Power BI will put an S on your chest
June 19, 2018

Power BI will put an S on your chest

Jason Leidig | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft BI

It is currently being used at a program level by project controls to provide project performance data to the project team. Engagement with Power BI allows the different stakeholders for the project to engage with performance data providing them the opportunity to be more responsive to issues and opportunities. It keeps everyone that is a part of the project on course and helps drive collaboration with the team members.
  • The layout of Power BI is very intuitive. Someone that is familiar with Excel and working with Charts and Graphs in that environment will find the learning curve a rather short one to start using Power BI.
  • I like the way Power BI fits an assortment of users and how the functionality that you engage is replicated in Excel, that being Power Query and Power Pivot. So what you learn in one tool can be readily applied towards the other which allows you to more effectively apply your training.
  • I appreciate how Microsoft is working to develop tools that go a long ways to empowering the end user. Prior to Power BI I would have had to consult with a "BI" professional to develop a dashboard. With Power BI I don't have to consult with anyone, I can work to put together the dash board I want and using a tool set that is really robust and allows me to engage an enormous amount of data. It's provides a great deal of flexibility and the types of data I can connect to.
  • Updates...Microsoft is working diligently to keep Power BI current with monthly updates. They do a really good job of listening to the end user, if there is functionality not currently present just give them a month or so.
  • Just to be clear, even though it's easy to get going right out of the gate with Power BI it provides plenty of opportunities to create some really sophisticated reporting solutions. With DAX in Power Pivot and M language in Power Query, you are provided with plenty of head room to do some really amazing things in Power BI.
  • Training...there are resources across the web for learning and growing your skills and Power BI. And what's even better is the majority of those resources are free.
  • Data engagement, when presenting the data to the end user Power BI goes a long way to allowing that end user to engage the data and begin to identify root cause by simply interacting with the graph/chart/data set. It allows for really fluid engagement. Prior to Power BI so many times during the presentation of data we often times ended the engagement with that data with more questions than what were answered. With Power BI, more often than not, the end user is able to get answers to the questions by simply clicking on the data in the graph/chart/dataset to see the details. This tool really does have the capacity to make you look like a rock star.
  • The desktop version is free, monthly updates, free training resources...what's not to love. I'm sure that someone with a higher degree of technical learning will be able to better articulate some negatives for Power BI, I'm just not that guy. I have nothing but appreciation for Power BI.
Flexibility, engagement, training resources, updates, cost, implementation, ease of use, support; these are the reasons why I would recommend Power BI. Power BI is best suited for situations where collaboration is needed among several different groups who are working concurrently on different activities. Where there are multiple levels of data that need to be parsed through. It's difficult to think of a scenario where it wouldn't be beneficial other than the obvious.

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
10
Report Formatting Templates
10
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
10
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
10
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
10
Report Delivery Scheduling
10
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
10
Predictive Analytics
10
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
Not Rated
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
10
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
10
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