1.4.2024 • Business digitalization and knowledge management Metaverse & AI

How Can Power BI Copilot Help You with Reporting?

Power BI Copilot is an AI assistant in Power BI that lets you create reports, visualizations, summaries, and queries using natural language. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the features and limitations of Power BI Copilot – and how you can use AI Assistant to improve your reporting experience.

What does Power BI Copilot require?

To use Power BI Copilot, you must meet certain prerequisites: Your Fabric Admin must turn on Copilot and the Azure OpenAI service. Copilot is still in the preview phase and Azure OpenAI is currently only available in the US and France regions. So if you turn on the service, you must accept the possibility to process data outside your tenant’s geographic- or compliance area. Copilot also requires at least dedicated F64 or P1 capacity (Copilot does not support Fabric Trial). Read more about Power BI licensing here.

Copilot features are still in preview, so if you want to use them with Power BI Desktop, you’ll need to enable them through Settings.

What can I do with Power BI Copilot?

Power BI Copilot can help you with:

Create new report pages from an out-of-the-box data model
Create narrative visualizations: The Narrative with Copilot visual summarizes selected visuals as text
Summarize the content of the report or a specific visual
Create descriptions for semantic model metrics
Make DAX queries using natural language

Let’s take a closer look at each of these features and how they work.

Create report pages

You can ask Copilot for suggestions for report content based on your data model, or write your request in natural language. Such as “Create a product profit margin analysis page”. Copilot creates a page with visualizations of the topic and possibly slicers. You can add more pages to the report and edit them however you like.

This feature is still quite limited, and Copilot creates all pages on more or less the same basis. In terms of appearance, the report pages are quite stylish and easy to use, but you will definitely have to edit the content yourself to some extent. If you don’t have experience creating Power BI reports, this will definitely make it easier to get started. For more experienced reporters, this may not be much of a joy in the early stages.

Narrative with Copilot visualization

The Narrative with Copilot visual summarizes selected visuals as text. You can enter your request in natural language, such as “Summarize management” or “Answer likely questions from management,” and Copilot creates a text summary based on selected visuals.

The visual updates automatically when data refreshes or when you apply slicers and filters. You can also edit the text to make changes to the content Copilot suggests.

Summary of the content of the report

Do you want a quick overview of the report content, or ask a question about a specific metric or visual? You can enter your request in natural language, such as “Summarize the visuals on this page,” and Copilot will give you an answer in text.

Semantic model metrics descriptions

You can add descriptions to semantic model metrics so you and your users can easily understand what they represent and how they are calculated. Copilot allows you to automatically create a description that matches the logic and formula of the measure. At least for now, the description needs to be created separately for each metric. Based on the experiment, the descriptions created by Copilot are quite clear. In my opinion, this feature is very time-saving for the report developer.

DAX query view with Copilot

The DAX query view itself is still in preview, and a Copilot addition to it is still being planned. However, based on the available data and examples as a BIM developer, this is the part that excites me the most. You can use the view in Power BI to edit and create DAX queries, and Copilot lets you ask natural language for help with DAX formulas. Or, for example, you can ask what a built-in DAX query or function does. The DAX query view on Copilot is expected to be available during Q1 2024.

Considerations and limitations

Power BI Copilot is a new feature that is still in development and preview. As such, it has some limitations that you should take into account:

Copilot doesn’t yet understand complex prompts, and doesn’t know how to add filters to reports or edit visualizations for you, for example.
Copilot also can’t tell if it doesn’t support a request. For example, if you ask Copilot to modify or add a slicer, it will not execute the instruction successfully, but it will not give an error message either.
These limitations can be expected to gradually fade over time as Copilot learns from user feedback.

Want to hear more about Power BI Copilot?

If you want to learn how to use Power BI Copilot in your organization, we’re here to help! You can order tailored training for your team on the opportunities offered by Power BI Copilot. Contact us using the footer form or sales@sulava.com to discuss more!