Microsoft Power BI Reviews

The steepest slope to climb was formula syntax. It was a lot of testing in excel and trying to convert to Power BI. Luckily the forums are helpful, and most formulas are already available to copy and paste from the forums too.

We have been rolling it out throughout the company over the past 1.5 years. It's been a journey with highs and lows but the overall result is amazing.

In light of the hype around this "Tableau destroyer" in recent months, I want to highlight some fundamental flaws in data connectivity and reports maintenance of Power BI, which the Product Team so far has turned down as "not in scope". In practice, though, this renders Power BI pretty useless for getting dara from any 3rd party products, in the cloud in particular.

This review reflects Power BI as of mid March 2017. I have gathered my knowledge from testing, community interaction and a dozen tickets with Power BI Pro Support. The focus lies on getting data via Web Services, much aligned with Microsoft’s «Cloud First» Strategy.

1) Power BI Online is in the cloud, but does not allow for HTTP calls. Power BI Desktop allows for HTTP calls, but only with static authentication parameters.
First of all, a distinction needs to be made between Power BI Online and Power BI Desktop. While Power BI Online is the "master" that ultimately allows you to share and publish your reports, user experience in design is diminished by HTML limitations (you may know from Word or Excel Online) and more importantly, data connectivity (Get Data) is limited to SQL Servers on Azure and about 20 to 30 plugins from 3rd party solutions at present. Take note that on Power BI Online, you cannot select or manage your Gateways, either.

This brings the attention to the Power BI Desktop client. Updated every one to two months, the Desktop client brings data connectors necessary to connect to a larger number of data sources.
With the Web connector, HTTP calls been configured, although with just static headers and parameters and Basic and Windows authentication only. Importantly, though, Power BI Desktop includes Microsoft Power Query, which you may know from Excel 2016 already. With M Scripts, you can script and customise in many ways and most interestingly, convert it into table form quickly. This is where Power Query shines. However, Power Query does not seem to call on methods for nonces and timestamps required in token based authentication (OAuth for example). (Should this be incorrect, please please let me know. I have been browsing the fora and nagging Support too long already.)
What’s really amusing here is that Microsoft Azure uses OAuth 2.0 themselves. So, you cannot run any reporting on Microsoft’s Azure AD or Resource Manager database for example, a notorious blackbox. Back to Powershell. (Power BI does not accept Powershell feeds.)
In short, while Power BI Online does not allow to get any data out of the web (except for those 20 to 30 plugins, mostly Microsoft Products), Power BI Desktop allows for Web calls, but only with static parameters and thus, basically with your user credentials.
That’s a big limitation in Data Connectivity.

2) With Power BI Online being the master, the HTTP calls cannot be scheduled or refreshed in the cloud.

Now that you have configured your HTTP call (with risky user credentials), you want to publish your report and have it refreshed on a scheduled basis, say every day.
Tough luck.
While you can publish your Report to Power BI Online and subsequently a broader audience, it’s a static image of your Desktop data. You cannot schedule a data refresh in Power BI Online (because there is no Web feature anyway) and you cannot even refresh the data manually as this requires republishing the Report anew.
You risk your management looking at outdated data whenever you forgot to republish your report and sneak the new URL into your dashboards and iframes.

3) The On-Premises Data Gateway is pretty useless for Web Services.
Yes, there is the On-Premises Data Gateway. Yes, you can configure Web Services in the gateway, although it’s pretty ironic to route web calls via on-premises infrastructure.
But did you ever try it? That is, you cannot specify any HTTP headers fort he calls at all, lest writing a Power Query script. And thus, we are back at authentication via Basic and Windows only and writing REST scripts in the data source for every single HTTP call because with no Headers and Body, all parameters need to be coded in the URI.
Will you do that?

At the end of the day, Power BI is Microsoft's long overdue acknowledgement that Excel and some Dynamics Reports do not cut it for Reporting purposes. Indeed, for reporting on SQL Server, Dynamics 365 (if you want to afford it), and Excel and Access databases stored in your OneDrive, Microsoft Power BI does a neat job.

However, as soon as you want to integrate with 3rd party systems or via web services in particular, Power BI presents so many limitations in authentication, Header and Body configuration, scripting, and scheduling that you need to configure an entire SQL Server environment (on Azure or On-Premises via feature poor Gateway) and write a SQL CRL interface or buy Azure Data Factory to get that data in.

