When we are doing any kind of solution our main focus is to satisfy our end users and to deliver a very user
friendly solution in the end. We need to make their lives simple and it can be
done by many means and one of them is allowing them to use voice commands to
serve their purposes.
In this blog first of all we will create a Cortana card in
Power BI and allow the end user to view their interests by voice command in windows devices, then we will download Power BI application from app store and use Q&A voice command to get insights, currently there is no proper way of integrating Power BI and voice command in android devices but it will be there in near future.
Important pre
requisite
You need to have Power BI pro account in order to share a Cortana
card via an app, this can be created in Power BI services including end user for him or her to be able to integrate that to their Cortana and to activate it using voice command or by a simple search.
You need to have dash boards where important reports and visuals are pinned in the app created in the Power BI services in order to get insights using voice command in ios devices.
You need to have dash boards where important reports and visuals are pinned in the app created in the Power BI services in order to get insights using voice command in ios devices.
What is
Cortana?
Cortana is a
voice-controlled virtual assistant for Microsoft Windows. Comparable to Siri,
the intelligent assistant enabled on Apple devices, Microsoft's Cortana will
use the Bing search engine and data stored on the user's device to make
personalized recommendations.
Creating a
Cortana card in Power BI
Cortana card can be created as a report in Power BI while
setting page size to “Cortana”. Creating visual is also same as the normal
report creation, you can add visuals in the allotted space. Cortana size is
very small comparing to a normal report, it is better to add two visuals, three
is ok but more than that will clutter the screen.
Have a look at the following image to get an idea about
Cortana Card, in the format pan you can notice that I have selected the “Cortana”
as page size and named my Cortana card report as “Voting Cortana” while giving
“Comparison of Voting” as a synonym in the left vertical task bar.
My Cortana card visual is lame but just for a demo right so
don’t mind it.
Creating Power BI app and publishing Cortana card.
To create an app you need to login to Power BI services which
has to be a pro activated one and there you need to expand the Work spaces in
the left most vertical task bar and click on “Create app workspace”, then in
the right most part of the screen you will get some details to provide for the
app. I named it Cortana and made the availability private which means only the
people I add to this app can view it, also I can restrict their role by only letting
them to view the data or let them be an admin if I want to. Once you are done
save and create the app. In the below image you can see the preview of app
creation.
Now it is time for us to publish our Cortana card to Power BI
app which has the end users integrated on it, you can simply do this by
publishing and selecting the app name when publishing and you are good to go in
my case the app name is Cortana.
Important –
In order for Cortana and Q&A to use this report and data we need to enable that in the settings
of Power BI services.
Steps to be
completed are given below
1. Select the
app you have created from the work space
2. Go to
settings
3. Go to
dataset
4. Go to
Q&A and Cortana
5. Tick that
and activate it
Check the above image for further
clarification.
Configuring Cortana to support Power BI
Pre requisites
1. Must be
running Windows version 1511 or later
2. Only
supported by English
3. Windows and
PBI accounts has to be linked
4. Cortana has
to be connected to Office 365
You can check your windows version
in “about your pc” mine is 1703.
You need to login to Cortana using
your Microsoft credential and also you need to login to the office 365 which
you can find in the note book of Cortana under the connected services as you
can see below.
It is important to add the account
linked to Power BI in the “access work or school” of the “manage your account”
simply add the account linked to Power BI to your computer in the settings.
The same steps has to be performed in the end user computer to support
Cortana and Power BI integration. There the credentials of the end user which
has been given permission to access the app in our work space has to be used.
Once you have successfully completed the above steps restart your computer for the settings to take place, now you can call your Cortana report by it's name in my case the name is "Voting Cortana" or by using a synonym you gave it in my case I gave a synonym "Comparision of voting" , end users who have been given access to it via app can do the same too.
When you use voice command and say
the name or synonym of a Cortana card then Cortana will show you what you asked for like
a magic.
How does Cortana card look in a laptop or desktop which runs windows OS ? see below
Using Q&A voice command in iOS devices.
In iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad we can use voice
command to get quick insight and navigate through our data. In order to do this
first of all we have to install the power Bi app from the app store and the
link is given below.
In the iOS device you should login with the power BI
credentials which has access to the power BI services where you have all your
dash boards and reports uploaded.
Once you have success fully login with your credentials go to your dash board and
check whether the dashboards are available, in my case I have them all up to
date.
There I selected the dash board "Voting Cortana" which I have
created and the visuals are pinned in the dash board as shown below.
In the bottom there is an icon like this 
press that and access Q&A where you can
ask your natural language questions on your data set and the best part is there
you can use voice command to ask your questions and no need to type at all like
shown below.
press that and access Q&A where you can
ask your natural language questions on your data set and the best part is there
you can use voice command to ask your questions and no need to type at all like
shown below.
The Q&A has a well-developed machine learning algorithm and
depending on your usage the predictions get better day by day and also you can
give feedback for the results by just long pressing the Q&A result and selecting
happy face if the result is satisfying or the frown face if that is not what
you are expecting like shown below.
This way you can use voice command to get what you need with
ease in iOS devices.
These two methods will help to create an environment where the developer can keep updating while the end user will be able to view the content using voice command if they are using windows or iOS device.
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