Explore data by asking questions

  • 2 minutes

Power BI dashboards are about having a user-friendly experience. When users first interact with data, they often have additional questions and reach out to you. A few questions might be manageable to answer, but this isn't sustainable.

Power BI solves this problem with the Q&A visual. From the dashboard view, users can use the Ask a question about your data feature, which increases engagement between users and the dashboard.

Q&A feature

The Q&A feature is a tool within Power BI Desktop that allows you to ask natural-language questions about the data.

To locate the Q&A feature, go to your dashboard in Power BI service. Along the top ribbon is the Ask a question about your data search box. Some prompts are also available to help get you started.

Example of Q&A Visual

The Q&A visual consists of three main elements:

  • Question box: Use natural language to ask questions about the data. Example: What were the average sales amount by category?

  • Pre-populated suggestion tiles: Questions to help users consider how to phrase their questions. Example, top product category names by march sales tile results as a bar chart with category name and March sales.

  • Pin visual: Pin the visual created with Q&A to a new or existing dashboard.

Screenshot of top product category names by march sales bar chart.

With the Q&A feature, users can interact directly with the visual to ask their data questions, which will increase their interactions with the visual and save time.