Power BI - not quite there yet, but getting there.
Updated August 02, 2022

Power BI - not quite there yet, but getting there.

David Shi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Power BI Desktop

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

[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.
  • 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.

Do you think Microsoft Power BI delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Power BI's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Power BI live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Microsoft Power BI go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft Power BI again?

Yes

For any users with a heavy background in Microsoft applications, the interface will generally be regarded as familiar but not excellent.

Functionality wise it works but is still a bit clunky, which is very typical of your average Microsoft application. Technically the product itself is excellent in that it does what you need it to, albeit sometimes in a less ideal manner compared to the likes of Tableau where the overall usability appears to take on a more user centric approach as opposed to just plugging in as many functionality as you can with [Microsoft] Power BI.
Compared to its peers, this is one area [Microsoft] Power BI is undoubtly number one. No other application currently receives the same frequency of updates as [Microsoft] Power BI. At the current rate of improvement, we can expect a plethora of new features and fixes every single year and onwards for the foreseeable future, with Microsoft appearing to dedicate significant resources to ensure [Microsoft] Power BI stays relevant now as well as the future.
For any instance where Tableau is too expensive as an option, [Microsoft] Power BI is the natural choice. Also in cases where the end user is operating in a Microsoft stack heavy environment where they're expected to perform both the data modelling and wrangling as a data engineer type role, along with the actual creation of dashboards in a data vis and dashboard reporting developer type role.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
2
Customizable dashboards
5
Report Formatting Templates
4
Drill-down analysis
7
Formatting capabilities
2
Integration with R or other statistical packages
2
Report sharing and collaboration
5
Publish to Web
5
Publish to PDF
7
Report Versioning
5
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
Delivery to Remote Servers
4
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
6
Predictive Analytics
5
Multi-User Support (named login)
4
Role-Based Security Model
5
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
4
Single Sign-On (SSO)
7
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
Not Rated
iFrames
Not Rated
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Not Rated
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated

Microsoft Power BI 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.