Extracting deeper insights with Fabric Data Agents in Copilot in Power BI
Co-author: Joanne Wong
We’re excited to announce the upcoming integration of Fabric data agent with Copilot in Power BI, enhancing your ability to extract insights seamlessly.
What’s new?
A new chat with your data experience is launching soon in Power BI– a full-screen Copilot for users to ask natural language questions and receive accurate, relevant answers from their available Fabric resources. As part of this launch, users can also discover and leverage Fabric data agents directly in the Copilot in Power BI experience. With this integration, you no longer need to jump between different items to find what you’re looking for. It simplifies your workflow by helping you focus on extracting insights instead of navigating through various sources.
Previously, you may have access to multiple resources, but finding the right data to answer specific questions can be challenging. Copilot was limited to the right pane of a single report, allowing questions only about that open report. This new standalone Copilot in Power BI addresses this by streamlining the process. Now, when you ask a question, Copilot scans the Power BI semantic models, reports, and Fabric data agents you have access to. It ranks and suggests the most relevant items based on your query, giving you options to choose from.
How does it work?
Fabric data agents are key when your question involves accessing data from other sources in Fabric, such as lakehouses, warehouses, or KQL databases in addition to Power BI semantic models. Fabric data agent serves as the bridge to these diverse data sources, enabling you to retrieve relevant information from OneLake for your queries. Moreover, if you already know which data agent to use, you can manually add it to the Copilot session and interact with it directly for more relevant results.
Once Copilot determines that the Fabric data agent is necessary, it rephrases the query for clarity, sends it to the data agent, and retrieves the answer from the most relevant data source—whether it’s a lakehouse, warehouse, semantic model, or KQL database. Security protocols, such as Row-Level Security (RLS) and Column-Level Security (CLS), are enforced based on your permissions, and the answer is then delivered directly in the Copilot conversation interface.
The integration of Fabric data agent with Copilot in Power BI takes natural language querying to the next level, making it easier to find insights without switching between resources. Whether you know exactly what data you need or if you want to rely on Copilot’s suggestions, this integration helps you focus on gaining insights from your data.
Getting Started
Stay tuned for the launch of the standalone Copilot in Power BI experience in the coming weeks. To create a Fabric data agent, explore the documentation. When you have access to the standalone Copilot experience, turn on the ‘Users can access a standalone, cross-item Power BI Copilot experience’ tenant setting. Once the tenant setting is enabled, you can manually add Fabric data agent(s) to your Copilot session.
What’s Next?
- Explore the documentation to learn more about Fabric data agents.
- Read more about the latest updates in Copilot in Power BI.
- Learn more about how Copilot in Fabric works.
- Watch our Copilot and AI in Fabric session at Build.
