Microsoft Power BI reviews

Similarity with excel and power query. Since most of us know excel and worked on DAX, I found Power BI very user friendly. Also the visualisation of this software is very attractive and modern looking.
As a BI tool, this can process Big data from multiple sources and automate things which helps us to reduce unnecessary time building reports and dashboards.
Also this has the functionality to share/embed which helps to make report sharing easy without hassle.

Data visualisation panel should be more easy to use.

What I’ve enjoy about using Power BI is that have simplified the process of creating and sharing reports. It’s a very helpful tool to visualize data, and you can connected with several data sources like Excel, SQL and Access. You can share a report via link and you can choose the option that works best for you, like if, everyone that have the link can access to the report or some specific people. The people that have access can view and interact with the report but not modify it. An interesting and helpful feature is mobile layout view. You can create views of reports adapted to mobiles. I learned to create dashboards in Power BI by myself, there’s no need of a full training before start using this tool.

Something that had me struggling is that the data source must be as simple and clean as it could be or it may present execution issues. It often shows running issues for certain inquiries.

1. It is very easy to use and it is avery good low code platform .
2. Power query console is a very good functionality in power BI .

1. License structure is bit complex with power bi part of power apps platform

It has a friendly and intuitive interface that makes it easy to import data, cross-check data, perform calculations, and display graphics. It also identifies trends and patterns and predicts future events.

Requires knowledge of Excel at an intermediate level and learning time in the use of the platform.

The Microsoft power BI is a great tool for visualising data. We can easily upload data, use slicer, use graphical visual and link up the data easily. Data from various can be included in the same report. I found Microsoft power BI easy to use as compared to other visualisation tool.

It is difficult to learn at your own. I found that Microsoft Power BI is limited when it comes to the ability to connect SAS dataset.

What I like about this application is that, it is a great application to visualize data with a great capacity to import data, what I like about this apply is that from its board I can access a large number of tools the organization, as see The performance of my team members, the state of the offers, and also see the income of your company among others plus a great application.

What I like least is that when you start using this application it becomes very difficult to learn since it is a bit complicated to understand if you use it for the first time because of the large number of options and tools that it offers.

It is a good tool for data representation and decision making due to its ease of use. I like datagrid, because you can play with this tool and show data dynamically.

Also you have possibility to share this report with others people through power bi report server, I like it.

For moment, I don't have cons to say. For me It is keeping a good tool for model and visualizate data.

Everything is very easy to use and handy, in any way you need it's appreciated.

None from my view, overall good highly recommend

PowerBI interfaces seamlessly with our LMS system and gives us a real time snapshot of the current status of all of employees at multiple locations across the country. With the large amount of information it’s still easy to drill down to the individual level and helps us to not only identify large trends but to address single employee needs at the same time.

There is a very steep learning curve. Sharing dashboards is not always intuitive or easy.

My team recently switched to Power BI. I can see how may features are available for various users, such as budgets, long term financial planning and records consolidation, project management, and a wide array of other features for the business team.

The learning curve is steep - we have been using it for a few months and I still do not understand how to operate the software effectively. My team has experiences similar issues with integration.

It is a good data analytics and visualization software and its ability to import data from multiples sources is a great feature.

What I like about Power BI is that from the dashboard, we are able to get a great overview of the organization including the market analysis, the status of our current deals, track the performance of each team member, view the gross income and company financials.

The ability to filter to the specific metric we are interested in is an amazing feature. It enables us to review our marketing expenses and also see how each team member's activities contribute to the bottom line. It is also easy to forecast cash inflows and outflows.
Power BI makes it possible to customize the visualizations and it also has the option to upload and view data from Excel.

Frequent upgrades from Microsoft keep Power BI functioning well.

It has both freemium and premium versions. You can try it out and have a feel of the software before you choose to purchase it.

It can be a bit complex due to the fact that it is a collection of various tools and you have to learn what each component does and how it relates to the rest of the structure.

