One stop solution for your data visuluzation
We use Power BI for our daily reporting visualization. We often use it for analyzing big data and creating impactful visuals from them. We …
Starting at $10 per month per user
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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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Pricing
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
Product Demos
Microsoft Power BI Guided Tour
powerbi.microsoft.com
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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).
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(1782)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-1 of 1)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 02, 2022
Power BI - not quite there yet, but getting there.
[Microsoft] Power BI is currently used as an alternative to Tableau, with its lower cost and more robust built in modelling, ETL functionality and familiarity for users used to the Microsoft stack. As an alternative to Tableau in the organization, it is currently deployed on a very limited basis as Tableau is still the preferred platform for creating dashboards across the majority of the organization.
- Excel integration, allowing users more familiar with Excel to transition over with relative ease.
- Inexpensive license model, compared to Tableau which can get very expensive depending on your needs.
- Updates, by far Power BI is one of the most updated apps currently. With monthly releases of new features and fixes.
- Poor interface, not as intuitive as Tableau and very typical of Microsoft where it can easily get you 80% of the way there, while getting the last 20% is seemingly impossible.
- Not enough flexibility in formatting, whereas in Tableau getting something to look 'pixel perfect' takes a lot of effort, in Power BI in a lot instances 'pixel perfect' is not even an option given the lack of controls in formatting.
- Reliance on Excel means data related best practices are naturally hindered by the kind of 'dirty' data that is typically used in Excel as opposed to cleaned up tables sitting in data warehouses.
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3.7
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4.0
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5.6
56.66666666666667%
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50%
5.0
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- Positive - Allowing users to migrate from Excel to a more modern platform saving hundreds of man hours from dealing with poor data practices and VBA related shenanigans.
- Positive - Good and inexpensive entry point to serve as a starting point on educating developers and end users on data visualization best/worst practices.
- Negative - Another barrier to hiring, as users are expected to have Power BI experience which lowers the number of potential candidates.
In any [Microsoft] Power BI to Tableau comparison, especially in organizations that uses both platforms the most important aspect is which platform came first. As any platform that is widely adopted first will naturally have the 'first mover' advantage.
In this case where in my organization we had Tableau first, [Microsoft] Power BI is only picked in cases where Tableau licensing costs become an issue. Whereas in other organizations where [Microsoft] Power BI is the first option, Tableau is rarely picked as an alternative as [Microsoft] Power BI is deemed to be 80% 'good enough' for 10% of the cost. The only major issue being if you needed that extra 20% in which [Microsoft] Power BI will struggle to deliver.
In this case where in my organization we had Tableau first, [Microsoft] Power BI is only picked in cases where Tableau licensing costs become an issue. Whereas in other organizations where [Microsoft] Power BI is the first option, Tableau is rarely picked as an alternative as [Microsoft] Power BI is deemed to be 80% 'good enough' for 10% of the cost. The only major issue being if you needed that extra 20% in which [Microsoft] Power BI will struggle to deliver.
- no training
Plenty of resources on youtube and community forums for a beginner to pick up the product and run with it in a very short amount of time.
While for anyone familiar with Microsoft applications, training would mostly be less pertinent than simply just jumping into the application and learning on the fly.
While for anyone familiar with Microsoft applications, training would mostly be less pertinent than simply just jumping into the application and learning on the fly.