Use Power BI's AI to Add Written Summaries to Financial Dashboards

What This Does

Power BI Copilot can generate a written narrative summary of your financial dashboard, automatically describing what the data shows in plain English. Instead of a dashboard full of charts that stakeholders stare at silently, you get a dashboard with a paragraph that says "Revenue is trending 5% below plan, driven by West region softness in enterprise deals..." Every time the underlying data updates, the narrative updates too.

Before You Start

• You have Power BI Desktop or Power BI Service (browser version)
• Your financial report or dashboard is already built in Power BI
• You have a Power BI Pro or Premium license (the Copilot features require Pro at minimum)
• Copilot is enabled in your Power BI tenant (check with your M365 admin if unsure)

Steps

1. Open your Power BI report

1. Open Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) in your browser, or open Power BI Desktop
2. Navigate to the financial report where you want to add a narrative (e.g., your monthly P&L dashboard)

2. Add a new page for the narrative (recommended) or find space on an existing page

1. Click the "+" button at the bottom of the report to add a new page, or click on an existing page with available space
2. Name the new page "Executive Summary" or "Key Insights"

3. Add the AI Narrative visual

In Power BI Desktop:

1. Click the "Insert" tab
2. Click "AI Visuals" → "Smart Narrative" (older) or use Copilot pane (newer version)

In Power BI Service with Copilot:

1. Click the Copilot button in the report toolbar (purple sparkle icon)
2. In the Copilot pane, type: "Write a summary of this report highlighting the key financial trends"
3. Click "Add to report" when the narrative appears

What you should see: A text box appears with an AI-generated paragraph describing the data in your report.

4. Customize the narrative scope

1. Click on the narrative visual to select it
2. In the Copilot pane, refine your request: "Focus on the variance vs. budget and highlight the top 3 drivers of underperformance"
3. Or type: "Summarize this for a CFO audience. Use plain language and keep it under 100 words."

What you should see: The narrative updates to match your guidance, using data from your report visuals.

5. Pin the narrative to your main dashboard

1. Hover over the narrative visual
2. Click the pin icon to pin it to your main financial dashboard
3. The narrative will update automatically when the underlying data refreshes

Real Example

Scenario: Your monthly CFO dashboard shows revenue, EBITDA, and expense trends across 4 business units. Stakeholders keep asking "so what does this all mean?" in every review meeting.

What you type in Copilot: "Write a 3-sentence executive summary of this month's financial performance. Mention whether we're ahead or behind on revenue and EBITDA vs. budget, and name the biggest driver."

What you get: "March revenue of $45.2M came in 3% below budget, driven by a $1.8M shortfall in the West region enterprise pipeline. EBITDA of $8.4M was 5% favorable to budget, reflecting delayed hiring across G&A functions. Two enterprise deals totaling $2.1M are expected to close in Q2, supporting recovery toward full-year plan."

That paragraph appears on the dashboard and updates automatically next month when the data refreshes.

Tips

• Pin the narrative to your Power BI homepage so executives see the key message before they even open the full report
• Write a specific Copilot prompt that matches your standard monthly narrative format. Save it in a text file so you can paste it in each month.
• If the narrative quotes numbers that don't match what you see in the charts, check that your data model relationships are correct. Copilot reads from the data model, not just the visuals.

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.