Use Copilot in Power BI Desktop to Create Measures from Numeric Columns

I have been thinking about a mechanism to generate measures from numeric columns on Power BI data models. Of course, we can use Tabular Editor, but it requires some scripting, which is all right. However, the more advanced our requirements get, the more complex the C# script. In real-world development scenarios, it does not make sense to blindly create measures for all numeric columns, such as the key columns used to define relationships between tables, making C# scripting a bit more complex.

In this blog and accompanying YouTube video, I explain using Copilot within Power BI Desktop to create measures from numeric columns. This feature represents a significant advancement in Power BI’s capabilities as of April 2024, enabling data analysts and BI professionals to streamline parts of their data analysis tasks.

Prerequisites

As explained in a previous post here, we first need to enable Copilot on the Fabric Portal. Please note that Copilot in Power BI Desktop requires either Power BI Premium Capacity or AT LEAST an F64 Fabric Capacity. Unfortunately, Copilot is NOT available on PPUEmbedded capacities, Fabric capacities smaller than F64 and Fabric Trial (FT) capacities.

We also need to have the latest version of Power BI Desktop installed on our machine. With that, let’s begin.

YouTube Video

Here is the video on YouTube where I explain the same thing in less than 5 min. But if you are after more details, continue reading.

Introduction to Power BI and Copilot

As Power BI evolves, it incorporates more sophisticated AI-driven capabilities that simplify various aspects of data analytics. The integration of Copilot in Power BI Desktop enhances user interaction with data in many ways. Our focus on this blog is specifically using Copilot to create simple yet crucial measures based on numeric columns that previously required manual effort.

Use Copilot for Measure Creation

Using Copilot is straightforward and demonstrates impressive intelligence in its operational logic. The following steps explain how to do so:

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Microsoft Fabric: Terminologies and Personas Explained

In this blog post, I will explain some of the key concepts, personas, and terminologies related to Microsoft Fabric, a SaaS analytics platform for the era of AI. If you are not familiar with the basic concepts of SaaS analytics platforms and how Microsoft Fabric fits in, I recommend you read my previous blog post, where I explain them in detail.

Microsoft Fabric is an experience-based platform, meaning users can interact with it depending on their roles and personas. For example, a data engineer can use the Data Engineering experience to perform large-scale data transformation through the lakehouse. A data scientist can use Data Science experience to develop AI models on a single foundation without data movement. A business analyst can use the Power BI experience to create and consume interactive reports and dashboards. And a data steward can use the Data Activator experience to govern and secure data across the organisation.
The Data Activator experience is in private preview and is not available for public use yet!

Microsoft Fabric Terminologies

To understand how Microsoft Fabric works, it is crucial to know some of the terminologies that are used in the platform. Some of them are existing terms that are also used in Power BI or Azure services, while some of them are new and specific to Microsoft Fabric. Here are some of the key terms that you should know:

  • Tenant: A tenant is a dedicated instance of Microsoft Fabric that is provisioned for an organisation or a department within an organisation. A tenant has its own set of users, groups, permissions, capacities, workspaces, items, and experiences. A Fabric tenant is associated with an Azure Active Directory (AAD) tenant, which is a directory service that the organisations own when they sign up for a Microsoft cloud service such as Azure, Microsoft 365, Power BI, etc. AAD provides identity and access management for cloud applications. A tenant in Microsoft Fabric can only be accessed by users who belong to the same AAD tenant.
  • Capacity: Capacity is a term that refers to the amount of resources available to support a computing service. In the context of SaaS applications, capacity refers to the ability of the system to handle a certain amount of load or demand based on the required resources and infrastructure such as compute power (CPU, RAM, etc.), storage, network bandwidth and whatnot. As explained in my previous post, Microsoft Fabric is a SaaS platform. So, from a Microsoft Fabric perspective, capacities are sets of resources that are allocated to a tenant to run analytics workloads. The capacities sit in a tenant, and the available resources can be shared by multiple workspaces or dedicated to a single workspace for better performance and isolation. Microsoft Fabric capacities are available in various F SKUs that offer different levels of resources and features. For more information about capacities and SKUs, see Microsoft Fabric Capacity and SKUs.
  • Workspace: A workspace is a logical container that holds a collection of items and artefacts. A workspace can have one or more owners who can manage its settings and permissions and one or more members who can access its items. A workspace can also be assigned to a capacity to run its analytics workloads. In Microsoft Fabric, workspaces are based on Power BI workspaces.

The above terms also apply to Power BI, so they have been used within the community for a long time. The hierarchy starts with an organisation acquiring their potential Tenants, and then the purchased Capacities are available to tenants and the Workspaces that are assigned to capacities.

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