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Anonymous
Not applicable

Has Microsoft ever even seen Tableau?

My company has decided to go with Power BI instead of Tableau due to pricing. I thought that both platforms would be similar. Nope. For a tool to display data in VISUAL form Microsoft doesn't seem understand what the word "visual" means. 

If you want to create financial reports Power BI can certainly do that (I think). There are countless videos and tutorials and cheerleader type sales pitches on the virtues of Power BI financial reports.  

But if you need to track dates, milestones, days to complete, etc. Power BI is a nightmare. Sure there a couple of free timeline add-ons (if you can figure out which MS account to use to download them from the MS store) but these are simple and often do not work with the simplest of data sets. Forget about making milestone markers different colors based on their name. 

Even the template generator is command line driven. A VISUAL report template creator is command line driven. 

Within 20 minutes of playing with Tableau I was able to generate the exact timeline/gantt reports I was looking for. Days, no weeks of playing with Power BI and still nothing close to what Tableau can do using the exact same data set. And don't get me started on the dog-slow performance of Power BI.

It's a typical Microsoft product, it's like someone read a translation from a foreign language of visual reporting to the developers and they built it from that. 

3 REPLIES 3
v-xuding-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @Anonymous ,

I know that there are a lot of deficiencies in Power BI.  It still need to takes a while to be a better service. If you have some good ideas and suggestion, you could submit to Power BI Ideas. If you need support, you could ask for here. I hope it will serve you better.

 

Best Regards,

Xue Ding

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. Kudos are nice too.

 

 

Best Regards,
Xue Ding
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

a lot of deficiencies? the product is barely useable! This product is in the market more to decrease productivity than actually increase. It just shows how good the microsoft sales teams are in selling a rubbish product. Whoever is thinking about implementing this product in a company, please DO NOT! 

Anonymous
Not applicable

I have added several ideas but I'm not holding my breath. MS will still only do what MS wants to do. 

My first idea would be for the MS devs to look at Tableau.  My second would be for MS to hire VISUAL experts. They have never been good at anything requiring visuals and their UIs suck (think Windows 8). This is why MS does not have any drawing or photo programs. 

Power BI is like MS read a translated white paper on Tableau and tried to emulate it without ever seeing it. 

Finally, MS seems to completely miss the concept of who and what visual reporting is for: to take vast amounts of data and display it in a easy to digest form for people who don't have lot of time and and have difficulting with tabular data. 




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