Working with large data sets causes lags especially when on the free version. The free version has very limited features and doesn't give you the true performance capability of the software. This can however be solved by upgrading to Pro or Premium.

The user interface is a bit crowded with too many icons which hinders a clear view of the dashboard.

The thing that most sets PowerBI apart from comparable business intelligence solutions is the lower cost of multi-user deployment within an organization. PowerBI is part of a Microsoft Office 365 subscription package for businesses and you only need to pay an additional 15USD/month for each additional admin/analyst account you add. This is a stark contrast to similar solutions like Tableau, which charge a monthly fee for each user and has a minimum user count that equates to roughly a 15,000USD/year license cost as minimum. If your organisation is already invested in the Microsoft Office ecosystem this could be the ideal solution for you if you need to keep costs down.

It can't connect to google sheets and every other business intelligence platform can. This can be really limiting if your business uses a variety of SaaS solutions since many offer the simplest data integration options via Google sheets.

PowerBI also has real issues with external sharing of dashboards/reports. You only have the option of publishing internally (visible to your organization's users) or publishing publically (indexed in search engines). There is no option of sharing dashboards and reports to individuals outside your organization via a login, like what is done with Google Data Studio.

PowerBI also has a steep learning curve and uses 3 coding languages (DAX, M, and SQL). It's more complicated than it needs to be but it's relational database modeling has proven a good one and competitors have copied PowerBI's approach in recent years (Tableau).

Near-constant updates and feature additions. It's exceptionally easy to throw together a Power BI Report across a bunch of different data sources and then share it with 1 or 100 people. Tons of connectivity support - if you have data somewhere it can *probably* read it into a model for consumption. The "front end" development is pretty straightforward with the ability to get very fancy with custom visuals - although you need to be a real developer to build those yourself.

It feels like there are some (currently) missing enterprise features. We still haven't really figured out a holistic way of managing both the enterprise stuff, as well as the "power user" self service stuff that gets published around the org. To Microsoft's credit, there are pretty much monthly releases that add ne functionality and features. Some things I'd like to see include more API support and additional sources like Box, perhaps.

1. Free desktop tool for development(Power BI Desktop) and simple installation process.
2. Almost, we can connect many source to fetch the data. Ex csv,web,excel,sql,odbc etc..,
3. Specialized ETL(Extract,transform,load) to clean the raw unstructured data into structured data with help of Power Query.
4. Powerful DAX query to customized measure and calculated column to get desirable business metrics and KPIs.
5. Top standard visuals, Custom visuals(visual market) and also we can create our own visuals using reactjs.
6. Publish in cloud(azure) to view report anywhere in the world with help Power BI service.
7. High availability and low latency to view report and dashboard with help of xVelocity engine.
8. Anyone can easily create basic charts with structured data.

1. Power BI Desktop consumes a huge amount of resource in system.
2. Service monitoring increases for larger report consumers.
3. While dealing with an enormous volume of data, constant optimization takes place.

1. Improves with new releases every two weeks
2. Powerful insight management
3. Integration with MS products
4. Online forums and learning zones

1. Not as intuitive as packaged applications, but getting there
2. Not a good IDE for Python / R
3. Connectors to social media need to be improved

The dashboard creation is amazing. Give it a data source, design how you want to see your data, and it shows it to you. I enjoy creating dashboards for our different departments. And once our staff sees the reports and dashboards they get from this, vs how they used to get it in an Excel spreadsheet or an Access Report, they are hooked.

Overwhelming in the back end. Sometimes you just cannot get the data to display the way you want. There are so many options, features, methods. It gets overwhelming. My biggest gripe is that the back end is not as user friendly as other programs. And, comparing it to something that one of my users would create in Excel, it's difficult for me to get the exact data reported that they want. I have to figure out how to display it, and because the Power Bi is just so robust, it's a little overwhelming in that respect.

