ChatGPT, Gemini, & Copilot. Each of these AI-driven tools is a hot topic and used across the modern workspace. “It is foolish not to use it”, say many leaders. Released in May 2024, Microsoft’s Copilot for Power BI aims to provide a convenient natural language chat interface that uses powerful large learning models to respond with smart answers and actions.
But exactly how useful is it, and is it as powerful as industry claims?
What is Copilot for Microsoft Power BI?
As a business professional working closely with data you are familiar with analytics and data visualisation. You may have come across Microsoft Power BI and, more recently, Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end analytics solution platform. Now take this, plus the power of AI integrated into a single environment.
Copilot in Power BI provides a variety of AI-powered features aimed at boosting productivity and optimising workflows for business users, report creators, and data model managers. These capabilities help simplify complex processes, deliver actionable insights, and enhance the overall data experience.
How to activate Copilot for Power BI?
The following action prompts are required to use Copilot in Power BI:
An F2 or higher Azure Fabric Capacity Tier.
A Power BI workspace attached to a paid Fabric Capacity.
Enabling Copilot by Power BI or Fabric Administrators from the Fabric Admin portal, should the organization be unprepared to use it. This is enabled by default.
Working with Copilot
“You reap what you sow”, a common proverb used throughout history and more recently compatible with the usage of AI being a solid and data-powered foundation. To ensure Copilot delivers exact, relevant, and goal-aligned responses, model owners must invest time in preparing their data for AI.
Proper data preparation helps Copilot grasp the unique business context and prioritise the most essential information. Failure to do so will result in misinterpretation and inaccurate, hallucinated responses. For example, a user could develop a semantic model that throws together a bunch of tables with fuzzy relationships and inconsistent date fields. Copilot will attempt to consume it and will end up returning an unknow or an incorrect result.
Speed and computation also play a vital role in the generation of results. The higher Fabric tier attached, the faster & more accurate outcomes will be provided assuming the data model follows an ideal fashion.
DAX also plays a vital role in reporting. Copilot can be used to write DAX measures much easier than before, however it is vital to always question the response as it does not always follow best practices and may provide an answer that does not necessarily fit the developer’s reporting goals.
As a data user, one should collaborate with Copilot and not simply use it as this prompts both users and agents to ask the right questions instead of expecting the right answer.
Creating with Copilot
With Copilot in Power BI, you can generate report pages in just a few clicks, significantly reducing the time and effort typically needed. It streamlines the report-building process, saving you hours of manual work.
This also presents the question: What does the future hold for Power BI Developers?
Assuming the data is clean and setup correctly, Copilot provides a simple report that consists of basic visuals and a few KPIs with the proper labels. Sure, this is easy to consume and read but it falls short around these areas:
Proper user interface and experience that the audience is looking for.
It does not follow any design scheme or use of company themes or logos.
The visuals do not provide the level of detail that a stakeholder or a user at higher management is on the lookout for.
It caters to a basic overview and does not make full use of Power BI’s advanced capabilities like conditional formatting and filtrations.
How can we change the game?
That being said, if one were to guide their Copilot agent with a simple template with their company colours and the target audience it needs to keep in mind, it will provide a more robust and insightful reports that can prompt users towards actionable insights.
This can be achieved by using the power of Azure AI Foundry, where developers can create customized AI agents that have in-depth knowledge of their organization and underlying data which can be deployed and consumed in Power BI.
Is Copilot a game-changer or gimmick?
Let's say it comes down to the grooming of the agent and how it is consumed by asking the right questions on the right underlying dataset using the right prompts.
Copilot isn’t magic, it's leverage. The difference between “gimmick” and “game-changer” is the groundwork: clean semantic models, strong DAX, governed prompts, and deployment discipline. That ’s exactly where Keyrus comes in.
Keyrus will help you with:
Copilot Readiness Audit (Fabric & Power BI): Capacity tier check, workspace posture, governance & security review, and a semantic model health scan (relationships, granularity, date logic, DAX hygiene).
Data & DAX Hardening: Fix slow models, standardize calendars, refactor brittle measures, and implement naming/role conventions so Copilot answers are reliable and traceable.
Design System for BI: Apply your brand, UX patterns, and accessible layouts so Copilot-generated pages don’t look “generic demo.”
Prompt & Guardrail Library: Curated prompts for analysts and execs, plus policy guardrails to reduce hallucinations and enforce context.
Azure AI Foundry Agent Integration: Build organization-aware agents that understand your data/domain and surface inside Power BI.
CI/CD for BI (Azure DevOps): Version control for PBIX/semantic models, deployment pipelines, and environment secrets (Key Vault).
Ready to turn Copilot into a competitive advantage? Book a Copilot Readiness session with Keyrus at sales@keyrus.co.za.