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July 17, 2019
The Microsoft Power BI has been used within the company for a number of years. It is most commonly used in the financial sector of the company and has been delivering excellent results and handling facilities for managers. It shows in detail each value, graphic and is very easy to understand. In the presentations, the software is entering the place of excel.
- Helps to create machine learning models and find cognitive insights
- Connects to virtually all existing data sources (Google Analytics, SalesForce, and others)
- High performance and high compression ratio
- Very easy to implement
- Need to have more advanced knowledge in excel
- Some elements are limited
January 14, 2019
Power BI is being used primarily by our donor relations team to create visual dashboards of giving profiles, linked with other data sources. This helps us to easily spot trends in donors and gifts, linked to location and other anonymous demographic data. It is a powerful but easy to use visualization tool for modeling data.
- Data visualization - it's easy for users to visualize data using many built-in controls.
- Distributing reports and dashboards and delivering in real time on the web. Reports can be updated in real-time and display updated results automatically to decision makers.
- Pulling data from diverse data sources. Data can be pulled from a wide variety of databases, even flat-file text.
- Power BI is not a classic reporting tool, so it can't easily be used for financial reports.
- It can be quite expensive. Even those just viewing reports need a paid license to consume shared content.
- Error logging is very unhelpful. When something goes wrong with a dataset, it can be very difficult to see where the problem is.
It is used for pilot projects to asses the benefits of use.
- Beautiful visuals
- Ease of use
- Powerful data manipulation language
- I'd like to be able to use visuals based on different data sets in the same page.
- The visuals are limited - I'd like to see a ribbon plot for example.
- Would like to be able to use different data representations on the same visual. There's currently an ability to put lines on histograms but no ability to, for example, add points to a histogram or line plot. I understand some of these may be in development but you will never be able to create visuals for each possible combination. You need a way of combining two visuals into one - e.g. line and points.
- DAX is very powerful but a bit complicated for some users. I think you need to make some of the functionality that's available in DAX exposed at the UI level.
- The R visual gives the flexibility to plot a lot of stuff but it is limited by only being able to plot what's passed in the dataset.
- You need a text entry box that you can filter datasets by.
I've supported Power BI for companies within the job recruiting area. We implemented the software for staff or more importantly the recruiters to upload data such as health care, real estate, IT, hedge funds and law firms to see what markets were most active and how to distribute staff for recruiting needed employees for their clients. There was no problem; it helped my clients focus on the needed markets with the visuals and dashboard so managers and "higher ups" can put together a strategy.
- The dashboard is super easy to use. The GUI is flexible and updates as needed
- Customization was key for individuals and presentation purposes.
- Integration with Office 365 is another plus. The licensing made sense when pitching the proposal when a client is already running Office 365.
- Well in general Microsoft support needs CPR.
- There are bugs such as some items you'd think were allowed on the dashboard are not options however from reading they are continuing to improve these concerns/features.
- Implementation can be finicky depending on how the current environment is configured.
September 16, 2016
I am a single person putting together reports/dashboards to send out for others to interpret. The biggest problem right now is there is no direct connection to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.
- The visuals are excellent
- The interaction of data between graphs and charts
- The way the program saves how data sheets are manipulated.
- Connection to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
- Dashboards need to automatically update when I upload a report
- Increase speed
This differs from company to company. I have implemented solutions for a single line of business within a company and across all lines within a company. Typically during a deployment, we will develop and release content for a single business line and then move to others. Power BI specifically will display the data you have prepared in the background. It can also be used, by power users / analysts, to explore their own data and to make their own analysis without having to go through IT once a solid data model is in place.
- Easily create graphs and visualizations.
- Distributing dashboards & content packs
- Finding inconsistencies in data.
- If a data source is deployed directly to PowerBI.com without using Power BI desktop, you will not have the ability to troubleshoot connectivity issues which often arise during Metadata and other changes to the model.
- Not for typical static reporting.
- No row based security within Power BI itself.
