Among the various Power BI tools available in the digital market to enable data-driven decision-making capabilities, Power BI has emerged as a market leader. It offers advanced features that empower businesses to facilitate day-to-day business decisions. One such feature is Copilot, which was recently released. It uses generative AI throughout Microsoft’s tools to support development and decision-making.
In this blog, we will focus on Power BI DAX Copilot, a feature exclusively available on Power BI Desktop. DAX Copilot is designed to simplify creating and understanding DAX functions. It helps you automatically generate DAX queries or functions based on your specific requirements, significantly speeding up the development process and enabling the quick creation of complex DAX formulas.
Prerequisites
Below are the prerequisites to access Copilot features in Power BI.
Power BI Admin setting: If you are not the tenant admin, you must contact them to turn on this setting.
Users must sign into Power BI Desktop using a Microsoft Account to access Copilot-related features.
After signing in, a compatible workspace with write access is required. It must be assigned to a Copilot-enabled capacity. Only paid SKUs (F64 or higher or P1 or higher) are supported.
How Can Copilot Improve Power BI Development?
Faster and More Accurate Formula Creation: DAX Copilot automates the creation of complex DAX formulas, thus speeding up development. It helps generate accurate formulas based on simple user inputs, thus reducing human error. This ensures more reliable and consistent reporting, which is critical for decision-making.
Improved Collaboration and Understanding: DAX Copilot provides natural language descriptions of existing measures. This makes it easier for teams to understand and share complex departmental models. With better visibility into data, teamwork is easier.
Enabling Limited DAX User: Copilot enables even less savvy users about DAX to create and update formulas. This lowers the technical barrier to data analysis. It makes the environment more data-driven and inclusive. Thus, the analysts can work more on the insights and less on the complexity of techniques.
To learn, Power BI Copilot offers two versions,
Power BI DAX Copilot – available in Power BI Desktop
Power BI Report Copilot – available in Power BI Desktop/Service
How Can Power BI DAX Copilot Transform Your Data Analysis?
Power BI DAX Copilot is revolutionary and exclusively available in Power BI Desktop. It aims to simplify understanding and build DAX formulas, allowing deep data transformation and insights. However, it usually has a steep learning curve for most users.
DAX Copilot serves as a smart assistant for all DAX-related tasks. This enables developers to write the formulas for the most advanced system and comprehensively describe the measures already available. Accordingly, all stages of working with DAX will become faster, simpler, and more approachable.
Why is Power BI DAX Copilot Important?
Technical Gap: The technical complexity of DAX in Power BI often makes it challenging for users to learn. With AI support, the entry cost of DAX Copilot decreases, enabling powerful formula writing and comprehension even among users with limited knowledge.
Time Efficiency: Hand-crafting an accurate DAX measure can take an impractical amount of time when dealing with complex business problems. DAX Copilot accelerates this workflow by generating formulas based on a user’s input, freeing the analyst to focus on what data extraction leads to insight.
Business Value
Faster Insights: Automating formulae generation for companies allows for immediate actionable intelligence.
Fewer Errors: Since AI powers Copilot to succeed, DAX formulas are more accurate, and reports are reliable.
Empowering Analysts: Analysts’ time is no longer wasted with a preoccupation over technical matters but can be used for data analysis, thereby enhancing overall productivity.
How to Use Power BI DAX Copilot Effectively
Analyze Existing DAX Measures
It is crucial to comprehend the current measures, especially when working with generic or complex reports.
Scenario: Explaining Complex Measures:
Below is a scenario where DAX Copilot can help explain an existing measure by providing a natural language description in real-time. This explanation can offer valuable insights that help guide your business decisions.
Business Impact: Least dependence on other team members and faster team member onboarding for new analysts.
So below are steps to achieve this scenario,
Open a report and go to Model View on Power BI desktop.
Select a measure to know its description and select the Create with Copilot (preview) option in the Properties pane.
Now, this will give you the description of the selected measure in a new window.
Creating New DAX Measures
There are times when generating a new DAX measure can be challenging. DAX Copilot simplifies the process. Below is a step-by-step scenario where you can easily identify the Top 5 products from the data using Copilot with prompts:
Scenario: Automating Top 5 Products Calculation:
You need to identify your top 5 products based on revenue. Rather than trying to recall a formula from memory, simply use Copilot by typing a prompt like “Top 5 Products.” In an instant, DAX Copilot will handle the calculation for you, providing the results quickly and efficiently.
Business Impact: Saves hours of manual work and makes it possible to make rapid decisions in dynamic environments.
You should go to the DAX query view and click Copilot(preview) at the top.
After loading data into the Power BI desktop and creating a data model, you can search for basic functionalities like “Top 5 Products”. Copilot will write DAX for you and give the solution in the results pane.
Copilot will also explain any existing measure; you just need to put that measure in the text pane and ask for the explanation.
How Does DAX Copilot Help Businesses?
Better Collaboration: Teams can also share models more easily, as Copilot explains the purpose of the measures to all.
Scalability: As data increases, analysis complexities grow. DAX Copilot supports the consistency and accuracy of formula creation.
Empowered Decision-Making: Improved measure development and interpretation are the keys to delivering timely, actionable insights to business executives.
What Are The Advantages of Power BI Copilot?
There are several impressive features hidden in Power BI Copilot, such as:
With Power BI Copilot, users can leverage AI-powered suggestions to optimize their data models. Co-Pilot analyzes the data model and user inputs to provide recommendations for improving data relationships, creating calculated columns, and defining measures.
Power BI Copilot takes DAX formula creation to the next level by providing intelligent suggestions and auto-completion. Users can simply describe the calculations they need to perform, and Co-Pilot will generate the corresponding DAX formulas.
What Are The Limitations of Power BI Copilot?
There are some limitations below on Power BI Copilot as it is still in Preview:
The Copilot pane on the Power BI desktop or service cannot be resized like the data or visualization panes.
Copilot cannot add filters or slicers to the page based on prompts.
Closing
In conclusion, the world of Data Analytics, Power BI Copilot is a significant and futuristic update that allows users to quickly create auto-generated formulas and reports with a single click and get insights from the data faster by integrating Gen-AI. The seamless integration with Microsoft Fabric further enhances the capabilities of Copilot, enabling users to get AI-based insights from different analytic workflows.
If you need assistance exploring more effective ways of leveraging this feature, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts for support, guidance, and best-practice recommendations. Contact us today!
FAQs
Is Copilot available for Power BI?
Yes, there is a Copilot for Power BI. It is available in both Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service. Using Copilot, we can write DAX and create reports.
Is Copilot available for Power BI Premium Per User?
Copilot is supported only with specific licensing tiers, such as higher-level Fabric Capacity and Premium plans. To enable Copilot, your administrator must activate it within the platform, and the service must be hosted in a supported region as outlined in the region availability guidelines. Without meeting these requirements, Copilot cannot be accessed.
