AI visualization in Microsoft Power BI

Technical contribution

February 6, 2025

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful platform for Business intelligencethat makes it possible to visualize, analyse and interpret data in order to make well-founded decisions. Power BI already uses artificial intelligence to make data analysis faster and more efficient. In this article, three important visualizations are presented: "Key Influencers", "AI division" with an analysis tree and "Smart Narratives".

Key influencers: Analyzing influencing factors

The Key Influencers visualization helps to identify important influencing factors on selected metrics. It shows these factors in a diagram and indicates how strongly they influence the metric. This allows users to quickly identify which criteria, such as certain product features, are decisive for sales figures.

In addition, the "Top Segments" sub-function offers the option of analyzing not only individual metrics, but also grouped values in segments. This makes it easier to understand the interactions between different metrics.

AI division: data analysis with analysis tree

The analysis tree visual in Power BI makes it possible to display data in a tree diagram and automatically organize it into different levels. Users can drill down from a higher level to more detailed levels, for example to analyze annual sales figures by city, month or product type.

The AI division uses artificial intelligence to search specifically for relevant data levels. Users can set maximum and minimum values to find out which level has the highest or lowest values. The AI automatically adjusts the displayed levels when a different node is selected.

There are two approaches to data analysis in the AI split: the absolute and the relative AI split. The difference lies in how the next level is determined: either by the absolute highest or lowest values or by comparing the highest and lowest values within the current level.

An example: If a user analyzes their sales figures and wants to drill down to the city of Toronto, the next highest value would be Canada in the absolute AI split. With the relative AI division, on the other hand, a different level would be displayed, showing the months with the highest sales figures.

Smart narratives: creating automated analyses

With Smart Narratives, users can create texts that are generated by artificial intelligence. These analyses can be created for a single visual or an entire report page. The AI evaluates the specified values and draws conclusions, such as sales increases in a certain month or the turnover of a product in a certain period. The texts update automatically when changes are made through filtering.

Users have the option to expand the text and have additional values generated by the AI. A Smart Narratives icon can be added to a visual to provide an instant summary of the content.

Smart Narratives allow users to quickly create customizable analyses, which significantly increases the efficiency of data analysis.

Conclusion: Advantages of AI visualization in Power BI

The diverse AIfunctions of Power BI support users with various tasks. They help to find out, which factors a value most most influence and how strong this influence is. In addition enable they the analysis of data about different dimensions across and the targeted search for conspicuous patterns. Power BI offers a dynamicAIsupported data analysisthat improves understanding individual or multiple visuals considerably improved.