web tool. Microsoft should put efforts into making the web tool robust and easy to use.
  • The refresh cycles are less if you opt for the free version. We bought an enterprise edition to get over this.
  • Free versions have less storage and are slower.
Our data is stored in an Azure data lake. Hence, Microsoft Power BI is the best fit for us. It works seamlessly. We use other enterprise software from Microsoft's stable. Power BI is well integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem. Our users are well versed with Microsoft technologies, hence feel comfortable using Power BI. There was minimal training required. Further, there is a pool of qualified Power BI experts available at reasonable prices in the market.
September 15, 2019

Really Great!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Power BI in our IT dept, but the information and analytics gained are then provided company-wide to those who need it or could be helped by the information. It helps us easily visualize and conceptualize the data that we've always had. Insights gained are really quite valuable.
  • Correlation.
  • Presentation.
  • Visualization.
  • Dashboard customization.
  • Sharing.
  • Agility.
It's really helpful in the world today, as big data has taken over the data center and IOT has really caused a massive influx of data coming in. And without a way to visualize and correlate the information into logical, sortable data, it's basically worthless. Power BI helps bring value to the data you already have.
Guillermo Villamizar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is actually being used by our entire organization. Each type of user has access to different views or reports, and they don't have to manually make the reports on another tool such as Excel, although later they can export it to Excel so they can manipulate the information or send them to another person.
  • Reports and dashboards complexity were greatly reduced.
  • Easy drill-down on selected information.
  • Different types of views for the same information.
  • The licensing cost might be a little high for some companies.
  • It consumes a lot of resources.
  • It's not very user intuitive on first use.
The fact that we don't have to use Excel to create awesome visual charts makes this a complete time-saver. Instead of spending hours and hours updating spreadsheets, Power BI integrates with other programs we use in the organization to pull the raw data automatically, and it looks awesome as well.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
1. It is used for Executive reviews for visualization and dashboards to provide insight in the business operations, marketing, finance. My organisation is using this because it comes free with Microsoft Office license. It provides similar services as other tools in the same field.
2. It is being used in my departmen,t but other functions are starting to explore this BI tool.
3. Visualization, dashboards, scorecards, easy to understand huge datasets through graphs and charts, flexible for users to connect withEexcel

  • Free license and tool is available in Microsoft office as an alternative to expensive tools in the same field
  • Flexible to connect with multiple data sources and ERP systems
  • Training modules are available for users with good detailed explanation
  • Can publish review online for yourself and team-members and executives
  • Multiple layout for visualization
  • Editing data is bit difficult -- it requires dataset to be formatted in a particular manner, otherwise it will give errors and the user will end up most of the time in fixing the issue himself.
  • Everytime data is required to be refreshed, which leads to the issue of regenerating the visualization
Scenarios where it is well suited- User with Excel experience and needs to analyze the data via visualization without spending huge money on license subscription of other software

Scenario where it is less suited - User who does not know how to handle big data and cleaning data requirements of BI.
Chris Widner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As we are trying to understand the overall health of the organization there are various metrics around revenues, costs, etc that we want to be able to slice and dice. We have some contracts that are such severe outliers (both positive and negative) that they can greatly skew our numbers. We use PowerBI to better understand our metrics and quickly manipulate the inputs into our reports.
  • Easy to create beautiful charts that make the data very easy to understand.
  • Ability to quickly add/remove certain contracts from the dataset and see the differences with and without these contracts.
  • Mobile view is really nice too!
  • Can be difficult to import certain data sets like MySQL that is on-prem.
  • Takes a bit of getting used to using. Once you're using to it you look like a genius with how fast you can create reports.
  • Pricing can become a bit much at scale.
PowerBI is great for scenarios where you have raw data and quickly want to get insight into the trends within that data. If you're a small company or working on a small team that will consume this data you can move quite quickly and have everyone on the same page.

