Good for visualisations and reporting!
March 19, 2019

Good for visualisations and reporting!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft BI

Microsoft BI is used by a few data teams in my organisation in conjunction with other business intelligence tools. One of the primary reasons for using Microsoft BI is its simplicity, user friendliness, and good palate of visualisation options. Unlike most other standard BI tools in the market, Microsoft BI does provide a good array of graphical representations - thereby making it a good choice for reporting purposes.
  • Good range of visualisation features.
  • Very easy to setup and get onboard.
  • Handles data integration from multiple sources decently well.
  • Not advisable to use Microsoft BI as a standalone primary tool for data management.
  • The process of moulding or repurposing data is not easy.
  • Integrating Microsoft BI with non-Microsoft tools is a huge pain.
Unlike Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (OBICS), Microsoft BI offers a good range of visualisation options. However, it falls behind in terms of data management capabilities. If your requirements are more data intensive and less reporting intensive, then Microsoft BI may not be the best tool.

In terms of similarities, Microsoft BI is closest to Tableau - however, I would still recommend Tableau as a better option than Microsoft BI because Tableau allows data integration across multiple sources comfortably.
If your primary use case requires the use of several visualisation options and graphical representations, then Microsoft BI might be a good option to use. However, if your data management needs do not revolve around reporting, then it is better to go with other standard business intelligence tools available in the market like Oracle BI or Tableau.

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
Drill-down analysis
7
Formatting capabilities
9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
6
Report sharing and collaboration
8
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
8
Report Versioning
6
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
Delivery to Remote Servers
7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
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