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Introducing Copilot Pane in Power BI Desktop (preview)

Headshot of article author Harleen Kaur

 

Earlier this year, we announced Copilot preview for all customers with Premium/Fabric capacity in Power BI web. We’re thrilled to share that the same Copilot experience for report creation is now available for preview in the April version of Power BI Desktop.

Get started with Copilot

To get started using Copilot, you need write access to at least a single workspace that is assigned to a paid Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher) that has copilot enabled. See below for details on how to enable Copilot for your organization.

Select the Copilot icon in the ribbon to open the Copilot pane in the report view.

  • The first time you select the Copilot ribbon button, a dialog will prompt you to pick a Copilot compatible workspace. Select any workspace assigned to the required capacity.

GIF explaining steps to get started with Copilot in the report view of desktop

 

  • Once you land on the Copilot pane, a welcome card will appear. Select “Get started” to start your interaction with the Copilot.
  • Once you’ve successfully completed the above steps, you won’t be asked to connect to a workspace again. You can change the associated workspace in Options & Settings > Options > Copilot (preview).

A screenshot showing examples of high-level prompts that users can use to interact with Copilot.

Copilot for Desktop capabilities overview

With our current preview, users can create reports faster and easier in the Power BI Desktop experience. You can use Copilot to:

  • Summarize a Power BI semantic model – Copilot will help you easily obtain a summary of the data in your Power BI semantic model. This summary can help you gain a better understanding of data in your model, identify important insights, and improve your data exploration experience. Ultimately, this can help you build more meaningful reports.

A screenshot showing users can use copilot to summarize the underlying model.

  • Suggest content for a report – Copilot can help you get started on a new report by suggesting topics based on your data. By selecting this option directly in the chat, Copilot will evaluate the data and provide a report outline with suggested pages that you can explore and choose to create for you.

A screenshot showing high-level prompt for users to ask copilot to suggest content for the report.

If you select Create next to the first page, Copilot will create that page for you.

A screenshot showing the create button for users to create a report page.

  • Create a report page – Copilot for Power BI can assist you in creating a report page by identifying the tables, fields, measures, and charts to help you get started. By giving Copilot a high-level prompt that’s specific to your data, it can generate a customizable report page that you can modify using our existing editing experiences, saving you time and effort getting started. Here are some examples of high-level prompts to get you started:
    • Create a page to evaluate the performance of different shifts based on good count, reject count, and alarm count over time.
    • Create a page to analyze the efficiency of the production line and overall equipment effectiveness.
    • Create a page to compare the cost and material of each product and their impact on production.

 

A screenshot showing Copilot creating a report page.

How to enable Copilot for your organization

Before your business can start using Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Fabric:

Considerations

  • The Copilot button in Desktop will always appear in the ribbon; however, to start using Copilot you need:
    • you must be signed in
    • your admin needs to enable Copilot in the tenant settings
    • you need member or contributor access to at least a single workspace that is assigned to a paid Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher)
  • If you are a first-time user of Copilot in Desktop report view, you will be asked to pick a Copilot compatible workspace once you click on Copilot button on the ribbon.
    • The workspace you select here doesn’t need to be the same as the workspace where you’ll publish your report.
    • If you cancel or close the workspace picker dialog without any selection, you will see the following error message.

A screenshot showing an error message when users cancel or close the workspace picker dialog.

  • Unlike Data pane or Visualization pane, you cannot resize the Copilot pane.
  • Fabric Copilot experiences in Power BI are preview experiences.
  • Copilot responses are generated with AI and can make mistakes, always check your work.
  • The create page capability does not support the following connection modes:
    • Live connect to SSAS and AAS
    • Real-time streaming in Power BI
  • Updates are continually being made. Stay informed by regularly checking our monthly Power BI feature summary blogs for the latest enhancements.

More information

Read more about Copilot in Power BI in our documentation.

Also, if you have feedback, please share it in our feedback forum.