How to Use Copilot in Power BI (2026 Guide)

Power BI Copilot lets you query reports and semantic models in plain English, get visual answers on demand, and summarize key insights without writing DAX or SQL. To access it, your organization needs a paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher). If your workspace qualifies, Copilot is already on by default. You access it through the Copilot pane inside any open report, or from the standalone entry point on the Power BI Home page.

What Copilot Can and Cannot Do

Copilot in Power BI handles three broad categories of tasks for business users. First, it can find content: you describe what you are looking for and Copilot surfaces relevant reports, semantic models, and Fabric data agents from anything you have permission to access. Second, it answers ad hoc questions about data, generating new visuals or DAX calculations on the fly when the answer is not already in a report. Third, it summarizes: you can ask Copilot to give you a plain-English summary of an entire report or a specific section of it.

Copilot does not replace your semantic model. It works with what is already in the model. If a measure does not exist, Copilot can attempt to write DAX to create one, but the quality of that output depends heavily on how well your data has been prepared. Microsoft now calls this the "Approved for Copilot" setting, renamed in January 2026 from "Prepped for AI." When a model owner marks a semantic model as approved, it receives prioritized ranking in Copilot searches and the friction warning for unvetted models is removed.

One important limitation: Copilot responses are nondeterministic. Two users asking the same question against the same data may receive different answers. This is expected behavior, not a bug. Set clear expectations with stakeholders before embedding Copilot into recurring workflows. For a repeatable prompt on an unchanged model, Copilot caches responses within a rolling 24-hour window, so you may see the same answer twice if the data has not changed.

Capacity Requirements Before You Start

Many teams discover they cannot access Copilot because their license does not qualify. Here is what your environment must have.

Workspace capacity. Your workspace must be on a paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher). Power BI Pro and Premium Per User (PPU) licenses alone do not unlock Copilot at the organizational level.

Admin tenant setting. The setting "Users can use Copilot and other features powered by Azure OpenAI" must be enabled in the Fabric admin portal. Copilot is on by default but your admin may have turned it off.

Supported region. Your Fabric capacity must be in a supported region. India West, Qatar Central, UAE Central, Korea South, Taiwan North, and several others are not yet supported as of March 2026.

Cross-region processing consent. If your Fabric tenant operates outside the United States or France, your admin must enable "Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your tenant's geographic region" in the admin portal, or Copilot is off by default.

If you meet all conditions, navigate to app.powerbi.com. You should see a Copilot icon in the left navigation. If it is missing, ask your Fabric admin to verify the tenant settings listed above.

Using the Copilot Pane Inside a Report

The Copilot pane is the most widely available experience and requires the least setup for end users. It appears as a panel on the right side of any report hosted in a qualifying workspace.

Open the pane. With a report open in the Power BI service, select the Copilot icon in the toolbar. The chat interface loads on the right.

Ask a specific question. Vague questions return vague answers. Phrase your question as a business analyst would: "What were the top five products by revenue last quarter?" or "Which regions are below target for Q1 2026?" Copilot queries the semantic model and returns a visual, a numeric answer, or a DAX-generated measure depending on what the question requires.

Review how Copilot arrived at the answer. Expand "How Copilot arrived at this" below any response. This section shows the fields and filters applied. If a relative date filter was used, for example "last year," this section confirms whether it resolved to the range you intended. Validating this output is important because date filters can resolve differently depending on the model's date table configuration.

Ask for a report summary. Type "Summarize this report" or "What are the key insights on this page?" Copilot reads the visuals and text boxes on the current page and returns a structured summary in plain English. This is useful for briefing stakeholders before a meeting without requiring them to open the report.

Clear the chat between unrelated questions. Copilot maintains context across the current conversation. Switching topics without clearing degrades response quality because prior context remains active. Use the clear chat button to start fresh when you change subjects.

Using the Standalone Copilot Experience

The standalone Copilot is a full-screen experience accessible from the Power BI Home page and the left navigation. It is currently in preview. Unlike the Copilot pane, it is not scoped to a single open report. You can ask questions across all reports, semantic models, and Fabric data agents you have permission to access across the full workspace.

