How to interact with your corporate data right from within the Cortana experience including voice integration for querying your data. How Q&A can resolve our day today question from organization. How to Use natural language queries to find answers in your own data. Start with a question, and have fun traveling through your data refining or expanding your question, uncovering trust-worthy new information, zeroing in on details and zooming out for a broader view

1. How to Get Lightning
Fast Answers with
Power BI
- Q&A and Cortana
Vishal Pawar

2. Download All Data Set , Data
Set Sample, Presentation
and Power BI Desktop File
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3. • 9 + years of experience in Complete Microsoft BI Stack
• BI Solution Architect (Email – VishalPawar@live.com, @Vishal_bi)
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• Knowledge sharing - 350+ BI Articles ,400 SQL Article , 350+ SQL Script
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• SQL PASS Chapter Lead for Mumbai & Navi Mumbai
• MCTS: Microsoft® Certified Technology Specialist -SQL Server 2008 R2, BI
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• SQL Server Expert in Architecting and Optimization
• BE - Computer Science & Engineering , RAIT , Mumbai
• MBA-Information System, Arianth College , Pune
About Me

4. Agenda
1. Current BI Wave
2. Power BI – How to get Started ?
3. Sample Data Set to play ?
4. Q&A – Deep dive with Demo
5. Cortana – Deep dive with Demo
6. What is next for Q&A AND Cortana

5. Analyst – End user
We are into
3rd Wave
Welcome 3rd wave of Analytics

6. Agenda
1. Current BI Wave
2. Power BI – How to get Started ?
3. Sample Data Set to play ?
4. Q&A – Deep dive with Demo
5. Cortana – Deep dive with Demo
6. What is next for Q&A AND Cortana

7. Power BI – Just Quick Overview - 1
This is Boring !!
Show me some latest !!
https://sqldusty.files.wordpress.com/
2016/01/power-bi-diagram2.png

8. Power BI – Just Quick Overview - 2
Start from here - www.PowerBI.com

9. Agenda
1. Current BI Wave
2. Power BI – How to get Started ?
3. Sample Data Set to play ?
4. Q&A – Deep dive with Demo
5. Cortana – Deep dive with Demo
6. What is next for Q&A AND Cortana

10. Data set use in today Presentation
Data Set 1
• Custom ,Totally hand Made
• Salary Details
• Excel example will have Meta
data information
Data Set 2
• Power BI Sample DB
• From Obvience
• How to get it >>Next Slide

11. How to Get Sample content packs and
datasets for Power BI - – Data Set 2
Click here to go to get all details of Sample packs
Quick DEMO

12. Agenda
1. Current BI Wave
2. Power BI – How to get Started ?
3. Sample Data Set to play ?
4. Q&A – Deep dive with Demo
5. Cortana – Deep dive with Demo
6. What is next for Q&A AND Cortana

13. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

14. What is Q&A
A natural language understanding engine
based on traditional search
pattern matching techniques
And All enhanced with
Heuristic matching based on the structure of the model
General understanding of English syntax
Pre-built business intelligence commands, and
Customizable domain-specific knowledge of the specific
kinds of language used in the target model

15. What Q&A can not Do ?
• However, regardless of how much intelligence we
build into it, there are clear limits to the abilities
of any system to interpret both the data and the
questions targeted at it.
• Example - It can’t calculate “total sales by year”
from a pile of customer invoice emails. And it
won’t be able to tell you “why sales didn’t go up
last year”,
• But rather than just talking about what
it can’t do, let’s focus on what it can do.
• For more details -
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2014/02/27/demy
stifying-power-bi-q-amp-a-part-1.aspx

16. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

17. How Q&A works & How to Enable it !
A set of core natural language
understanding abilities
Context-dependent keyword search
Built-in knowledge for how to filter,
sort, aggregate, group, and display data
DATA
-Column
-Row
-Relation
-Datatype
Demo to
enable Q&A

18. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

19. Basic keyword search - Columns & Tables
• Names of the tables and columns
• Note - Your source data should have sensible
naming conventions
• Q&A detects obvious word breaks and plurals
• Example “Middle name” to match the
column Middle_Name , but not vise versa  ..
• It does not yet , try to guess the meaning behind
abbreviated names like AvgNetPrft, or ones with
nonobvious word breaks like pickuptime, or
automatically search related terms such as
matching “client” to a table named Customer.
Demo – Middle_Name

20. Basic keyword search - Data Values
• Q&A will match string data values it finds in
the Dataset (Or in Model)
• These searches are case insensitive, and will
match either the exact word typed or the
singular form of that word.
• Example “Show Average Salary ” will match to
“show average salary ”

21. Basic keyword search - Relationships
• Q&A utilizes the implicit relationships
between a table and the columns it contains
and the explicit relationships defined in the
model between tables
• Example - “employee and their state” and “list
employee and their state”
• Distantly related things can be used in a single
query, so long as there exists a set of
relationships between them.

