How to Enable Copilot in Power BI

Ready to bring AI-powered analytics into your Power BI reports? Microsoft Copilot can act as your personal data assistant, helping you build stunning visuals, generate DAX formulas, and create narrative summaries in seconds simply by using plain-English prompts. However, getting it to show up isn't as simple as flipping a single switch. This guide will walk you through the entire process, covering the admin settings, licensing requirements, and feature flags you need to configure to enable Copilot across Power BI.

What Exactly is Copilot in Power BI?

Before we jump into the setup, let's quickly cover what you're enabling. Copilot for Power BI is Microsoft's generative AI feature integrated directly into the Power BI ecosystem. It’s designed to speed up your report creation process and help you uncover insights faster. With Copilot, you can:

• Create Reports Instantly: Describe the type of report page you need, and Copilot will build it for you by analyzing your data and adding the most relevant charts and slicers.
• Summarize Data: Generate narrative summaries that explain the key trends and insights from a report page or a specific visual. This is incredibly useful for adding context to your dashboards.
• Write and Explain DAX Code: Get help writing complex Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formulas by describing what you want to calculate. Copilot can generate the code and even explain what it does.
• Ask Questions About Your Data: Use natural language to get answers about the information in your dataset without having to manually build a visualization first.

In short, it’s a powerful tool to make data analysis more accessible, lowering the steep learning curve traditionally associated with powerful BI platforms.

Prerequisites: What You Need Before You Start

To enable and use Copilot, you'll need a few things in place first. Think of this as your pre-flight checklist. Without these, the Copilot buttons simply won't appear, which is the most common reason users get stuck.

1. The Right Licensing and Capacity

Copilot isn't available on free or Power BI Pro licenses. Your organization needs to have one of the following:

• Power BI Premium capacity (P1 SKU or higher): This is the classic Power BI dedicated capacity for large-scale BI deployments.
• Microsoft Fabric capacity (F64 SKU or higher): Fabric is Microsoft's all-in-one analytics platform. If your company has invested in Fabric, you're likely covered.

Most importantly, the workspace where you plan to build your reports must be assigned to one of these eligible capacities. A user with a Pro license can use Copilot as long as the content is housed in a Premium or Fabric workspace.

2. Administrative Privileges

To turn on Copilot for your entire organization (or even a subset of users), you need to have the right permissions. You'll need one of these roles to access the admin portal settings:

• Power BI Administrator
• Fabric Administrator
• Microsoft 365 Global Administrator

If you don't have these roles, you will need to find the person in your organization who does and ask them to perform the steps in the next section. It's a good idea to share this article with them!

Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling Copilot in Power BI

Once you've confirmed your licensing and permissions, you can begin the enablement process. It involves toggling switches at the tenant level, workspace level, and sometimes even in the Power BI Desktop application itself.

Step 1: Enable Copilot in the Admin Portal (The Master Switch)

This is the most important step. If this setting isn't enabled at the organizational level, nothing else matters. You or your admin must activate it in the Fabric Admin portal.

1. Navigate to the Power BI or Microsoft Fabric portal (app.fabric.microsoft.com).
2. Click the Settings gear icon in the bottom left corner and select "Admin portal."
3. In the Admin portal, go to the "Tenant settings" tab.
4. Scroll down a bit until you find the section named "Copilot and other Azure OpenAI features." Expand it.
5. You'll see a setting called "Copilot and other generative AI features." Click the toggle to enable it.

Here you have a few choices:

• The entire organization: You can enable it for everyone. This is the simplest option but might not be ideal if you want to perform a staged rollout.
• Specific security groups: This is the recommended approach for most organizations. You can create a security group in Microsoft 365 (e.g., "Power BI Copilot Users") and enable the feature only for that group. This allows you to start an internal pilot program and get feedback before a wider release.
• Except specific security groups: Enable it for everyone except for certain groups.

After you make your choice, click "Apply." Be patient — updates to tenant settings can sometimes take up to 15-30 minutes to propagate across the entire system.

Note: You may also see an option for data processing geography. To use Copilot features, your data's processing must be handled in a region that supports it, typically the region where your tenant is homed or one listed by Microsoft (like the US or France during initial rollouts). Usually, leaving this as the default is fine unless your organization has very strict data residency requirements.

Step 2: Assign Your Workspace to an Eligible Capacity

As mentioned in the prerequisites, your Power BI workspace must be backed by a P1/F64 or higher capacity.

1. In the Power BI/Fabric service, go to the workspace where you'll be developing your reports.
2. Click on "Workspace settings" (either from the ellipsis "..." menu next to the workspace name or from the button in the top right).
3. In the Workspace settings pane, select the "Premium" tab.
4. Under "Capacity," either choose "Premium capacity" or "Fabric capacity."
5. Select a specific capacity from the dropdown menu that meets the SKU requirements (P1+ or F64+).
6. Click "Save."

Once this is done, any reports and datasets published to this workspace are now eligible to use Copilot features.

Step 3: Enable Copilot in Power BI Desktop (For Report Creators)

For users who build reports in Power BI Desktop, there is one more crucial — and often missed — step. Copilot is a preview feature and needs to be toggled on within the application itself.

1. Open the latest version of Power BI Desktop.
2. Go to File > Options and settings > Options.
3. In the Options window, go to the "Preview features" section.
4. Find "Copilot" in the list and check the box next to it.
5. Click "OK."
6. You will be prompted to restart Power BI Desktop. You must restart the application for the change to take effect.

After restarting, you should now see the Copilot button available in the ribbon on the Home tab of Power BI Desktop, provided you are signed in with an eligible user account.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you've followed the steps above and Copilot still isn't available, here are a few things to check:

"I've enabled everything, but the button is still greyed out!"

Double-check that the workspace you're using is definitely assigned to a Premium or Fabric capacity. This is the #1 reason Copilot is visible but not usable. Also, ensure your dataset is in Import or DirectQuery mode. Copilot currently has limited support for Live Connection mode to Analysis Services.

"My admin enabled it, but it's not showing up for me."

First, give it some time. Tenant settings can take a while to sync. Second, if your admin used a security group, confirm with them that your username was added correctly to that group. Finally, make sure you've restarted Power BI Desktop after enabling the preview feature.

"The tenant setting says it's on, but I have no option in Desktop!"

First, verify you are running the most recent version of Power BI Desktop. Preview features are often rolled out in the latest monthly updates. If you're on an outdated version, you won't see the option.

Final Thoughts

Enabling Copilot in Power BI requires a coordinated effort across licensing, tenant administration, and workspace configuration. By following the steps to turn on the master switch in the admin portal, assigning your workspace to the correct premium capacity, and enabling the preview feature in Power BI Desktop, you unlock the powerful world of AI-assisted report building for your team.

While features like Copilot are making complex BI tools more accessible, the setup and learning curve can still be a hurdle. We built Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require navigating admin portals or learning a dozen configuration settings. With our tool, you connect your data sources — like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Facebook Ads — with one-click integrations, and then just ask questions in plain English. Graphed automatically builds the live dashboards and reports for you in seconds, no steep learning curve and no admin assistance required.