Users of Microsoft’s cloud-based business intelligence (BI) suite Power BI can now query on-premises data sources to gain business insights simply by asking it in plain English. Power BI’s hallmark Q&A feature has been updated to carry out natural-language queries on all on-premises data sources linked by Power BI Enterprise Gateway, beginning with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services.
“Using Q&A with on-premise data sources has been a top community ask from the very first time we introduced the Q&A feature,” said Patrick Baumgartner, Microsoft’s principal program manager, in a blog post.
The new functionality, which is currently in beta, will be extended to other data sources in the next few weeks, Baumgartner said. “Power BI’s goal is to provide the best experiences for getting insight from any data. Extending our natural language query experience from the cloud directly to your on-premise data is another great step to achieving this.”
In order to turn on the new Q&A experience for locally-held data, admins need to enable the feature via the gateway’s Q&A and Cortana settings. Admins will also need to create an index based on the targeted on-premises data, allowing users to ask questions of Power BI, which will reply with graphic visualizations or report sheets.
Baumgartner said Power BI’s Q&A feature has been given a number of new enhancements, with a more flexible auto-complete feature that provides more options as users input terms. It’s also easier for users to compare different answers by adjusting their questions interactively. For example, by clicking on a term or value Power BI will suggest various alternatives, so users won’t need to retype their entire question.
Another new capability is the ability to ask questions based on specific report sheets, which lets users filter out data further. Finally, Power BI can support synonyms such as “alternate names for tables, columns and measures”.
Microsoft has been trying to make Big Data more usable in several ways besides these updates to Power BI’s Q&A feature. For example, the Redmond-based firm teamed up with a Chicago-based startup called Narrative Science Inc. just last month, creating a new feature that lets users turn Power BI visualizations into “stories”. The feature works by transforming charts, graphs and visualizations into text in an effort to describe their findings.
Last March Microsoft added a new custom visual called SandDance that’s designed to help unlock Big Data’s storytelling potential. SandDance uses a blend of 3D graphics and animations to rearrange data points and create new visualizations, helping users to explore Power BI data even further. The idea is that users can visually connect the dots to see the relationship between seemingly unrelated insights.
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