22. Basic keyword search -Contextual
ambiguity resolution
• Q&A’s keyword search capabilities will
attempt to use context to resolve ambiguity
caused by duplicate column names or
duplicate values.
• Example, - “customers 2012 London phone
number” will match “London” to customer
city rather than employee city and “phone
number” to customer phone number rather
than employee phone number.

23. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

24. • less than, Maximum
• number of, count of
• Average, between, before
Aggregations
• Such as last month
• This year
Date
keywords
• Before
• AfterDate ranges
Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes

25. • Show, is
• what is
• are, what are
Display
verbs
• Between, equal
• More than
• less than
Equality
keywords
• Phrase
• NounsNames
• Opportunity = opportunities
Plurals

26. Possessives
• Tables and columns
• columns - >containing table
• Have and of
Relationship
• Descending, Ascending
• Alphabetical order
• Sort
Sort order
• Opportunity = opportunities
Tenses

27. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

28. Question Template

29. Q&A - Example
# Q&A and Cortana Text
1 All Leaves by designation
2 All leaves by department
3 all leaves by group
4 All leaves by subgroup
5 Average Department Salary
6 Average salary by department
7 KPI by Designation
8 KPI by department
9 KPI by group
10 KPI by subgroup
11 Sick leave by designation
12 Sick leave by department
13 Sick leave by group
14 Sick leave by subgroup
15 Average salary by designation
16 Average salary by department
17 Average salary by group
18 Average salary by subgroup
19 Average salary by gender

30. Define your own visualization type/
chart in Q&A
• Tell Q&A which visualization to use
• Selection of visualization type can be left to
Q&A based on the columns selected and the
categories of data specified or inferred in the
model (in this case, geographical)…
• Or the type can be named explicitly.
• Example “Salary by state as a treemap"

31. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

32. Q&A is your friend , how ?
Auto-Completes
Corrects Spelling
Instant Preview
Auto-Suggests
Auto-Correct

33. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

34. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

35. featured questions for Power BI Q&A
If you own a dataset, you can add your own featured questions to that dataset. And
Power BI Q&A will show those questions to colleagues who use your
dataset. Featured questions give your colleagues ideas about the types of questions
they can ask about the dataset. The featured questions you add are up to you -- add
popular questions, questions that display interesting results, or questions that may be
hard to phrase.
Steps to us Featured option -
• Select the Q&A question box. Notice that Q&A is already being helpful by
displaying a list of terms that appear in the dataset.
• To add to this list, select the gear icon in the top right corner of Power BI.
• Select Settings > Datasets > Retail Analysis sample > Featured Q&A Questions.
• Select Add a question.
• Type your question in the text box and select Apply. Optionally, add another
question by selecting Add a question.
• Navigate back to the Power BI dashboard for Retail Analysis Sample, and select
the How to ask link.
• The new featured question, Sales by territory, is first in the list. Select it.
• The answer displays as a map visualization.
• Link - https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-q-
and-a-create-featured-questions/

36. Q&A – Deep dive
• What is Q&A and What it can not Do ?
• Theory & Demo
– How Q&A works, Demo to Enable Q&A dataset
– Basic keyword search, Demo for Basic keyword
– Words and terminology that Q&A recognizes
– Question Template & explicit visualization
– How Q&A helps you phrase the question, Q&A is friend
• DEMO
– More demo - Aggregation
– featured questions for Power BI Q&A
• Advance Q&A Modelling

37. • Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
Must read Series -
Demystifying Power BI Q&A
Advance Q&A Modelling
What Is a Phrasing?
What Kinds of
Phrasings Are There?

