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Anomaly detection (preview) is now supported in Power BI Mobile apps

Headshot of article author Maya Shenhav

Last month the Power BI AI team released Anomaly detection, a feature that enables report creators to enhance line charts by automatically detecting anomalies in time series data. Then when the report is published to the service, report consumers can view the anomalies and their explanations.

Now, with this Power BI Mobile apps release, report consumers can also view and understand anomalies directly from the mobile apps! This capability is available on all apps (iOS, Android, Windows), in all supported form factors (phone, tablet, iPad, and laptop/desktop, including Surface Hub).

When you view a report that has anomaly detection enabled on a chart with time series data, you’ll see the same detected anomaly indications on the visual that you see in the Power BI service and in Power BI Desktop.

In the Power BI Mobile app, there are a number of ways to open the Anomalies panel to see additional information and explanations about the detected anomalies:

  • You can tap the anomaly indication itself – this opens the insights pane directly.
  • In Phone, you can tap More options (…) and choose Show anomalies from the menu that appears.
  • You can tap the data point to display a tooltip – here you’ll have a new action, Anomalies, that displays the insights pane.

In the anomalies panel you’ll see a natural language explanation of the anomaly detected, as well as associated factors sorted by their explanatory strength. Swipe from right to left to view all relevant factors and their strengths.

While the Anomalies panel is displayed, the mobile report is still scrollable under it, so you can continue interacting with your report, slicing and dicing to better understand anomalies in your data. For each interaction, Power BI re-runs anomaly detection to detect anomalies in the data in scope.

What’s next?

Try out anomaly detection in the Power BI Mobile apps and share your feedback with us.

Please keep sending us your feedback, and don’t forget to vote for other features you’d like to see.

If you still don’t have the Power BI Mobile app installed on your mobile device, you can get it from App Store, Google Play and Microsoft store.