1. Ease of Use: Unlike other BI software’s, Power BI's interface is friendlier especially to MS Excel users. You will not feel overwhelmed rather it will look familiar.
2. Powerful engine: Users who need to tackle very large datasets with thousands of entries know that MS excel gets horribly slow processing such a large file. Power BI is a God sent for these users. Its processing engine is super-fast and the speed is more noticeable when you let it handle such large datasets.
3. Excellent data presentation tools: For regular MS Excel users Power BI is a PowerPivot on steroid but a lot smarter one. Even those users who are not familiar with the complexities of PowerPivot feels less intimidated by its simple and user friendly design.
4. User friendly but powerful DAX language: To write formulas you have to use DAX language in Power BI which in my opinion is a fancy name of just natural language formula writing. However, DAX is super easy to learn and pretty much intuitive but at the same time very much powerful.
5. Schedule refresh option: Power BI has an option to auto update the report at fixed interval of time which is very helpful if you need to prepare and submit reports weekly or monthly.
6. Option to control users of the report: In Power BI you can share your reports with other users and also control how much of the report can they see. If you want you can allow only a part of the report to be seen by some user which is super convenient.

Honestly, in my opinion, Power BI is by far the best software made by Microsoft. But considering I am a heavy user of MS Excel, it is easier to me. I think learning curve of Power BI for a beginner with no prior skill in MS Excel will be a bit steep. Then again, BI is a complex thing itself. So master any kind of BI software will be tricky by its own merit.

below are a few pros
• Sharing dashboard in a group
a. Sharing can be done once you have the Pro version of Power BI. Dashboard can be shared with the respective department members or your own team members.
b. Since you have prepared the dashboard you will be the owner and you can decide whether you want to give the other members only viewing rights or editing rights as well.
c. With this feature reports will always be on the cloud server and can be viewed as and when required
d. Reports can be downloaded as and when required.
• Viewing dashboard in Mobile/ tab and preparing phone layout
a. Once a dashboard has been prepared and saved, the same can be accessed on Power BI App with the same login.
b. Since the screen is small compared to laptop, all the dashboard elements can be redesigned to suit the phone screen.
c. The other features remain the same and the dashboard is interactive on the phone as well however it cannot be edited on phone.
• Export dashboard to PowerPoint, PDF
a. This is one of the most important features of Power BI. Reports or dashboards prepared can be exported on PowerPoint or PDF with a click of a button.
b. Hence Management reports and department reports can be automated on Power BI and once you refresh the data, the report will be ready to share.
c. One problem is that few images which are not compatible with PowerPoint don’t show post downloading.
• Narratives for dashboard
a. This is one of the recent features offered by Power BI. With the help of narratives you can get the insight of the dashboard in a story form.
b. Narrative uses its intelligence to study the data and give output in pointers, paragraphs etc which can be customised.
• Importing visuals to suit your need
a. Apart from the general visualizations available in Power BI, there are additional visualizations released by Power BI from time to time. These visualizations enhance the visual appearance as well as the adds to further analytics in different ways.
b. Visualizations which have downloaded and used in the dashboard are Infographic designer, Narratives for Business Intelligence, KPI Column chart, and Timeline.
• Edit interactions in dashboard
a. It is important to understand the interactions and groupings in power BI since with the help of these you can control which graphs you want to automatically change by clicking on the other.
b. With the help of grouping you can define groups and sub group which can be viewed together as a group if required.
• KPI Column Chart
a. This is a recent custom visual developed by Power BI. With the help of this visual you can put the KPI target against the actual on a monthly basis.
b. Forecasted revenue/ cost can also be put in this visual which will be shown in different colour.
c. Individual monthly targets can also be put which can be interchanged by putting variance.
d. Data can also been viewed in a table form along with graphical.

• One of the important features of exporting report in PowerPoint does not allow custom visual to be exported. Hence if there are custom visuals in your report then the same will show error once exported.
• Arranging dashboard is a bit tedious and takes a lot of time
• To share reports, we need to publish to MS Cloud. We cannot share report from Power BI Desktop
• For sharing a report even members to who report needs to be shared have to get Power BI Pro. Since the department to whom report is shared is just to view giving them a Pro license might not be useful.

