Original subtitles

Narrator: Next up,

let's talk about something called Smart Narratives

which create customizable AI generated text summaries

either based on entire report pages or individual visuals.

So here's an example

of a Smart Narrative added to our product detail page.

And what's important to keep in mind is

that Smart Narratives react to report filters

just like any other visual.

So the text shown

in that summary would dynamically change based

on the filter context.

You can also update your Smart Narratives,

you can edit the text, you can reformat the text

or you can insert dynamic values like the one shown here.

In this case,

I've added a dynamic value defined as current product

which essentially populates

whatever product is currently filtered for that page.

So let's jump back

into Power BI and explore a few different ways to

create these types of narratives.

All right, so for this demo

we're going to jump into the product detail page.

And remember there are a couple types

of Smart Narratives here.

There are report level narratives

and visual level narratives.

And let's start with report level

which will essentially factor in all of the visuals

and all of the filter context for page as a whole.

To do that, we can head to insert,

we'll see our AI visuals grouped right here.

We can go ahead and click the Smart Narrative option.

And that's going to create a summary

of the insights that Power BI has found.

So in this case, it's showing a 260% increase

in adjusted profit and total profit, trending up

between Monday, June 28th, 2021, and Monday June 27th, 2022.

And I won't read you all the details here

but Power BI is kind of following this template to

produce this summary here.

So you'll see the same kind of consistent themes.

And if you want to understand

how certain values in here are derived,

you can click on any of these underlined words or values

and it's going to show you exactly

how it generated that value.

So in this case, Monday, June 28th is the first date

of the time series.

This one is the last date.

This 260% increase says it's the percent change

between the first and the last dates for total profit

and adjusted profit with second highest trend coefficient.

So at least Power BI is kind of providing some insight

into where these values are coming from.

Now as far as how valuable

or insightful these summaries actually are,

personally I'm not a huge fan.

I'm not really impressed.

We'll talk about this a little bit more later.

But the good news is that you can edit

and customize these quite a bit, which is nice.

Now, you might notice some of these hidden value icons.

This is indicating that current data

and filters are producing no results

for that particular value.

So kind of think of that as like a placeholder insight

that isn't available based on the current report filters.

Those aren't visible to end users, and you won't see those

unless you're in here in edit mode like I am.

So let's say you don't really love some

of these insights here.

You can treat it just like text, you can format,

you can delete paragraphs, you can get rid

of those placeholder hidden value icons like so,

and we can resize and reformat

like we could with pretty much any other visual.

So let's do a little reformatting here.

I want to drag this into place

in the lower right corner of my report for now.

And we'll just pull it right down here.

These can be a little bit clunky to work with to be honest.

But remember that these also respond

to filter context like any other type of chart.

So that means if we go back

to our exact dashboard

and drill through to a different product,

like the water bottle for instance,

we'll see that Smart Narrative change

along with the dynamic values within.

Now speaking of dynamic values

that's something that you can add yourself as well.

So let's click in here, jump to the top of our list,

kind of create our own note right in here.

And I'm going to keep it simple.

To be honest, I find this kind of tricky to work with

but do something like total orders for.

I'm going to leave a space placeholder for right now.

That's going to be a dynamic value.

Total orders for blank were blank.

So what I'm going to do is try a dynamic value to

return the currently selected product.

And then another one to calculate total orders

for the current month.

So let's see if this works.

I can click this lightning bolt to add a dynamic value

and it looks like my dialogue box is getting cut off here

so I may need to drag my visual up to see those options.

But this is where I want to input the current product name.

And there are a few ways to do it.

I could try something like current products.

It gives me some suggestions

and then it gives me the result, which is nice.

I could do something like this product as well.

So it's kind of nice

that it inputs natural language queries reasonably well.

I think that should do the trick.

So let's go ahead and save that dynamic value.

You can see it puts that placeholder there

until it populates with water bottle

which is in fact the current product.

Now second dynamic value I want to add here is total orders

for the latest month.

So let's try total orders for latest month.

Try the first suggestion.

That does seem to result in a valid value,

and we can go ahead and name this as well.

If we want to customize,

call it something like current month orders and press save.

And there we go, populated with 404

which we can map right here to our gauge.

That does look like the correct order value

for the current month for this particular product.

Now again, I can format these values.

Maybe we want to make these dynamic pieces bold

just to make them kind of pop a little bit.

So you do have a bit of flexibility here

in terms of customizing the actual text.

And if you want to review any fields that you've added,

these were the two that I added,

you can edit or delete them from there.

So let's drag it back into place here and we can do a bit

of formatting on that Smart Narrative to change things

like the color and the border and so on.

So let's go ahead and add a visual border.

And why don't we get fancy

and round the corners a little bit to 10 pixels.

Let's add a title and call it something like report summary.

We'll use our standard Segoe bold font in size 10.

And let's make this text white

against dark gray background to make it really pop

as a header and we'll center it as well.

So there you go.

We've got our formatted Smart Narrative box here

and that's our report level narrative.

Now to show you how a visual level narrative works,

let's actually jump into customer detail here

and we'll try to find a narrative

on a completely different visual

like one of these customer donut charts, for instance.

What we can do is right click and select, summarize

and that's going to also produce a Smart Narrative.

In this case, it's pretty simple.

Average had the highest total orders at 11,600

followed by low and high.

So keep in mind this isn't factoring

in any other charts or visuals or filters on this page

just the visual that we had selected.

And the last way that we can integrate Smart Narratives,

we can go ahead and delete that one we just created,

is to actually head to the properties

for a specific visual, head to header icons and drill

into the icon sub menu.

And you'll see this Smart Narrative option at the bottom.

You can toggle that on.

That's going to create this icon in the header

called Smart Narrative.

And if you click that, it's basically going to produce

the same text value, but using this tool tip kind of format.

So that's how to create and edit

and customize Smart Narratives.

To wrap this up, I have to say you really need to use these

with caution, and I'd advise that you really don't rely

on this tool to produce your report insights or summaries.

AI is great at a lot of things like processing

and aggregating tons and tons of raw data,

but the fact is humans, at least today,

are much, much better at communication

and insight generation.

And I think the problem with a lot of these Smart Narratives

is that they fail to address the why, right?

We're looking at very,

very simple descriptive narratives

that don't really provide any explanation or insight

and that's because they lack any sort

of human intuition or business context.

For instance, as a human analyst, I might understand

that sales are down because we cut our marketing budgets

or that revenue for Product B increased

because of the new supplier deal that our COO just signed.

These are the types of insights that actually add value

and lead to real recommendations for the business

and it's where these Smart Narratives

are currently really falling short.

So bottom line, I think it's a neat feature.

It can be a great thought starter

but I'd highly encourage you to rely

on your own human intuition when it comes

to generating meaningful insights.