Microsoft claims you no longer need to hire expensive Power BI optimization experts. With Copilot, a task that took days could now be done in minutes.
Microsoft Power BI is often touted by many in the data industry as the visualization tool of choice, primarily due to its friendly user interface, integration with various data sources, and enterprise-grade features. While Power BI is arguably easier to use than alternatives like Qlik Sense, Tableau, and Amazon QuickSight, one area developers and customers still struggle with is optimization of complex reports. Microsoft now claims that you don’t need to hire experts for this job as Microsoft 365 Copilot can already do it for you.
In a new blog post, Microsoft has highlighted that unoptimized reports often lead to a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) due to increased compute capacity and low customer satisfaction. Enterprise customers end up paying thousands of dollars to Power BI optimization experts so that they can refine your data model, DAX, and Power Query transformations. You don’t need to do that anymore, according to Microsoft’s Principal Solution Engineer for Data and Analytics, Greg Beaumont.
In his 16-minute tutorial embedded below, the executive has demonstrated how Microsoft 365 can be leveraged by customers to create a “consultant-grade 20‑page assessment” with recommendations about how to mitigate issues:
Beaumont says that after following recommendations from Microsoft 365 Copilot, he noticed the following improvements in his report:
- Semantic Model and Power Query refresh time reduced by 45%
- Semantic Model (Import Mode) size reduced by 79%
- Report visualization rendering times reduced by 25%
The engineer notes that if a human was involved in this process, the consultant assessment would have taken 16-40 hours to produce instead of 15 minutes, and the optimization itself would also have taken roughly the same time instead of the two hours that it took now.
Microsoft’s claims and demos are certainly interesting. They will make Power BI optimization experts a bit nervous about being made obsolete, while also making enterprise customers ponder about their existing strategy in this area. However, do note that you do need a commercial Microsoft 365 license to follow this optimization process in Power BI Desktop.
