In this training walkthrough from Pragmatic Works, Justin Vogel introduces the Standalone Copilot experience in Microsoft Fabric and demonstrates how it transforms the way users interact with Power BI content. Rather than manually searching through countless reports and workspaces, Standalone Copilot enables users to ask natural language questions and receive ranked, transparent, and actionable insights instantly.
Justin explains that many organizations struggle with report sprawl. Users often spend more time searching for the right report than actually analyzing data. Standalone Copilot directly addresses this challenge by acting as a centralized, AI-powered entry point for analytics, making self-service reporting faster, simpler, and more intuitive.
Standalone Copilot is a dedicated Copilot interface available within Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. It allows users to interact with their data using plain English questions and returns meaningful results such as reports, visuals, summaries, and even DAX queries. Unlike traditional navigation methods, Copilot searches across workspaces and ranks results based on relevance.
According to Justin, this experience significantly reduces friction in analytics workflows and helps organizations unlock insights without requiring deep technical expertise.
To access the full Standalone Copilot experience, a few prerequisites must be met. Justin highlights that recent updates have lowered the entry requirements, making Copilot more accessible.
These requirements provide Copilot with the necessary context to deliver accurate and meaningful responses.
Once enabled, Standalone Copilot appears in the left navigation pane in Power BI. Microsoft has also introduced a new entry point directly on the Power BI homepage, allowing users to start their day with Copilot without switching views.
The interface is intentionally clean and user-friendly, featuring:
Users can freely ask follow-up questions and refine their queries, encouraging an interactive and exploratory analytics experience.
Justin demonstrates how users can ask questions such as finding sales trends for a specific company or year. Copilot responds with a ranked list of matching reports and visuals, clearly explaining why each result was returned. This transparency helps users trust the results and quickly navigate to the most relevant content.
When Copilot uses an existing visual to answer a question, users can select View in Report to open the report and spotlight the exact visual used. This focused view ensures attention is drawn to the most relevant insight.
Another powerful feature Justin highlights is the Explore Answer option. This allows users to generate fully editable visuals that do not modify official reports.
This approach provides a safe sandbox for ad hoc analysis, allowing users to experiment freely and only save what matters.
Standalone Copilot also supports verified answers curated by data modelers or analysts. When a verified answer is used, Copilot clearly indicates this, increasing confidence in the result.
Users can also expand the How Copilot arrived at this section to understand the logic behind each answer, including measures and filters applied. This transparency plays a critical role in building trust with AI-driven insights.
For more advanced scenarios, Justin demonstrates how Copilot can generate full DAX queries. When users request complex insights, such as identifying the top 1 percent of customers by sales, Copilot:
This feature is especially valuable for analysts who want to validate results, troubleshoot relationships, or refine logic manually.
To close the walkthrough, Justin shows how Copilot can summarize an entire conversation and transform it into a ready-to-share email. Copilot generates a subject line, structured content, and a professional sign-off, making it easy to communicate insights with teams.
Justin concludes that Standalone Copilot is a major step forward for analytics in Microsoft Fabric. By reducing friction, improving transparency, and enabling natural language interaction, Copilot empowers users at all skill levels to work smarter with data.
For organizations interested in training or consulting services, Pragmatic Works offers expert guidance to help teams successfully adopt Copilot and Microsoft Fabric.
Don't forget to check out the Pragmatic Works' on-demand learning platform for more insightful content and training sessions on Fabric and other Microsoft applications. Be sure to subscribe to the Pragmatic Works YouTube channel to stay up-to-date on the latest tips and tricks.