Use Power BI Copilot for Natural Language Dashboard Queries

What This Does

Power BI's AI features let you ask questions about your supply chain dashboards in plain English and get instant chart results, so you can answer an ad hoc question from your manager in 2 minutes instead of rebuilding a report.

Before You Start

• You have access to Power BI (Desktop or Service via browser at app.powerbi.com)
• A dashboard or report is open with your supply chain data (inventory, orders, supplier performance, etc.)
• Your report sits in a workspace backed by a paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher). A Power BI Pro or Premium Per User license on its own does not turn Copilot on, so check with whoever administers your tenant if you are not sure what your organization runs. Microsoft lists the current rules on its Copilot for Power BI overview

Steps

1. Use the Q&A Feature (available in Power BI Pro, retiring February 2027)

Q&A is the most accessible AI tool in Power BI and the one most likely to already be switched on where you work. It predates Copilot and runs in both Desktop and Service. Microsoft has announced that Q&A retires in February 2027, and that reports still holding a Q&A visual will show an error in its place once that happens. Copilot is the replacement, so treat Q&A as the way to get answers today and Step 3 as the path you move to before the retirement date.

On any Power BI report or dashboard:

1. Look for a text field at the top that says "Ask a question about your data"
2. If you don't see it, go to Insert → Q&A Visual in Desktop, or click the Q&A button in Service

2. Type your supply chain question

Ask in plain English:

• "Total inventory value by category this month vs last month"
• "Which suppliers have OTIF below 95% in the last 30 days?"
• "Top 10 SKUs by days of supply ascending"
• "Inventory turns by product category for Q1 2026"

Power BI interprets the question and generates a chart automatically.

3. Use Copilot (if available)

If your organization has Copilot in Power BI enabled:

1. Open the report in Power BI Service (browser)
2. Click the Copilot icon in the top-right of the report view
3. Ask a more complex question or request a summary: "Summarize the key insights from this dashboard. what needs immediate attention?"

Copilot generates a narrative summary of the dashboard, highlighting anomalies and trends.

4. Pin the answer as a new visual

In Q&A: if the generated chart answers a question you want to track regularly, click Pin Visual to add it to a dashboard for ongoing monitoring.

Real Example

Scenario: Your VP asks "Which of our top 20 suppliers had the worst OTIF performance in Q1, and what's the trend?" You have a supplier performance dashboard but the view isn't pre-built for that exact question.

What you type in Q&A: "OTIF rate by supplier for top 20 suppliers by purchase volume, Q1 2026, bar chart sorted ascending"

What you get: A bar chart of OTIF by supplier, lowest performers first, exactly what you need for the answer, in under a minute. If you need to share it, click Export to get the visual into a PowerPoint or email.

Tips

• Q&A works best when your data model has clear, descriptive column names. If columns are named "col1" or "inv_qty", rename them to "Inventory Quantity" so Q&A can understand them.
• For complex multi-filter queries, Copilot handles natural language better than Q&A. use Q&A for simple visuals and Copilot for summaries and narratives.
• If Power BI isn't available at your organization, the ChatGPT Level 1 approach (paste your data as a CSV excerpt and ask for analysis) provides similar results for smaller datasets.

Power BI features and Copilot availability change frequently. If features aren't visible, check with your IT/BI team or Power BI's help documentation.