Microsoft Power BI

4.6 (1,715)
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BI visualization and reporting for desktop, web or mobile

About Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a suite of analytics tools for analyzing business data and sharing insights via rich visualizations. Customizable and pre-built dashboards unify important metrics into single views, showing real time updates to every device. The centralized, web-based Power BI service interfaces Power BI gateways to connect to and unify organizational data while Power BI Desktop for Windows provides local data mashup and report authoring features. Live dashboards offer an instant 360-view on business health, leveraging 59 out-of-the-box connections for apps or services such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, Azure, Facebook, Github, QuickBooks Online, Twilio and Zendesk. Power BI brings all that data, wherever it resides, together to form a complete picture of key metrics that can then be queried using natural language.

With Power BI Desktop, users can author reports using intuitive drag-and-drop tools and share amongst colleagues through the online Power BI Service. Integrating with Microsoft’s established Query engine, data modeling and visualization technologies, Power BI Desktop connects, shapes and reports to centralize a typically disjointed process of reporting. Outputting to .pbix format, these report files can then be manually shared like any other or uploaded to the shared service. In addition, this ability to keep all users on the same page at all times extends to a suite of optimized mobile support. Power BI Mobile keeps remote connectivity consistent across native apps for Windows Mobile, iOS and Android devices, adding intuitive gesture-based operation. Live dashboards can be viewed on the fly, alongside full report sharing capabilities and data-driven alerts.


Key benefits of Microsoft Power BI

  • Microsoft Power BI spans a suite of Business Intelligence tools for creating rich visualizations and sharable reports.

  • Web-based Power BI Service provides a centralized hub for defining live personalized dashboards, harnessing on-premises data via Power BI gateways.

  • Out-of-the-box connections and pre-built dashboards for 59 popular apps and services makes unifying data quick and simple, wherever it resides.

  • Power BI Desktop for Windows provides deeper visual data exploration within a free-form drag-and-drop canvas and a library of powerful visualizations.

  • Author rich reports that can be exported to Power BI’s .pbix format or shared more engagingly among user groups by uploading to the Power BI service.

  • View personalized dashboards and reports from anywhere with Power BI Mobile, offering optimized apps for Windows Mobile, iOS and Google Play.

  • Stay informed of the very latest real-time update with data-driven alerting and full report sharing options while on the move.

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    Reviews

    Overall rating

    4.6 /5
    (1,715)
    Value for Money
    4.4/5
    Features
    4.5/5
    Ease of Use
    4.1/5
    Customer Support Software
    4.1/5

    Already have Microsoft Power BI?

    Software buyers need your help! Product reviews help the rest of us make great decisions.

    Showing 5 reviews of 1,715
    Michael
    Michael
    Overall rating
    • Industry: Tobacco
    • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
    • Used Weekly for 1+ year
    • Review Source

    Overall rating

    • Value for Money
    • Ease of Use
    • Customer Support Software
    • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

    Ugly numbers to pretty pictures

    Reviewed on 2020-06-13

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

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

    Pros

    As the title says, it turns ugly numbers into pretty pictures. It is easy enough for a non-developer to use and turn a mess of data into an intelligent and understandable story.

    Cons

    It literally changes every three months. You just get used to it and with the next update a lot has changed. I don't really see this as a con though because this is more like a Christmas present waiting to see what they will have made better this go around.

    Alternatives Considered

    Tableau

    Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

    When preparing charts in MS Excel you wind up with too many human errors and you have to have someone who really knows excel to build great dashboards.

    Switched From

    Microsoft Excel

    Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

    Cloud based, integrated with other Microsoft products and it was first to have a huge amount of AI integration and capabilities.
    Galaad
    Overall rating
    • Industry: Mechanical or Industrial Engineering
    • Company size: 201–500 Employees
    • Used Daily for 2+ years
    • Review Source

    Overall rating

    • Ease of Use
    • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

    Ease of use and great on-boarding experience

    Reviewed on 2024-01-08

    I am a supply chain analyst. I use the product daily for reporting and ad-hoc analysis. I often...

    I am a supply chain analyst. I use the product daily for reporting and ad-hoc analysis. I often confronted to massive data base and multiple data source. PBI empowers me to build complex data model and produce sharps dashboard for others user in my organisation.

    Pros

    I really like the profusion of learning media for PBI (webinar, forum, microsoft learning experience and LinkedIn Learning). You can learn at your pace. Quickstarting is easy. Becoming proficient require a bit more patience but is relatively easy for people using other microsoft tools (Excel).

