Can Power BI act as a traditional report writer?

[randyminder]

We're beginning the architecture phase of a new web based product and we're exploring alternatives for reporting and dash-boarding. I've spent three to four hours in training videos learning Power BI and I'm impressed with its capabilities.

However, what appears to be lacking is the ability for Power BI to act as a traditional report writer, like a Crystal Reports. I like all the BI features in Power BI but we also need traditional report writing features such as being able to create page headers / footers, report headers / footers, groupings, with headers and footers, detail section(s) etc. In other words, we need to be able to create traditional "banded" type reports. Is Power BI able to do this, or should we look elsewhere for more traditional reporting solutions?

[keajht31]

Power BI is not meant to do that. SSRS/Crystal report is the right tool in my experience. Trying to recreate the traditional report in Power BI can be very frustrating, at least for me.

[v-jiascu-msft]

Hi @randyminder,

You still can do many customization as the picture shows. And you also can submit ideas here to get new features.

Best Regards!

Dale

[Anonymous]

Microsoft's traditional report authoring tool is SSRS. They have also breathed new life into it in recent releases. Power BI is really geared at the Analytics segment.

[edcarden]

Thats a a shame because SSRS is a terrible report authoring tool for many report types especially if youve evcer used Cryustal Reports. SSRS is great a a very select few report types but over all its very non-user friendly if youve had any experince with another report writing tool like Crystal or even the Reporting tool that came with JMicrosoft Access for many yeras.  

SSRS is geared towards developers (aka coders) and not those who are traditonal report writers and thats a ssame because SSRS had so much potentional until somone decideed that they needed to reinvent the wheel when creating the GUI/Interface for SSRS 

[randyminder · Accepted solution]

Thank you. This is what I suspected and exactly what I wanted to know.