Using Q&A in D365FO Embedded Power BI Workspaces

Embedded Power BI analytical workspaces are among my preferred features in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. They integrate the robust features and capabilities of Power BI into D365FO without any extra licensing fees.

Additionally, it's important to recognize that these embedded Power BI reports draw from an internal data warehouse within D365FO, which is separate from the transactional database that stores business transactions. This separation enables developers, report designers, and citizen developers to craft intricate and visually impressive reports without compromising the performance of core business processes in D365FO.

The key benefits of using D365FO Power BI embedded workspaces over traditional reporting options include:

1. Integrated Experience: Power BI Embedded allows for seamless integration of interactive reports directly into the Dynamics 365 Finance application workspaces. This provides a unified experience where users can access and interact with reports without leaving the application.
2. Personalization: Users can personalize workspaces by embedding tiles and direct links to reports hosted on PowerBI.com, enabling a tailored view that meets their specific business needs.
3. Drill-Down Capabilities: The embedded reports enable users to drill down into detailed pages from Power BI visuals, starting the action from the data points they are exploring.
4. Contextual Reporting: Reports can be filtered based on the application context, such as company or date range, providing relevant insights that are aligned with the user’s current work environment.
5. License Bundling: The Power BI Embedded service license is included with the Dynamics 365 Finance application, which means there’s no need for a separate PowerBI.com subscription.
6. Real-Time Data: With Power BI Embedded, developers can deliver always-up-to-date views with Direct Query, ensuring that the data displayed is current and actionable.

These benefits contribute to a more efficient, context-aware, and user-friendly reporting environment within Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Role of Q&A in D365FO Embedded Power BI Reports

I've always recognized the power of Power BI Q&A, which allows users to delve into their data through natural language queries. However, I hadn't enabled it in a D365FO Power BI embedded workspace until recently, which uses a direct query mode.

Working with a customer, I set up a Power BI embedded dashboard to shed light on integration systems and incoming data flows. Initially, the Q&A feature was sluggish in understanding various questions and natural queries. Yet, in just a day or two, it began delivering astonishing results and visuals. This is because the Power BI creates an index of the data source and uploads a subset of that data into Power BI for Q&A reference. Once it starts working, the potential appears limitless, and now, instead of crafting static visuals, I can simply publish a page with the Q&A feature active for user exploration.

Here are some of the key features:

• Natural Language Queries: Users can type questions in plain English and receive answers in the form of visuals.

• Interactive Experience: It provides an interactive way to explore data, often leading to more questions and discoveries as visualizations reveal new insights.

• Autocomplete Suggestions: As you type, Power BI Q&A offers suggestions and immediate feedback, similar to search engine behavior.
• Understand Synonyms: It can use synonyms from the Microsoft Office thesaurus or those defined by users, making it easier to understand and respond to queries.
• Visual Results: The answers to questions are presented as charts and graphs, which can be customized and saved. You can adjust the prompt with the visual required like Pie, Map, Matrix, Table get the exact result or visual as expected.
• Integration with Reports: Q&A can be added to reports as a visual or a button, allowing for easy access within the context of existing reports.
• Teaching the Q&A Model: Users can teach the Q&A model new terms and phrases to improve its understanding of queries. The more you use it, the better it gets.
• Feedback Loop: Users can review the questions asked and fix any issues with the Q&A model, enhancing its accuracy over time.

These features make Power BI Q&A a versatile tool for data exploration and reporting and having this feature within D365FO embedded Power BI reports is a great addition.

Note some key aspects for the best experience -

• Try and limit the number of tables / entities used in your report.
• Never add same field names across multiple tables, it confuses the Q&A engine.
• Try to use standard dimension tables like Date dimension for easy & effective data exploration.
• Ensure all duplicate synonyms are fixed & suggested questions are added and verified in the Power BI visual prior to uploading / checking in your PBIZ resource file.
• Spend some time with Q&A in the sandbox after deploying, it usually takes 2-3 hours for accurate results and auto complete suggestions to show up.

All the visuals above are generated with dummy data / junk values only for illustration purposes from within a D365FO environment. Certain names and values are obfuscated for my own reasons.