38. Advance Q&A Modelling - Phrasing
Attribute Phrasings - “have”, “of” and “for”
Name Phrasings - “named”
Adjective Phrasings - Simple , Measurement and Dynamic
Noun Phrasings - Simple noun and Dynamic noun
Preposition Phrasings – Relation and Geographical Entity
Verb Phrasings - related via verbs

39. Advance Q&A Modelling –One More mile
Add missing relationships
Rename tables and columns
Choose a Default Field Set and Label for each table
Choose a Data Category for each date and geography column
Fix incorrect data types
Mark year and identifier columns as Do Not Summarize
Normalize, Sort by, tables - multi-column, Pivot, Union, Split, Synonyms

40. • Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
Must read Series -
Demystifying Power BI Q&A
Advance Q&A Modelling
What Is a Phrasing?
What Kinds of
Phrasings Are There?

41. Agenda
1. Current BI Wave
2. Power BI – How to get Started ?
3. Sample Data Set to play ?
4. Q&A – Deep dive with Demo
5. Cortana – Deep dive with Demo
6. What is next for Q&A AND Cortana

42. Cortana – Deep dive
• What is Cortana for Power BI
• Theory
– How do Cortana and Power BI work together?
– DEMO
– How to Enable Cortana & Add account
– How to create answer page for Cortana
• Upcoming Ideas on Cortana and Q&A

43. What is Cortana in Genral ?
• Ask natural language questions in Cortana and
find answers from data stored in Power BI.
How do I get results?
• Cortana looks for answers in Power BI datasets
that you have access to. If you are a dataset
owner, enable Cortana to access the dataset (and
its reports).
• Answers from Power BI in Cortana need to
be enabled in Windows 10.
• If you are a dataset owner, create Answer Pages
designed specifically for Cortana.

44. Enable Cortana in Windows 10 to
access Power BI
• For Cortana in Windows 10 to access data in Power BI, you need to
add the work or school account you use with Power BI.
• Ensure you have Windows 10 version 1511 (Windows 10 November
Update) or higher. Check which version you have by
selectingSettings > System > About. >NOTE: You will only see the
version number if you've installed the November update (or later).
• Select Settings > Accounts.
• Scroll to the bottom where you'll see Accounts used by other
apps and select Add a work or school account.
• Sign in with the account you use with Power BI.
• Cortana will use this work or school account to check Power BI for
potential answers to your questions in Cortana.

45. How do Cortana and Power BI work
together?
• With the November 2015 update of Windows 10, Cortana can now find answers
from data stored in Power BI through the Public Preview of integration between
Cortana and Power BI. To use Cortana to get answers from Power BI, all that is
required is to add the work or school account you use with Power BI to Windows
10 and have access to a dataset in Power BI that is enabled for Cortana.
• Similar to Power BI Q&A, ask or type your questions using natural language.
Cortana will search your Cortana-enabled datasets in Power BI for answers and
display results directly in your Windows 10 device.
• Cortana can find answers either directly from datasets in Power BI or from report
pages published to Power BI and designed specifically for Cortana (called Answer
Pages). Interact with the visualizations as you would in Power BI or, to further
explore an answer, simply open a result in Power BI.
• Cortana ranks the answers from Power BI, giving you one or more best matches
if there is high confidence a result is a good answer. Other potential answers
from Power BI are listed in a Power BI section below any best matches. If you're a
dataset owner, you can help Cortana return better answers by creating
specialized reports (called Answer Pages) for Cortana in Power BI Desktop to
answer the most-common questions and by optimizing your model for Power BI
Q&A.

46. Use Power BI Desktop to create a
custom Answer Page for Cortana
• Use the full capabilities of Power BI to create
reports designed specifically to answer
Cortana questions.
• And, if the report has a filter, Cortana will
understand questions that specify items in the
filters' list, and apply the filter on-the-fly.

47. Create an Answer Page for Cortana
An Answer Page in a report is sized specifically
for Cortana so that Cortana can show it as an
answer to a question. To create an Answer Page
for Cortana:
• Add a page to a report and set the page size
to Cortana.
• Give the page a name.
• Publish the PBIX file to Power BI.
• Enable the dataset for Cortana.

48. Additional Tips
• Cortana will only search for answers in Power
BI if the question has 2 or more words.
• If you add the word "my" to your question,
Cortana searches available datasets for
answers that contain information found in
your Windows 10 profile (the information you
see when you click on your picture).

51. Where to see What coming next – Q&A
• https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi/status/1328500?query=Q%26A

52. Where to see What coming next – Cortana
• https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi/status/1328500?query=Cortana

53. Thank you ! Any More Question !
• Reference
– https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
– https://support.office.com
– https://technet.microsoft.com
– http://bimentalist.com/
Feedback – Please send you feedback –
vishalpawar@live.com

54. Sample file from Obvience