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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

(26-50 of 140)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
From being able to import data from a plethora of sources and clean and establish relationships between them; create sublime real-time dashboards; to sharing them with your team members to collaborate, nothing can beat the comprehensive features of Power BI with the kind of aggressive pricing that they have set. The available charts and figures are so pleasing to the eyes that the resultant dashboard feels like a renaissance painting.
Greg Watkins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For us, any type of revenue reporting, and being able to ingest different data sources like SFDC and ChurnZero, and even data from our own internal platform is huge. The flexibility allows you to really get a good grip on the business. For Finance or CSM teams, I can see a lot of value, depending on how you are attempting to measure the business. From an end user, since the platform is so quick, it allows me to free up time, so I can spend on other strategic areas of my day to day.
Christian Maxwell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I think it is well suited to pull large masses of information into a usable report that can be used to analyze trends and current standings. It is a much more powerful, configurable, and easier to use Excel pivot table. I don't think it would be as appropriate to use for smaller data if you only have a few hundred points of data; Excel is probably still better to use.
Dustin Ghia | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • [Microsoft] Power BI is very useful to make cool reports from the scratch with just a little of knowledge, gathering data from a lot of sources.
  • Power Query is not the most efficient tool to prepare data neither to analyze it. Power Query language is very complex an the final result can easily be achieved using standard SQL [when] working on a database source, or using other tools like [Python] with Elastic Search.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Good to use when the business involves complex calculations and requires intensive data modeling. Visuals scaling is not as great as other BI tools, but it will be useful to cover a lot of information in a single view. Covers almost every need of a BI developer or an analyst and also has support to import great works from third-party developers.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is suited for teams with a lot of reporting and dashboard creation requests as it gets the job done even though the learning curve is steep. It is also suited to the situations where data is scattered across different platforms and tools and needs to be combined to generate reports and insights.
Alex Brielmann | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft] Power BI seems to sit slightly in the middle of the road as a data aggregation and visualization tool. It has the look and feel of an old tool that should be mastered by now, but it's output does not seem to match that. Our team had to constantly fix errors and bugs, which is not what you are looking for from a tool coming from Microsoft. On the other side, it isn't as user friendly or pretty as a tool like Domo. It somewhat lies in the middle on both functionality and user experience.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is extremely well suited to present and analyze data. The Decision-making process not only benefits from Power BI's reports and dashboards but also from the possibility to interact with the presented data and mold it accordingly to the need of every user. This solution definitely makes reporting easier, cleaner, and way more fruitful.
April 30, 2021

The Industry Standard

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Power BI is very useful to congregate large data sets in a concise, attractive way to share with senior management. It can be automated with data queries to pull in databases and refresh on a regular cycle. It's great for scenarios where you have regularly changing data being driven by another tool. For example, we use Clarity PPM to push data into Power BI.
Gabrielle Wayman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If you’re like our team and need a way to reduce redundant data reporting requests for a particular group of users, Power BI will suit you. You’ll need someone experienced with BI tools to help you get set up, as it’s not designed for laypeople. Once it’s set up, though, the reporting is easy to use and clear to understand.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is particularly well suited for environments with disparate data sources that need to be presented logically and thoughtfully across systems and analytical engines.

Power BI is less appropriate when a platform (ERP for example) may have native, out of the box, robust reporting, that is directly tied to the data models in the application.
Luciana Montivero | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I think Power BI really addresses the goal of what it was meant to do. It has a powerful interface, an easy integration with most data sources, which makes it easy to just import some information and start playing with your data. If you want a fast, powerful data analytics tool or a control panel to show fast reports, this is the tool you need. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to add a SQL-powered data source, add some visualization tools, and then just try different things! It's a truly complete and intuitive tool that will help you take real advantage of all the information your company does.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Best suited for daily reporting purpose. It is very user friendly so people from non technical background can use it. Also the drag and drop feature helps to check the different scenarios. It also helps to connect directly to R scripts.

Less appropriate scenario would be when explaining through different graphs, it doesn't have a lot of options to choose from.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is well suited for reports that were formerly in Excel. They will be presented in an easy to use and view fashion. Additionally the visuals are interactive making for a pleasing experience on the end user side. Overall, it is a great tool for data analysis, and being able to view data in different ways and make ups.
Berlynn Pierce | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a marketer I am much less familiar with the tool than those who build the report like our finance and data teams. I don't find it intuitive or user friendly as I try to update things as simple as a date range, search within a list. I initially tried to download the app but there was so much data in such a small space that I didn't find it useful. I would much rather use Adobe for reporting and appreciate the weekly reports that are sent.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Well suited to scenarios where you're connecting to data sources such as MS SQL Server and need to be able to automate the display of data under a common set of repeatable filters and plots. Also great for organizations already within the MS ecosystem since you can integrate with MS Teams, etc.
Less well suited if you need more flexibility and dynamic changes around your visualizations. MS Power BI dashboards are more rigid and less suitable for cases where you want to use the dashboard to dynamically drill into your data and slice it multiple ways quickly.
April 27, 2021

Do try PowerBi !

Ilektra Skepetari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If a certain company is already using Microsoft cloud services, [Microsoft Power BI] is a life saver. It is extremely easy to load data sources from Azure and then the simple data manipulations provide very insightful charts. However for very complicated manipulations it can be quite slow - in this case the automatic background data refresh is necessary.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft] Power BI has helped us consolidate multiple data points from excel into clean visuals to explain complex data into visual storytelling.

In one example, we had website inventories from over 25 websites that we consolidated into one summarized view, breaking down page types, format types, template types, etc. all into a clean set of visuals.
April 27, 2021

Power BI Review

Akhilesh Arya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Data is the new fuel, we all know that but to use the data we have to derive insights from the data, this tool is best suited for analytics and research. Doesn't matter if you are running a small departmental store or an organization, data analytics will help you to grow faster.
In addition to that for researchers this tool is very useful.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used a handful of BI tools and Power BI is hands down the best in my opinion. I use it for answering day to day questions and it really shines when you need to provide data to a wide audience and people want to look at it there own way. Power BI is not Excel though so if users are looking to do data manipulation on the consumer side then a BI tool is not what your are looking for.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Power BI is an excellent choice for any company looking to get into the Visualization space, or considering a change or supplement of existing BI tools. With both cloud-based and on-prem versions available, delivery methods fit with any on-prem, hybrid, or cloud-based approach. Obviously, from a cloud perspective, this would lend itself better to companies with an existing investment in Azure. The desktop tool provides an easy-to-use experience that will be familiar with advanced Excel users. This allows power users in the business a faster track to develop data models than many other tools. The visualizations are at least on par with other top tools, and the open source nature of developing visuals has led to a rich marketplace providing additional capabilities. There is a reason Power BI is leading in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This has been such a great tool for our digital shelf strategy, but I think there are really endless applications that it could be used for. Having a pro user or a data scientist working with your team is key to realizing all the benefits though, otherwise, there is a steep learning curve.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I think the entry point for Power BI is good, especially for businesses already joined to Microsoft in an Office 365 environment. It typically plays nice with any source data, and it has some very powerful display options. My stakeholders really like what we're doing with it.
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