December 13, 2018
PowerBI is used within our organisation to display various data and metrics in a visual way, but also allows exporting where required to allow users to interact with the data directly in Excel. It is used by all staff at our organisation. For some it is a simple snapshot view of some data to show where we as a company are right now, for others they use it to drill into sales or product data to give them a quick way to see this data without having to use the clunky reports/interface of our ERP system. The product has allowed us to move from just Excel-based reports to dashboards that show visually what is happening. It also provides the option of simple controls to slice and filter the data to requirements. It is simple to use and create visualisations where previously we had to use a separate system for that.
- Easy to make visual dashboards from SQL queries. Previously we had to use a third party application that had to run on a web server that was so complex to setup and run. PowerBI removes all that.
- Ability to control who/which group has access to each dashboard or report. Ties in well with the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem.
- Has many connectors to allow pulling data from various systems, both onsite (via gateway) or external (via APIs), and join the data to create a report/dashboard.
- Ability to show data but also export the data, if permitted.
- Easy to show PowerBI dashboards on SharePoint or on other websites via embedded code.
- Once a report uses a Pro feature, it needs a Pro license, but a lot of these are just basic features and the users are just viewing and not using any of the advanced features. It would be nice to have a Pro / Viewing license and Pro / Interacting license.
- Limited amount of refreshes per 24 hours period. 5 refreshes as of Dec 2018.
- The emailing of reports is there but kind of basic. It will do a screen grab of a report, which doesn't turn out very well.
We gather all of our sales and digital marketing data into BI and create reports for management that really show our effectiveness in the world. There are lots of extra features you get with this that can be customized and modified. Quite a bit better than the previous software we used.
- We can view our whole business on one dashboard which we share at meetings
- There report views are outstanding but could use more colour options
- We are trying to embed their visuals for our app on mobile
- I can not seem to find out how to export their files in other formats
- They use SQL but we are moving to non SQL servers soon
- Sometimes the data gets too squished on small monitors
Power BI for office 365 (now simply become {Power BI}, is a unique and general platform for managing business intelligence through Microsoft tools. The platform is then subdivided into services rather than desktop or mobile. Thanks to this, in my experience, it was possible to create customized and performing BI tools.
- perfectly integrated with microsoft tools
- objects can be easily shared in mobile environments
- attractive dashboards
- in the standard version it is not possible to do analysis by excel
- the Pro version is required for sharing jobs
- only a few data sources allow real time connections
In our organization, Power BI is used for ad-hoc data analysis and some regular reports, next to other BI tools. Only data analysts use it to compile reports that are easily viewed in Excel by non-Power BI users. It is the tool of choice for combining data from multiple sources.
- Ease of use. Most people have experience working with Excel. If you know how to create pivots, you can use Power BI.
- Data extraction and transformation (ETL). ETL is a joy with Power Query. It is intuitive, simple and a magical experience to transform poor data into something useful.
- Visuals. Power BI is beautiful to behold, especially Power View.
- Maps. The interactive maps are great built-in tools.
- Cost You cannot find anything cheaper than Power BI, unless you want to give it to every user in your company.
- Automatic updates. A choice of a daily or weekly refresh is too slow for this era of real-time updates.
- Speed. It takes a while to load all the data into memory. Data with more than one million records will take a few minutes to refresh. Once it is loaded, it starts being fairly fast.
- Changing queries in Power Query. Although Microsoft is working on it, when you delete a step in Power Query, you might have to rebuild your data model. This defeats the purpose of having a fantastic user interface, in which it is simple to change queries.
May 21, 2014
We are a Microsoft partner, with my line of business focusing on creating data-driven solutions for our customers, ranging from IT-sponsored enterprise data warehouse initiatives to small team and personal business analytics solutions. My consulting team uses Power BI for primarily two purposes: 1) to create pilot/proof-of-concept solutions for our customers to help launch them on their BI journey; 2) to perform data analytics on larger enterprise data-driven initiatives. The agility of the Excel-based solution, combined with the power of the in-memory PowerPivot data engine, more than meets our need for the these 2 purposes. Our customers appreciate it because it allows them to remain in their very familiar Excel environment.
