Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued) Reviews & Ratings 2025

Overview

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.

Learn from top reviewers

Microsoft cloud based amazing Reporting tool for

Rating: 8 out of 10

November 9, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

Power BI is being used as a primary reporting tool across whole organization. It provides attractive GUI compare to other existing tools such as Qlikview and Qliksense. Also i...

Shiv Shrotriya

Analyst - Information Technology

datawarehousing/BI developer

Varian Medical system

3 years of experience

Excellent program for manipulation and presentation of statistical data.

Rating: 9 out of 10

July 17, 2019

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

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 excellen...

Denis Pereira

Technician - Information Technology

Programmer Analyst

Alcoa Aluminiun S/A

1 year of experience

Powerful, easy to use, no-nonsense visualization

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 15, 2019

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

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 trend...

Jeremiah Miller

Director - Information Technology

Associate Director IT Infrastructure

Mennonite Central Committee

2 years of experience

Power BI Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

June 6, 2016

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

It is used for pilot projects to asses the benefits of use.

Richard Lorenz

Analyst - Information Technology

Manager of Compliance and Business Performance

Computershare Australia

1 year of experience

Power BI to reduce BS!

Rating: 7 out of 10

June 1, 2016

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

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 ca...

Daniel J. Lewis

Consultant - Information Technology

System Administrator

vdiscovery

2 years of experience

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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

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Pricing

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Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)

N/A

Unavailable

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

No setup fee

Offerings

Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

3 people also want pricing

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Qlik Sense

$20

per month per user (10 user minimum)

What is Qlik Sense?

Qlik Sense® is a self-service BI platform for data discovery and visualization. It supports a full range of analytics use cases—data governance, pixel-perfect reporting, and collaboration. Its Associative Engine indexes and connects relationships between data points for creating actionable insights.

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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9

Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

9.5

Avg 8.0

9
Drill-down analysis
(11) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
9
Formatting capabilities
(11) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
(6) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
10
Report sharing and collaboration
(11) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.5

Avg 8.3

10
Publish to Web
(11) Ratings
10
Publish to PDF
(10) Ratings
9
Report Versioning
(6) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
9.6
Report Delivery Scheduling
(4) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
8.7
Delivery to Remote Servers
(3) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers

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.

10

Avg 7.9

10
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
(10) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
(11) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
10
Predictive Analytics
(8) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.8

Avg 8.5

10
Multi-User Support (named login)
(10) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
9
Role-Based Security Model
(8) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
10
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
(9) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
(5) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

9.5

Avg 7.8

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.8

Avg 7.8

9
REST API
(2) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
8
Javascript API
(2) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
8
iFrames
(1) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
8
Java API
(1) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
7
Themeable User Interface (UI)
(2) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
7
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
(2) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API

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Product Details

About
Tech Details
FAQs

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Report Formatting Templates and Integration with R or other statistical packages and Report sharing and collaboration highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).

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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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(1-5 of 15)

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Powerful, easy to use, no-nonsense visualization

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 15, 2019

JM

Jeremiah Miller

Associate Director IT Infrastructure

Mennonite Central Committee (Non-Profit Organization Management, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

View profile

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're already using Office 365, Power BI for O365 is an easy choice. Start playing around with the free version and then easily add individual Pro licenses with little risk. However, if you anticipate using this with many users, it can get expensive quickly.

Power BI for Office 365 - A compelling data analytics platform for personal and team use

Rating: 8 out of 10

May 21, 2014

KR

Ken Raetz

Manager, DW/BI Services

LBMC Technologies, LLC (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

1 year of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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!

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well-suited: In small-to-medium size businesses (SMB), Power BI is a wonderful solution. The speed to design and deploy a highly valuable solution makes it a fantastic selection for these businesses. Also, individual or small teams, even in large corporations, can benefit from it. Finally, accounting, finance, and business analysts are the "sweet-spot audience" for Power BI. Also, Power BI is great for designing prototypes or mockups of future enterprise capabilities.

Less Appropriate: Information Technology team developing an enterprise analytics solution. Power BI is not intended to be an enterprise solution. Power BI is fully capable of handling millions of rows of data for analysis. However, in more complex analytical scenarios, where complex rules are incorporated into the data model over VERY LARGE sets of data (in particular, dimensional/structural data), the PowerPivot solution is not as strong. It is generally recommended that you upgrade to SQL Server Analysis Services for these scenarios.

Power BI to reduce BS!

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

June 01, 2016

DJ

Daniel J. Lewis

System Administrator

vdiscovery (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

View profile

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's very flashy, and cost effective (if you are a gold partner which my clients were so we bundled their packages). It also does a great job compiling printable/email-able PDFs for reference. Another great feature is being able to display statistics on TVs for either internal or external use. It lets everyone know whats going on; being transparent.

Almost there

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 04, 2014

EV

Eltjo Verweij

Data Analyst

Vierzicht.nl (Logistics and Supply Chain, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

Verified User

1 year of experience

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Power BI is great for a daily or weekly report, or any ad-hoc queries. Ideally, all users should have Windows 8 and Excel 2013. If you have more than 500,000 records or need real-time updates, you might want to look for another BI tool.