This session recap is from information presented by Elayne Jones during 3Cloud’s Envision Summit.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could open Power BI, say the magic word, and automatically create beautiful reports to help you turn data into insights? Yearn no longer. This session demonstrates how easily you can incorporate Generative AI capabilities in Power BI content.

Through integration with Generative AI features, you can transform raw data into actionable reports in record time and with little to no user effort. Tools like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and OpenAI allow you to enter natural language prompts and automatically generate Power BI content. Saving time in development ultimately reduces cost and allows you to focus on analyzing the data and sparking change in your organization.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a revolutionary reporting tool that allows you to turn raw data into actionable insights. It provides responsive visuals which allow you to interact with data and uncover trends. However, creating effective Power BI reports requires a basic understanding of data modeling and visualization best practices.

  • A well-designed data model allows visuals to respond and be filtered correctly.
  • Improper report creation can result in incorrect measure calculations, confusing visual interactions and misinformed conclusions from the reader.

Turn Data into Insights with Generative AI

Generative AI allows you to create content by entering a simple natural language prompt.

  • Generative AI tools automatically generate content for you based on your commands.
  • Add more details to your prompts to customize results.
  • At any time, you can modify or remove content created using natural language prompts.

Generative AI draws upon existing data in Large Language Models (LLMs) hosted in the Microsoft Cloud. Tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, and OpenAI analyze existing data and use historical trends to generate content.

Security Concerns

Security is of utmost importance to Microsoft. At the end of each chat session, data is discarded and is not shared with other organizations. Copilot inherits your organization’s Microsoft 365 Privacy Standards:

  • Two-Factor authentication
  • Compliance standards
  • Privacy protection standards
  • Responsible AI statements 

Copilot Combines the Forces of Generative AI & Power BI

Microsoft calls Copilot an AI companion that will become your work assistant. You can ask questions or enter commands, and Copilot automatically generates content. You can choose to keep, to discard, or to modify any content generated by Copilot. Copilot will be built into all tools in the M365 stack including Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and Power BI.

Copilot can be used to automate report creation including creating new Power BI reports and visualizations. Just enter a brief description of what you want to analyze and how you want to visualize the data. Copilot generates the report automatically!

Data Analysis Expression (DAX) is the formula language in Power BI that allows you to analyze data with custom filter contexts and to create unique insights. Begin by using Copilot to quickly enter text prompts and generate complex calculations. Then optimize and refine the results using existing DAX calculations.

Existing AI Power BI Visuals

Currently you can type in questions to produce data insights and automatically generate Power BI visualizations. You can add more details to customize results and add visuals to existing reports and dashboards.

  • Smart Narrative: A visualization in Microsoft Power BI that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to interpret data and generate commentary on the data presented. Smart Narrative works like an assistant analyst, providing insights that may not be readily apparent. Power BI uses AI to analyze the data and auto-generate a summary.
  • Decomposition Trees: Explore reasons for increases and decreases in business metrics. Analyze impact of different fields from the data to track and understand metrics. Create new perspectives on data and drive outcomes.
  • Key Influencers: Automatically highlight the most statistically significant contributors to business metrics. Overcome human bias. Automatically updates based on interactions with other visuals on the page.

Benefits of Incorporating Generative AI Tools

Generative AI can streamline business processes and foster creativity and innovation. A few examples are below.

  • Democratize development: Elevate reporting standards by empowering everyone to leverage Power BI.
  • Increase productivity: Save time requesting content from IT and create reports in a fraction of the time previously required.
  • Overcome bias: Allow impartial AI algorithms to analyze data without preconceived notions or leading assumptions.

Use Cases for Industry

Generative AI promises to be a gamechanger across industry lines. Commands that could generate insights in various industries include:

  1. Supply Chain: Build a report that allows me to select dates and analyze worker productivity trends by departments.
  2. Healthcare: Show me a report that dynamically identifies medical outliers between patient classes and color-codes the results.
  3. Finance: Generate a dashboard that compares market trends year-over-year and automatically updates based on what industry I select.
  4. Education: Create a report that analyzes student performance across courses for the last rolling twelve months.

Get Started

Ready to incorporate Generative AI into your business strategy? 3Cloud can provide expert guidance on AI implementation in Power BI. Let’s talk about AI.