I wouldn't recommend using this to share data across a larger organization unless price isn't an issue. It can become expensive when you're talking 50+ users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
A lot of Packages are available to represent the data. Predictive and Visualization representations are very useful. A lot of users are implementing new packages and share the same with other users which helps to find a quick solution to our requirements. The open Source community provides help in case of any issues or solutions needed. Such as issues with finding a central repository to find out the implementation of packages. More searches are needed for finding the details of any package, for example, any package needs to search a lot to find out the details. Recommendations to others considering the product are much needed in the understanding of our language to proceed with the tool. Data Representation, Analysis, Visualization, Detailing, Training purpose as well.
  • Lot of Packages available to represent the data
  • Predictive and Visualization representation are very useful
  • Lot of users are implementing new packages and share the same with users which helps in find quick solution to our requirements
  • Open Source community as well provides help in case of any issues or solution needed
  • Issues with finding a central repository to find out the implementation of packages
  • Search more needed for finding the details of any package, for example, any package need to search a lot to find out the details
  • Tutorials for beginners to explain the navigation and details
Dashboard Sharing and Auto refresh data in shared environments. Sharing of a report based on the target audience Customize the reports to filter what should be shown in the report.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have three BI solutions within our business, Power BI, Qlik View and Qlik Sense. Primary management reporting, dashboards and report distribution are done with Sense, basic marketing views are done through View and most power analytics and ad-hoc analytical work is done via Power BI. We find Power BI is best when data resides in several places and mostly spreadsheets. Using Power BI to connect directly into source systems (even Microsoft branded products Azure SQL Server) cause the app to time out. So company-wide we use sense, and functional analysts across all departments have Power BI to dig deeper than Sense can go.
  • Data blending from several different files is a big hit with our Power BI users. We have so many excel and CSV files and many of them are not clean, so making use of the data cleaning and blending saves us from countless pivots and lookups to just get data worthy of analyzing.
  • The visualizations are top notch, and available without additional cost. Everything is in vibrant colors and crisp, clear lines that whatever your produce is clearly pleasing to the eye. From mapping down to pie charts, the visuals are well done.
  • The Beta preview is very helpful, not all software allows you to preview or use things in beta, but Power BI has a wonderful set of tools and visualizations you can add into your work with very little effort or complexity.
  • Power BI lacks in horsepower compared to other tools with more robust ETL components built in. Particularly if you connect to any type of source system database like SQL, you have to either have a SQL View built for you that limits the volume of data your bring in, or have solid knowledge of the SQL table structures to build yourself custom (and correct!) connections to the tables.
  • Security is not as robust as other BI tools, like Qlik Sense. We often need to restrict subsets of data by customer and even functional position of an individual within a customer. Power BI’s security seems to be built for using just within a company, so if you leverage your work outside the firewall there can be issues when figuring out security streams.
  • I do not like the pricing. It’s really a dirty trick, Microsoft goes around and says the product is free. Well, the stand-alone is free, yes, but you have to pay for the “enterprise” version so you can share files. They say it only costs $10 a month/user, which again is a white lie. You need much more IT infrastructure and people to build SQL views and Tabular Models so you can use the tool, and Microsoft does not tell you that. So we find it is a good stand-alone tool to analytics, but a fairly heavy cost structure if you roll it out enterprise-wide as compared to Qlik or Tableau (which are more expensive per license, but require less back-office support).
Power BI is great for power Excel users and what I call “data archeologists” or people who dig up old data and clean it up for modern usage. It strings many files together and lets you customize the connections and format of the data. It does not work well with large data set or pull data from large databases, you will find it timing out unless you limit the data set first with a SQL View or Tabular Model before going after it. Also, large data sets take forever to refresh and update, so if you have a lot if iterations, you will spend a lot of time going out for coffee while the data reloads. Other BI tools allow you to localize the data with the first load (Qlik QVD’s) so you can refresh quicker. Comparatively, a refresh of SQL data on Power BI took 45 minutes, the exact same data set would refresh in 30 seconds using Qlik Sense.
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