The interface is beautiful and easy to navigate. Once data sources are all connected, it's pretty easy to create a new dashboard/layout if you know how to analyze your own data. Nearly every integration that we needed was already included.

It's hard to build some more complex reports. If you want to combine two different data sources into one view/metric, you will need some advanced skills.

1)Its Easy to use, Provides a Reliable user interface .
2)Its Time efficient as most of the work Power BI does it even before you know.
3)Integration to the third party visuals and creating its own market place have already took it way further than other products.
4)A User can customize its design and can easily give the dashboard access to the public.
5)It contains the most trending Visuals in the market.

1)Software is reliable on Latest Machines.
2)Old machines then need to be upgraded(OS, RAM) to use this software smoothly.
3) Multiple Dashboards can hang the entire system.

Because of its multiple options and tools for analyzing and organizing data, Microsoft Power BI is software that empowers businesses. Business teams may use it to produce all aspects of business intelligence projects, from the initial concept to the final representation. The platform is user-friendly and can import and export data from a wide range of other apps, making it ideal for people of all skill levels. Data exploration, discovery, and visualization are made easier for non-technical managers with Microsoft Power BI, which allows them to access reports and dashboards without any training. To acquire the best outcomes, everyone involved can work together more closely because the data is saved on the cloud. All Microsoft Office programs, including Excel, can be used to build an interactive data dashboard. Microsoft Power BI may be used to turn an Excel spreadsheet into a database, and PowerPoint can be used to display, store, and share the data.

Power BI requires extensive training for all members of the team, but if you have the appropriate skills, it is a superb tool for extracting the most accurate data.

Avantages

1. Outil de bureau gratuit pour le développement (Power BI Desktop) et processus d'installation simple.

2. Presque, nous pouvons connecter plusieurs sources pour récupérer les données.
csv,web,excel,sql,odbc etc..

3. Spécialisé en (Extraction, transformation, chargement) pour nettoyer les données brutes non
structurées en données structurées à l'aide de Power Query.

4. Puissante requête DAX pour une mesure personnalisée et une colonne calculée pour obtenir les mesures commerciales souhaités.

5. Publier dans le nuage (azur) pour voir le rapport partout dans le monde avec l'aide du service Power BI.

6. Tout le monde peut facilement créer des graphiques de base avec des données structurées.

7. La gestion de stock a l'aide de power pivot et indescriptible

Inconvénients

1. Power BI Desktop consomme une énorme quantité de ressources dans le système.

2. La surveillance des services augmente pour les grands consommateurs de rapports.

3. Tout en traitant un énorme volume de données, une optimisation constante a lieu.

4. la traduction des formules DAX en Français pour les francophones

The features and ease of creating visualizations are top notch. Also integration with all other Microsoft products as well as pre-built connectors to many of the most popular software is hard to beat.

There are many features not available unless you pay for expensive premium capacity.

Having been a user of the full range of Microsoft Office, it was only natural that PowerBI comes to mind when trying to create a live update dashboard. It is extremely easy to use - a plug and play approach comes to mind - and if you had worked with Microsoft Office before, some of the features are very intuitive to use. If the organisation that you are working with uses Microsoft Office, access issues are sorted and it becomes incredibly easy to drive adoption of this dashboard on a day to day basis

The design of the dashboard created with PowerBI can be found to be lacking at points, compared to some of the other BI softwares. The templates available seem great, but there aren't as many options as I would like when I am creating a specific type of dashboard.

It is so easy to use once you understand the premise of it. We have super users that create functional dashboards so that anyone can go in and get real-time updates without having to rewrite queries. We use this for our daily sales reporting and it lets you drill down and really understand the numbers.

It was a little intimidating to use at the start as there is so much functionality. Once you get the hang of it, it makes perfect sense. Just take your time to learn and focus on one aspect at a time and it will all make perfect sense.