Create reports in Power BI Desktop with Copilot

Article
04/29/2024

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

When you use the Copilot chat pane in Power BI Desktop, Copilot helps you use the transformational power of generative AI to get the most from your data. This article provides an overview of the Copilot chat pane capabilities for Power BI Desktop.

To use Copilot in Power BI Desktop, you need admin, 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) that has Copilot enabled.

Before you start

Read about all the ways Copilot can help you in the overview of Copilot for Power BI for more guidance before you start.

You need to be signed in to the Power BI service to start using Copilot in Power BI Desktop in report view.
You need to select a compatible workspace that you have write access to. It needs to be a workspace that's assigned to a Copilot-enabled capacity, in other words, a paid Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or a Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher).

Learn more about Copilot for Power BI capacity requirements.

Note

Your administrator needs to enable Copilot in Microsoft Fabric.
Your F64 or P1 capacity needs to be in one of the regions listed in this article, Fabric region availability. If it isn't, you can't use Copilot.
Your administrator needs to enable the tenant switch before you start using Copilot. See the article Copilot tenant settings for details.
If your tenant or capacity is outside the US or France, Copilot is disabled by default unless your Fabric tenant admin enables the Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your tenant's geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance tenant setting in the Fabric Admin portal.
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric isn't supported on trial SKUs. Only paid SKUs (F64 or higher, or P1 or higher) are supported.

Use Copilot the first time

Open Power BI Desktop.
In the ribbon, select Get Data, then select the type of data source, select a data source, and select Connect.
Now that you have data, select the Copilot icon in the ribbon to open the Copilot pane in the report view.

Tip

If you don't see Copilot, your admins may need to enable Copilot in Microsoft Fabric.
The first time you select the Copilot ribbon button, Power BI prompts you to pick a Copilot-compatible workspace. Select any workspace assigned to the required capacity.
Note
- The workspace you select here doesn’t need to be the workspace where you publish your report.
- If you cancel or close the workspace picker dialog without any selection, you see an error message saying that something went wrong.
In the Copilot pane, you see a welcome card. Select Get started to start your interaction with Copilot.

After you've successfully completed those steps the first time, you won't have to repeat them again.

Change the selected workspace

You can change the selected workspace to another Copilot-compatible workspace anytime. To change the selected workspace:

Select File > Options and settings > Options > Copilot (preview) setting under Global.

You see the name of the selected workspace and an option to select a new workspace.

Start using Copilot

Open Power BI Desktop.
In the ribbon, select Get Data, then select the data source, and select Connect.
In the ribbon, select the Copilot icon in the ribbon to open the Copilot pane in the report view.
Select Suggest content for this report.

Copilot evaluates the data and suggests possible pages for your report.
Select Create next to the first page you want Copilot to create.

Copilot creates that page.

Continue creating the pages that Copilot suggests. Otherwise select Create a report that shows and provide guidance on what you want in the report.
If you need help with writing prompts that get you the report page you want, see Write Copilot prompts that produce results in Power BI for guidance.

Create a narrative summary

You can also use Copilot for Power BI to create a narrative summary with just a few clicks. This narrative can summarize the entire report, specific pages, or even specific visuals. The summary can help you plan what visualizations you want to include in your report. See Create a narrative summary visual with Copilot for Power BI to learn how.

Undo a page

After Copilot generates the page, then you can review it. You have the option to start over by selecting the Undo button. After you select the Undo button, Copilot starts over. The content on the page is removed and you start over with topic selection by either generating new topics or selecting the one from the top, when you first started.

Save the report

When you're satisfied with the report, you save the report just like any other report.