Empowering Power BI Teams with Copilot in Power Automate
A guidebook for Power BI developers (and everyone else) to speed up automation with Copilot in Power Automate
Copilot is an AI-powered assistant developed and offered by Microsoft. Copilot is available in a vast suite of Microsoft offerings such as Bing Copilot, Power Platform Copilot, Fabric Copilot, Power BI Copilot, GitHub Copilot, etc., and the Copilot family is continuously expanding and evolving.
In this article, we will delve into Copilot in Power Automate. We will showcase the capabilities of Copilot in Power Automate for cloud flows to speed up our automation tasks and some tips to make the most out of it. This article is written with Power BI actions in the focus, but regardless, all the capabilities of Copilot are available for every connector.
Please read our terms of use before proceeding with this article.
Copilot in Power Automate
Copilot in Power Automate is a part of the Power Platform Copilot offering. Copilot in Power Automate can help developers build, set up, and run automation within Power Automate cloud flows. It offers a chat-like experience to interact with the developers and helps create and edit flows throughout the automation journey.
In a previous article, we presented an innovative use of Power Automate, where we automated our monthly Power BI data refresh validation. We will continue with this use case as an example and demonstrate what Copilot offers and how it can help us speed up our automation journey.
Our team has robust Power BI and data engineering skills, but we don't have a Power Automate developer. Due to budget and time constraints, skilling up and onboarding a Power Automate developer was out of the equation. So we turned to Copilot to help us out with our problem.
However, it's essential to be clear that we built the technical architecture for our automation by ourselves and only used Copilot to implement it in Power Automate. We have tried countless prompts to get a similar solution using Copilot, but with the current capabilities, it seems too complex for Copilot to generate an appropriate flow. So keep your prompts simple and try multiple prompts.
Availability and Licensing
At the time of the writing, Copilot in Power Automate was not yet available in all regions worldwide. You can check out the latest availability by region here. It's important to mention that Copilot is optimized for use in English and currently has limited support with other languages.
You don't need a separate subscription or license from the one you currently might have that allows you to work with Power Automate. Any of the following licenses give you access to Copilot:
- A standalone Power Automate license
- A seeded Microsoft 365 license, such as E3 or E5
- A Power Apps/Dynamics license
For Pro Power BI developers, you most likely have an E5 license that gives you access to both Power Automate and the Copilot. If you have a standalone Power BI Pro license, you need one of the licenses mentioned earlier to access Power Automate and the Copilot.
If Copilot is available in your environment’s region and you still don’t see the Copilot in the Power Automate, contact your admin. A Power Platform admin can turn the Copilot feature off.
Where does Copilot live in Power Automate?
Let's head to the Power Automate portal and see where Copilot lives and how to access it. On the Home page, you're welcomed by the Copilot, who will allow you to input your prompts to generate a flow.
On the Create page, you can find Copilot by clicking the Describe it to design it tile. You can input your prompts on the next page to generate a flow.
If you edit an existing flow or create a new one, the Copilot is available on a panel next to the canvas. There are several limitations on whether the editor Copilot is available for a flow. Some common reasons are:
- The New Designer is turned Off
- Your flow has a comment
- Your flow contains an unsupported hybrid trigger, i.e., flow is triggered manually from outside Power Automate.
- Your flow contains a non-Open API action
You can find the latest and updated list of unsupported flows here.
What Copilot in Power Automate can do?
Copilot has a variety of features and support to offer you. Let's look at them with an example. Before that, the simplest answer to this question is to ask Copilot about what he can do.
It's important to remember that Copilot doesn't support all the connectors and actions yet. Only the most common actions across several Microsoft 365 apps are supported.
Copilot can't create a flow if you describe a flow that uses an unsupported action.
We will create some part of the following architecture with Copilot.
Natural Language Creation
Copilot can understand your intent and create a flow based on the prompts you provide. You can describe your automation scenario using plain English, and Copilot will create a corresponding flow. Copilot uses GPT-3 as a foundation to understand the natural language prompt and writes the code for the flow.
Let's use the following prompt to build our flow: "Create a flow to refresh a Power BI dataset on a button click".
On the next page, you can review the generated options (use the < and > buttons if you've multiple suggestions) and select the one closest to your ask. Copilot can show some strange and irrelevant flow suggestions.
Auto-Setup of Connections
Copilot can automatically set up connections to new connectors when you add an action from the respective application to your flow. The automatic connection is established in both cases: designing a flow from scratch or adding an action to a flow.