For some pretty reports, do you really want to buy and customise all that BI infrastructure on Azure?

My advice to Microsoft: Work on Data Connectivity, especially in Power BI Online, rather than more visuals for those limited data sources. Your Microsoft clients will consider Power BI a given for the utter lack of reporting in Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics 365 (yes, pushing it there).
My advice to Users: If the connectors are not listed, look somewhere else. (And make sure it’s your use case that is listed. Power BI announced an Azure AD connector, but rather than reporting on Users, Groups, or Enterprise Apps, you can only see on a nice map where the last logins happened.)

Is it a Tableau destroyer? No. It’s a long overdue acknowledgement for necessary reporting with the potential of being a solid Business Intelligence solution ONCE focus comes to lie more on data.

Just wow. Able to create visualization of the large data sets.

Despite using it a few times a week, I find the basic functions to measure the work of my colleagues with positions corresponding to this software in the company.

With Power BI I made some predictive analysis for the company previewing the impact of adding limits to purchases, making an insane tool to help in the decision-making process. Also did some graphical dashboards emphasizing the important data that helped in meetings.

My overall experience has been rewarding and enriching. It has facilitated the handling of information and the presentation of reports for the analysis of large volumes of information and I have been able to improve my interpretation for decision making.

1. Dax query is highly reliable when comes to slice and dice the granular level data based on time trend.
2. Embedded report and dashboard in any kind of business applications easily and it becomes part of it.

PowerBI was easy to start to use, and you can expand with it as you go. It really can be as Indepth as the time you're willing to put in.

Concluding or summing it all up, I think this is by far the most convenient tool out there for performing various things such as extract data from different sources, clean, visualize, create colorful dashboards and reports. All in all, a great way to present what we have to say in words. With the use of Artificial Intelligence too, its clever enough to handle certain tasks really well.

Management loves it, I love developing with it but getting certain others to adopt it can be a bit of a challenge.

I am generally satisficed with the product, price and ease of learning with lots of YouTube video and the Power BI community, there is always something new to learn and implemented to improve or help meet your reporting requirements.

Having switched from excel recently, Microsoft Power BI has been of great help. Having good visuals for data is a plus to us as an organization for they help do comparisons at a glance.

Power BI has been a game changer for us when it comes to how we see and break down the analytics of our business. Its a platform that integrates all parties to one sheet and allows us to break the data down visually and analytically. Only drawback is when you need to make an update it could take the builder some time to update.

Overall, Microsoft PowerBI is a well-known business intelligence application that is extensively utilised by businesses of all kinds. Its robust data visualisation features, data connection choices, and capacity to find insights using AI and machine learning make it a useful tool for organisations looking to extract more value from their data. However, for certain users, the steep learning curve, restricted data preparation capabilities, and convoluted licencing approach may be disadvantages. Furthermore, the restricted third-party connection may be inconvenient for enterprises that employ a range of tools and systems. Regardless of these restrictions, PowerBI is a highly rated programme that is extensively used and trusted by enterprises seeking a comprehensive business intelligence solution.

We're using this as our enterprise analytics platform to supplement paginated reports in SSRS/PBIRS. Aside from the wrinkles mentioned, it's been a solid performer. If there was a little more "admin" capabilities around subscriptions and permissions, it'd be a home run.

It is an affordable software that enables us to consolidate our data, generate reports while keeping track of all the key performance indicators.

Overall, Power BI is a great tool for data analysis and visualization helping provide you with the necessary insights for faster and informed decision making.

We have begun to use this for all business reporting - from the Executive team all the way to the daily front-line workers. It has replaced outdated Excel files and labor intensive reporting methods of the past. It has become invaluable as a daily tool for the entire team and saves an extensive amount of hours from redundant report generation.

Overall, this is a great product for data visualization.

I have been using PowerBI from the past 3 years and have never looked back. It has helped me as an analyst to draw my clients into my stories. The automation aspect of PowerBI is hard to ignore. I have shared my dashboards and collaborated with teams which was a nightmare before. I love the addition of new features resulting from a dedicate community of PowerBI users (with very responsive Microsoft developers jumping in to solve issues). Mobile version of PowerBI is convenient and a hit with clients.