We are working with mostly finance/accounting departments, and in some cases, business analysts (or "power users") within the business community (sales, marketing, etc.). We are solving finance challenges like Accounts Receivable collections, along with operational challenges such as monitoring year-over-year sales metrics and comparing them to budgets that come from two data locations. In addition, we're solving painful "process issues" like trying to import multiple files into a single data set. We are literally reducing process time from days to minutes!
- Provides flexible and powerful analytics on large datasets. PowerPivot, the in-memory database engine, can handle 100's of millions of rows of data, giving 1-2 second response time for aggregate data analysis.
- Provides an adaptable environment to perform analytics. When combining data together in PowerPivot, you have the ability to create Excel tables, combine them with database queries, and then join that with data coming from a web-service provider.
- Powerful web-based deployment capabilities. SharePoint technologies have been a part of the Microsoft BI solution stack for some time. Office 365 provides a powerful way to deploy the Power BI analytics to a wider audience in a secure way, allowing for flexible access from most any device, whether phone, tablet, or computer.
- Power Query, one of the components of Power BI, is one of my favorite parts of the solution. Basically, you have at your disposal an end-user "ETL" (Extract, Transform, Load) tool, all within Excel. We've reduced multi-step, manual processes to single-click, automatic application of business rules to collect and transform data into a usable format. No need for VLOOKUP any longer with this capability.
- Licensing: Currently, Microsoft has a fixed pricing model for Office 365 users, regardless of role/function of the user. Most organizations have a small number of "power users" that create usable content and many more "consumers" that simply view/run reports created by power users. Microsoft does not differentiate between these users, and thus the pricing limits organizations from large deployments of the software.
- Version incompatibility: Excel 2010 and 2013 workbooks are compatible with each other. However, workbooks created in 2010 that include PowerPivot databases must be upgraded to 2013 format to run in 2013. Subsequently, you cannot open these upgraded PowerPivot workbooks in 2010. This requires ALL users to be on the same version.
- Visualization: Excel charting with PowerPivot workbooks is adequate for many users. Power View also contains a number of GREAT visualizations, including animated bubble charts and a very flexible dashboard/report design canvas. However, compared to some of the other self-service BI solutions, it is still limited in its visualization capabilities.
My organization is not using Office 365 yet. I did the research myself and have a given demo to my organization. We may purchase and use it.
- It's a self service BI. It's very easy to discover, analyze and visualize data.
September 19, 2016
We are using Power BI to create better visual representations for both internal use as well as customer facing analysis. It's not adopted across the entire organization yet but we are in the process of doing so.
- Ease of data import
- Easy to learn the basic operation of the software
- Like many Microsoft products, you can get by with a small understanding of the product, but to truly realize the entire potential does take a while to learn.
- Hooking up SQL databases to the cloud version is a more complex than just querying right into the database from the desktop version.
I'm a Senior BI Consultant, and have been developing reports with various tools for many years. I started with Crystal Reports, then Hyperion (Brio) Interactive Reporting, Microsoft SSRS, and then Excel Power Pivot. Once I started developing Excel Power Pivot reports and analytical solutions, I was hooked. When the addition of the other Powers: Power Query, Power View, and Power MAPS, I can say I am one of the biggest evangelists of the Microsoft BI Stack out there, and no, I don't work for Microsoft. I don't often look for work developing Power BI Solutions, the work finds me, and I am always glad to work with a client that knows benefits of utilizing Excel to it's maximum capacity. I mean, everyone already has Excel, and finding resources to support what I've built once I move on to the next project is always fairly painless. I'm glad to leave a maintainable solution in the hands of my client, and Power BI is the only BI Development tool that does ETL, Data Models, Drag and Drop report building, Pivot Tables, and more in an environment that's well known.
- Drag and drop report development
- Flexibility with Power Views, Pivot Tables, ETL, and Data Modeling all in one
- Price
- Power View is still in the early stages, so customization of the look and feel is a bit limited.
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued) Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
What is Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)?
Power BI for Office 365 allowed users to model and analyze data, and query large datasets with complex natural language queries. It has been discontinued in favor of other editions of Power BI going forward.
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued) Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |