Unlocking Efficiency: Microsoft Copilot in Power BI

Author: Michael Nardacci

In the ever-evolving landscape of data analytics and business intelligence, Microsoft Copilot is emerging as a disruptive addition to Power BI. This generative AI tool empowers users of all ability levels to create insightful reports, streamline workflows, and enhance decision-making. In this article, we delve into the background of Copilot, its capabilities within Power BI, and how your organization can leverage this powerful tool.

What is Microsoft Copilot for Power BI?

Copilot is built upon a foundation of generative AI. Through Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, Copilot was developed using large language models (LLMs) trained on vast amounts of text data. When a user interacts with Copilot, the tool processes the input and generates contextually relevant responses.  

Since Copilot can understand natural language conversation, queries, and prompts, Power BI users can describe what they need, whether it is creating a report, writing a Data Analysis Expression (DAX) formula, or summarizing the data, and Copilot will execute the request. Copilot returns suggestions, outlines, or even complete content based on the user’s intent, which can subsequently be modified or refined to meet the exact user requirements. It adapts to different types of users and will simplify complex tasks for Power BI beginners while providing advanced assistance for Power BI experts.

What are Copilot’s capabilities?

Microsoft Copilot provides efficiency gains and adds additional value at many different stages of Power BI development work. Below are some of the primary areas where organizations will benefit from this technology: 

1. Accelerated Report Creation: Copilot can automate report page generation thereby reducing manual effort. Business users can swiftly create visualizations without extensive coding knowledge leading to faster time-to-insight and quicker decision-making.  

2. Enhanced Data Exploration: Copilot can summarize datasets providing a holistic overview of the information. Users can identify data elements they might have missed which leads to improved data discovery and actionable intelligence. 

3. Improved DAX Development: Writing DAX formulas is time-consuming and potentially error-prone development work. Copilot assists by writing DAX formulas as requested by the user enabling analysts to enjoy more efficient data modeling and accurate metrics. 

4. Narrative Storytelling: Clearer insights for stakeholders are achieved through textual summaries for visuals created by Copilot. These narratives enhance report readability and facilitate communication.  

5. Empowering Users: Copilot helps to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical Power BI users. Business owners can independently create reports and dashboards without technical staff. This increases self-service analytics adoption and leads to greater data consumption across the organization.  

6. Decision Support: Copilot’s data insights help decision makers to develop strategic plans and feel confident in the underlying analytics. Real-time data exploration promotes agile and confident responses to emerging business conditions.  

7. Reduced Development Costs: Copilot’s ability to generate DAX and M code reduces the need for extensive developer resources. Organizations are then able to allocate resources more efficiently either by reducing their development capabilities or reapplying them to higher value analytics.   

8. Future Proofing: Organizations investing in AI such as Copilot now position themselves to benefit from future innovations. Copilot evolves alongside continuing AI advancements ensuring organizations on the leading edge of adoption enjoy sustained a sustained competitive advantage over organizations who have not embraced AI.  

In summary, Microsoft Copilot transforms Power BI from a visualization tool into an intelligent analytics companion. By leveraging Copilot’s capabilities, businesses gain agility, efficiency, and deeper insights, ultimately driving their business’ growth and success. 

How can organizations leverage Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot is currently available in public preview for Power BI. Their goal is to provide all paid Fabric-capacity or Power BI Premium-capacity users with Copilot for Power BI by the end of March 2024. An organization modernizing its business intelligence solution during this time can adopt Copilot within Power BI to multiply the efficiency and insights gained from traditional BI solutions and unlock significant business value. 

RevGen has a proven track record of delivering Power BI solutions for clients. Recent success stories include designing a custom Power BI solution for better reporting, reduced overhead, and easy-to-use dashboards and using Power BI to create all new dashboards and data visualizations to clearly show the client’s relationships between revenue and customer retention metrics. If your organization is currently considering improving your BI services, please contact RevGen for an initial consultation on how Power BI with Copilot may be right for you.

Michael Nardacci is a Sr. Consultant at RevGen Partners where he works on projects related to business current state assessments and data transformation and migration.