Finding a report by description. If you cannot remember the exact name of a report, describe it: "Where can I find data about the sales funnel including opportunities, pipeline stages, and quarterly goals?" Copilot returns a ranked list of matching items based on titles, descriptions, visual content, and your recent activity. You can then ask Copilot for a plain-English summary of any item in the results before opening it.

Attaching context before asking. Select "Add items for better results" and attach a specific report or semantic model before asking your question. Without an attached item, responses may draw on general model knowledge rather than your data. With an item attached, responses are grounded in that specific source.

Workspace billing. In January 2026, Microsoft introduced the Fabric Copilot Capacity (FCC), a dedicated capacity option that centralizes all Copilot billing for an organization. If your organization does not have an FCC, the standalone Copilot automatically selects an eligible workspace to track usage. You can change this selection at any time under More > Manage workspace inside the standalone interface.

Writing Prompts That Work

Power BI Copilot supports up to 10,000 characters per prompt. Longer, more specific prompts generally outperform short ones. Based on documented behavior from Microsoft's own tutorials and the platform's DAX generation capabilities, the following prompt structures reliably return useful results.

Date-scoped aggregations. "Show me total sales by region for Q1 2026." Copilot applies relative date filters and produces a visual breakdown.

Comparisons across segments. "Which product categories had the largest decline in gross margin compared to last year?" This triggers DAX generation for a year-over-year delta calculation.

Exploratory summaries. "What are the biggest drivers of the drop in conversion rate shown on page 3?" Copilot interprets the visual context on the named page and provides a narrative summary.

Threshold and ranking questions. "Which accounts have not placed an order in the last 90 days?" or "What are the top 10 items by order volume this month?" Work well when the relevant fields exist in the semantic model.

Avoid open-ended prompts such as "Tell me about this data." The output is typically too broad to be actionable. Narrow the scope by specifying a metric, a time range, a dimension, or a business outcome you care about.

The Q&A Deprecation and What It Means

Microsoft has announced that Power BI Q&A, the legacy natural language query tool available as a report visual, will be deprecated in December 2026. Q&A visuals embedded in published reports will stop working after that date. The replacement is Copilot, specifically the question-answering capability in the Copilot pane and the standalone experience.

Teams with Q&A visuals in production reports should audit those reports before the December 2026 deadline and replace Q&A visuals with standard Power BI visuals or, where appropriate, with Copilot-accessible query documentation. There is no automated migration path from Q&A to Copilot. Each Q&A visual must be reviewed and replaced manually.

If your organization does not have the capacity license to run Copilot and you need to move analysts away from Q&A before December 2026, a no-configuration option is to upload your data directly to VSLZ AI, which handles plain-English queries against uploaded files without requiring any Power BI capacity license.

Preparing Your Semantic Model for Better Copilot Results

Model owners have more influence over Copilot output quality than end users do. The most impactful steps are the following.

Add descriptions to measures. Copilot reads measure descriptions to understand what a measure represents. A measure named "Rev_LY" with no description is ambiguous to the model. Rename it to "Revenue Last Year (USD)" and add a description explaining the calculation logic and time period covered.

Mark the model as Approved for Copilot. In Power BI Desktop, navigate to the semantic model properties and enable "Approved for Copilot." This removes the friction warning in the standalone Copilot experience and boosts the model in search result rankings for your organization.

Use unambiguous column names. Column names such as "Status" or "Type" with no business context produce inconsistent results. Rename them to "Order Status" or "Customer Type" before publishing.

Define synonyms. Power BI allows model owners to define synonyms for fields so that natural language queries using alternate terms map to the correct field. This is configured in the semantic model's field settings and carries over to Copilot's language understanding.

Summary

Power BI Copilot gives business users natural language access to reports and semantic models without writing any code. It requires paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher), and the quality of answers scales directly with how well the underlying semantic model has been prepared. The Copilot pane inside a report is the fastest entry point. The standalone Copilot experience, in preview as of early 2026, extends that reach across the full workspace. Teams still using Q&A visuals have until December 2026 before those features are retired.