    I like that the product is deployed in many company. The competencies are transferable.

    I like the well defined working environnement (Query -> BI -> Viz) and the provided editor that are really enabling for people like me that are not developper by trade.

    Automation of import, analysis and viz is also a real game changer for people that were dependant on Excel before.

    Cons

    I dislike the lack of userfriendly info for more complex developpement.
    I feel not guided enough regarding more technical information regarding the product.

    Nicolas
    Overall rating
    • Industry: Government Administration
    • Company size: Self Employed
    • Used Daily for 2+ years
    • Review Source

    Overall rating

    • Ease of Use
    • Customer Support Software
    • Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10

    Probably the worst dataviz software out there

    Reviewed on 2024-03-18

    Go Tableau, only one which deserves my attention

    Go Tableau, only one which deserves my attention

    Pros

    None, it's really everyday just another bad stuff happening

    Cons

    It's slow, buggy, you can't do what you want to do, counter intuitive, no community

    Bodamer
    Overall rating
    • Industry: Translation & Localization
    • Company size: 11–50 Employees
    • Used Daily for 2+ years
    • Review Source

    Overall rating

    • Value for Money
    • Ease of Use
    • Customer Support Software
    • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

    Microsoft Power BI is a reliable source of truth. It provides very accurate insights about our...

    Reviewed on 2024-07-02

    It has been a very solid working experience with Microsoft Power BI. It has proved to us time abd...

    It has been a very solid working experience with Microsoft Power BI. It has proved to us time abd again to be a very reliable source of truth by providing us with accurate insights that help us understand our business performance. It also guide us to take actions to optimize our business operations.

    Pros

    Microsoft Power BI has very powerful data analysis tools which allows us to get very accurate and in-detail insights about our business performance. The reporting tool works so excellently and is very easy to use. It provides all our data and information with optimum security which helps us avoid loosing sensitive information.

    Cons

    No dislikes about Microsoft Power BI. There is nothing challenging about it to comment about.

    Katie
    Overall rating
    • Industry: Retail
    • Company size: 11–50 Employees
    • Used Weekly for 2+ years
    • Review Source

    Overall rating

    • Value for Money
    • Ease of Use
    • Customer Support Software
    • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

    Our trusty BI tool for all-things data

    Reviewed on 2023-11-26

    I've been a huge fan of Power BI since we switched to it from Excel. We use it to create dashboards,...

    I've been a huge fan of Power BI since we switched to it from Excel. We use it to create dashboards, set up automated reports, and anything else that requires reporting. In the years that I've used it, I've very rarely ran into bugs or performance issues. It's relatively easy to set up, has very advanced reporting capabilities, and tons of integrations you can set up pretty easily to pull data from different places. You can't fault it for BI.

    Pros

    We used to use Excel but switched over to Power BI for the more advanced features. And they've been very very handy for us. The data cleaning works a lot better, there's tons more cutomization options, and some integrations have been made much easier compared to just Excel.

    Cons

    The imterface isn't the best to be honest, especially compared to stuff like Tableu. But gets the job done nonetheless.

    Alternatives Considered

    Tableau

    Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Power BI

    Excel worked pretty well for us as well, but we decided to move to Power BI for the advanced charting options.

    Switched From

    Microsoft Excel

    Reasons for Switching to Microsoft Power BI

    We were already pretty used to MS tools, and Power BI looked like it would be easier for us to move to, so we decided on it.
    Showing 5 reviews of 1,715 Read all reviews

    Microsoft Power BI FAQs

    Below are some frequently asked questions for Microsoft Power BI.

    Microsoft Power BI offers the following pricing plans:

    • Starting from: US$10.00/month
    • Pricing model: Free Version, Subscription
    • Free Trial: Not Available

    Free Plan: Free Power BI Pro Plan: Price: $10/user/month Power BI Premium Per User: Price: $20/user/month Power BI Premium in Microsoft Fabric: Variable

    Microsoft Power BI has the following typical customers:

    2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000

    Microsoft Power BI supports the following languages:

    Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian

    Microsoft Power BI supports the following devices:

    Android (Mobile)

    Microsoft Power BI integrates with the following applications:

    Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Twilio

    Microsoft Power BI offers the following support options:

    Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base Software, Phone Support, 24/7 (Live rep), Chat

    Related categories

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