The Power of BI
September 01, 2017

The Power of BI

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

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

We are using the reporting features in Power BI, to track Account Receivable and Managed Service Profitability.

We currently use it to import templates of Excel files, and visual the data with its graphs. We also pull multiple data points from other applications we use to track VDI and other latency issues. We also have used it to show our managed service customers a custom dashboard they can dig into to see what we services we are performing in their environment.
  • The data input from multiple sources, such as excel, Salesforce, odbc connection. It handles data connections and data imports very well.
  • The ability to take static data and query it to make it dynamic is vital to the data scientist, this is something Power BI does very well.
  • Th e
  • The learning curve isn't huge, I was able to get some basic graphs up and running, and learn as I went.
  • Power Bi currently doesn't let you add your own connection packs, like we would like one for connectwise, but that is handled by the microsoft team.
  • Power Bi currently does not support Mac client and I have a hard time using it in my virtual machine.
  • The Power BI documentation and sample reports are not available for download and it is hard to recreate what they have done.
I have not used any Alternative products. A couple of the people that I work with have, but I have not.
Power BI is well suited for people who are using it to track and manage large data sets. We have a huge customer data base and we are able to slice and dice the data to meet our needs. I would also recommend the tool to anyone in the IT field who is looking for an opportunity to provide customers more value.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
7
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8
Report sharing and collaboration
7
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
7
Report Versioning
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
Delivery to Remote Servers
8
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
7
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
4
Multi-User Support (named login)
6
Role-Based Security Model
4
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
Single Sign-On (SSO)
4
REST API
6
Themeable User Interface (UI)
8