Microsoft Copilot in Power BI, as of September 2024, offers significant productivity gains for both business and IT report developers, with features designed to assist users of varying experience levels. While currently in preview, its evolving AI capabilities can streamline report building in Power BI Desktop and the online Power BI Service, despite occasional availability limitations.
Can MS Copilot Make a Power BI Developer More Productive

Microsoft Copilot has been introduced to the Power BI desktop and online products. This blog concentrates on potential productivity gains that a developer persona could gain by using Copilot to build and update reports on the Power BI desktop.
Firstly, it should be noted that I am looking at Copilot capabilities as of Sept 2024. As with all cloud products and specifically those using AI, products evolve rapidly. Copilot also learns from others in the same tenant or globally, depending on settings. It’s also worth mentioning that Copilot is currently marked as a ‘preview’ product. There are times you may get a message saying certain Copilot capabilities are not available, so try later.
Secondly, when I use the developer persona, I am including report builders who are in business roles and report builders who are IT professionals who have experience in other technologies, but less experience in Power BI. Some of the current capabilities are aimed more at the less experienced developer. Having said that, there are features that all developers should take note of to help set up the report to utilize Copilot use by business users better.
Lastly, while I will be looking at Copilot use in Power BI Desktop, some of the functions are also available online in the Power BI Service, where some report developers may work.
How do I access Power BI Copilot
Currently, to access Power BI Copilot, you need, admin, member, or contributor access to at least a single workspace that is assigned to a paid Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher) that has Copilot enabled. To set up your access in Power BI desktop go to File -> Options and Settings -> Options -> Copilot Preview and log into a workspace with the capacity described above. If you don’t have access to any appropriate spaces, you will get the message below.
The next step is to set up preview functions for Copilot by navigating to File -> Options and Settings -> Options -> Preview features and ensuring all the features that use Copilot are switched on.
Copilot for DAX
Creating DAX formulas or DAX tables is syntax driven and forces less experience developers, and a few experience developers, to head for browser search engines to find the right syntax. The good news is that Copilot can help with building the DAX formula directly in Power BI desktop.
Copilot in Quick Measures
Quick measures already provided a structured way to develop a measure from drop down selection of types of calculation. With Copilot suggestions you can write in plain English asking for example ‘total sales year to date’ and the sample DAX is written for you to tailor. This is probably the most useful of the current Copilot capabilities for developers. Note: there is also a Copilot feature in the Edge browser where you can query syntax questions.
* As discussed in this blog, Copilot will continue to change. While there were also enhancements to other aspects of Copilot in the October 2024 release of Power BI desktop, the Copilot feature in Quick Measures has been removed for now.
Copilot in DAX Queries
If you need to use a DAX query to create a summary table of results or a date table, Microsoft recently added DAX Query View as an area to build queries. This has now been augmented with Copilot to allow you to provide the query requirements in plain English. I have to be honest that I don’t often create DAX queries, more often using the Power Query layer to create summary tables. The exception being date tables. At the time of writing, I have been getting the Copilot unavailable message when attempting this feature. It is currently in preview, so to be expected.
Copilot for Documentation
Documenting measures with a description is often ignored by developers. However, if you take over a model from another developer it would be useful to see measure calculations written in plain English in the description property. Given Copilot’s language development in other MS products, written communication is one of its strengths. If you navigate to the ‘Model view’ in the left panel of PBI desktop, which shows the data model connections, and then highlight individual measures, you will see a properties panel with descriptions and synonyms. I will elaborate further on synonyms in the next section, but in descriptions with the Copilot feature switched on you will find a ‘Create with Copilot’ button to turn your calculation into an easy-to-understand plain English descriptions. Modify the description as required.
Copilot in Q&A
Q&A is a visual recently introduced in Power BI desktop. The sophistication of the Q&A dialog to design visuals is still low, but it’s early days. Copilot has been added to allow communication in plain English. However, the feature I want to highlight is the ‘Add synonyms’ dialog. As mentioned in the previous section, synonyms are part of the properties on each dimension and measure in the model view. Using the ‘Add synonyms’ dialog, synonyms are proposed for the measures and dimensions in the model. Given the strength of Copilot in language processing, this is a capable interpretation of the names you have used in the model. With synonyms against your measures and dimensions other features of Copilot, including the ones used online by end users are strengthened.
Copilot in Page Design
The most ambitious feature of Copilot is the ability to design a page from the model and plain English requirements the developer inputs. This feature will undoubtedly be strengthened as the product matures and learns, but at the moment is something you will try and perhaps get some ideas from, but not mature enough to actually use the results.
Conclusion
Copilot for the developer persona in Power BI Desktop is still in its infancy. When developing Power BI reports, I am more likely to need help with DAX formula or Power Query syntax, for which I get helpful advice from Copilot in the Edge browser. I have also recently used Copilot end user tools to find data in a report I didn’t create. Having said that, don’t write off the developer tools. As a maturing AI tool, it will undoubtedly improve over time as features are added and the tool learns from others. Keep checking back to Microsoft information and keep trying features as they are improved. I can’t promise it will reach the stage where it writes the report for you 😊, but it will help more and more