What is natural language querying?
Natural language querying allows users to ask questions of their data using the
human language. Power BI’s Q&A will interpret the question and immediately
display the results in a visualization that best answers the question. Before this
feature, answering questions through data querying was not a simple task. To
answer important business questions like, “What is our revenue by fiscal
month?” or “How many units are sold by manufacturers?” used to require much
time and thought. We can now answer these types of questions expediently
through Power BI’s Q&A. Watch the video below for a general summary of Q&A.
Example
Let’s say we would like to answer the questions asked above using the 5 data sets
that compose the report used to create the dashboard shown below.
To use Q&A, locate the text bar above the dashboard as shown below.
Simply type the question: “What is our revenue by fiscal month?” and Power BI will generate the best visualization to answer the question as shown below. We notice that fiscal month 3 contributes the
highest revenue for our company and that fiscal month 6 contributes the lowest amount of revenue which means that we can immediately start making data driven decisions within seconds of using Q&A.
To answer our other question “How many units are sold by manufacturers?” we type the question in the text bar and immediately get results displayed in another bar chart. Say we wish to this visual as a pie chart. If we add “as a pie chart” to the end of the last question, Power BI generates a pie chart showing the units sold by
manufacturer as shown below.
For tips about asking the right kind of questions of your data, click here.