Interactive Editing
While editing your flow, you can ask Copilot to add new actions and update or replace existing actions. Let's add a waiting time of 10 minutes to the flow.
If multiple suggestions are available, then Copilot allows you to select one to proceed. Otherwise, it will directly update the flow. Here, we can see that it has updated the flow, but the wait is at the incorrect place. We want to wait while the dataset is being refreshed. We can ask Copilot to move the wait action to the appropriate place.
You can use the Undo button or ask the Copilot to revert the last action.
Parameter Handling
Copilot can apply and update the parameters to actions based on your prompts. When we asked Copilot to add a wait time of 10 minutes, it automatically set the timer to 10 minutes. Now let's change it to 5 minutes.
Error Detection
Copilot provides real-time feedback to help you avoid common mistakes. It continuously identifies potential issues, such as missing parameters in an action, incorrect action configurations, incompatible data types, etc. Let's add a couple of new actions without setting up the parameters.
After adding the last action (create SharePoint file), Copilot informs us that we must finish setting up our previous action to fix the flow. Clicking on the tile will open the action's editing panel to set up the parameters and settings.
Debugging Assistance
At the time of writing, Copilot can't directly debug the flows. However, it can help you to identify the areas that need attention. It can provide information and details about the flow's structure and logic to help you troubleshoot effectively.
It's important to note that debugging doesn't work properly in all the scenarios. We haven't set up the parameters for the previous actions, and if we ask Copilot whether something's wrong. It behaves like your girlfriend.
Ask Questions about the Flow and the Actions
This feature is handy if you have a flow created by someone else. The Copilot can explain what the flow does and what a particular action does within the context of the flow.
Contextual Suggestions
While you're working on your flow, Copilot understands the context of your flow and suggests relevant actions and adjustments. For example, if you're working with dates, it can recommend date-related conversions and functions.
Ask Questions about the Product
You can inquire Copilot about product-related details such as how to use a particular feature, achieve a specific result, or find information.
Copilots are evolving; soon, we might have additional capabilities or areas it can cover.
Limitations
Copilot is in preview, and they have a long road ahead to mature and make it to the GA (General Availability). Writing a detailed note about their limitations and challenges at this stage is unfair. But as a rule of thumb, whenever you're working with a Copilot and unsure about something, take their suggestions with a pinch of salt.
That being said, a specific area that Copilot hasn't touched yet when it comes to cloud flows is custom connectors. At the time of writing, you can't use Copilot to create custom connectors. For example, Power BI REST APIs have a lot to offer. However, Power Automate only provides a handful of built-in connectors for Power BI.
If you're new to this topic, check out our previous articles to learn how to create custom connectors for Power BI.
Tips and Tricks
Your success with Copilot will mostly depend on how you interact with it. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of Copilot.
- Use natural/everyday language: Currently, Copilot is optimized to work with English. Use simple, everyday English terms to explain your demands.
- Be specific: Be as specific as possible instead of using generic prompts. "When an email with an attachment arrives, I want to upload the file to OneDrive" instead of "I want to process an email".
- Conditional prompts: Copilot understands the conditions better than lengthy statements. Use When X happens, do Y format in your prompts.
- Mention connectors: If possible, mention the connector in your prompts. Prefer "Create a file in SharePoint" instead of "Create a file".
- Review the generated flow: Copilot can suggest or perform strange and irrelevant operations that don't make sense. So, after each action prompt, review your flow carefully.
- Ask questions: Copilot can answer your questions on how to use the product and actions. So ask questions.
Pro Tip
The Copilot is struggling a lot with some actions. You may be confident that an action exists but can't get the prompt right. For example, adding an action to execute a DAX query against a dataset was a nightmare, and no amount of prompt tweaking helped us.
To get over this, refer to the connector's documentation and get the Operation ID of the action. Simplify the Operation ID to natural language in your prompt, and Copilot knows the rest.
That's all for now. Good luck with your Copilot shenanigans!
Conclusion
Copilot is terrific and can simplify pro and non-pro developers' workloads. We have just begun to see the capabilities of Copilot in Power Automate. Copilot also makes us realize the importance of simple and clear communication. However, there are several limitations and challenges that Copilot has to overcome. We're in the early stage, and Copilot will evolve and mature with time.
Next Steps
Earlier in the article, we mentioned Copilot in Powe BI. We're working on a similar guidebook on Copilot in Power BI. Keep in touch to know when it's available.
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