Summarize Visuals and Reports with Smart Narrative in Power BI

 

Power BI’s Smart Narrative visualization is an AI-powered feature that automatically generates text summaries of your visuals and reports. It analyzes data trends, key takeaways, correlations, and insights, presenting them in natural language. This helps users quickly understand complex data without manual interpretation. The summaries can also be customized for specific audiences or areas of emphasis.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to summarize visuals and reports with Smart Narrative in Power BI. You’ll learn how it works, how to configure it step by step, and how to customize it for real business reporting.

What Is Smart Narrative in Power BI?

Smart Narrative is a visualization that uses natural language generation to create written summaries of your data. It is an AI-powered text visual that analyzes the visuals and measures on your report page and then:

• Summarizes performance automatically
• Highlights increases, decreases, and comparisons
• Updates dynamically with slicers and filters
• Allows full text and DAX-based customization

Think of it as an executive summary that updates itself.

Adding Smart Narrative to a Power BI Report

Step 1: Preparing Your Report Page

Before adding Smart Narrative, make sure you have a properly structured report page. Ensure your page includes:

• At least one measure (Revenue, Profit, Count, etc.)
• Supporting visuals (bar chart, line chart, KPI card)
• Slicers (Date, Region, Category)
• A layout that leaves room for the narrative visual

Smart Narrative relies on existing context, so the more clearly structured your visuals are, the better the generated narrative will be.

Step 2: Inserting the Smart Narrative Visual

• Go to the Report view
• Click on an empty area of your report canvas
• In the Visualizations pane, select Smart narrative
• Choose Custom or Copilot

Power BI instantly generates a default textual summary. When you first add Smart Narrative, it analyzes all visuals on the current report page and creates a summary. The generated text typically includes insights about trends, comparisons, and notable data points.

Copilot Integration: Select the Narrative icon >> choose Copilot, then pick options like “Summarize this page” or “Summarize the entire report.” You can also use prompts such as “Provide an executive summary in bullet points” to adjust the tone or format.

Copilot Requirements: For Copilot-enhanced narratives, your workspace must be in a supported Fabric capacity region with admin-enabled tenant settings. This feature is available only in paid SKUs.

Step 3: Reviewing the Auto-Generated Summary

Smart Narrative examines your visuals to identify meaningful patterns. The auto-generated summary typically includes:

• Maximum and minimum values
• Trends over time
• Comparisons between categories
• Percentage changes and key contributors

You might see statements such as:

• Sum of Sales Amount trended down, resulting in a 75.75% decrease between January 2022 and October 2023
• Sum of Sales Amount dropped from 25,087 to 6,084 during its steepest decline between January 2022 and October 2023
• Gaming Console accounted for 27.62% of Sum of Sales Amount
• Across all 7 categories, Sum of Sales Amount ranged from 5,264 to 27,550

At this stage, the narrative is fully automatic and already useful for high-level reporting.

Creating a Smart Narrative for a Specific Visual

If you want focused insights for a single visual:

• Select the visual
• Right-click it and choose Summarize
• A pop-up narrative appears with insights specific to that visual. Select the pin icon to add it permanently to the report page

Example insights:

• East had the highest Sum of Sales Amount at 14,290, followed by West, South, and North
• East accounted for 28.21% of Sum of Sales Amount

Customizing the Smart Narrative

One of the most valuable features of Smart Narrative is the ability to customize the generated text while maintaining its dynamic connection to your data.

Editing the Narrative Text

• Click inside the Smart Narrative visual
• Edit the text like a regular text box
• Keep auto-generated values while rewriting explanations
• Add context, rephrase sentences, or include additional commentary
• Manually added text remains static, while data-driven values continue to update automatically

Example: “Overall total sales were 50.65K with a profit of 14.27K.”

Using Dynamic Values

Smart Narrative allows you to insert dynamic values that update when your data changes. When editing the text, highlighted values indicate dynamic fields connected to your model.

To add a new dynamic value:

• Place your cursor where you want the value to appear
• Click + Value in the toolbar

• A dialog box appears to create a dynamic value
• In “How would you calculate this value,” type a natural language description such as “Sum of Sales Amount”
• Name the value (for example, Total Sales)
• Alternatively, drag fields directly from the Values pane into the narrative
• Click Save

You can then reference specific calculations or aggregations from your data model directly within the narrative. The inserted value updates automatically based on filters and slicers.

Formatting Options

You can format your Smart Narrative text to match your report’s visual style:

• Change font size, color, and style to match your theme
• Add bold or italic emphasis to highlight key insights
• Use bullet points or numbered lists where appropriate
• Adjust alignment and spacing for readability
• Apply background colors or borders if needed

For Copilot: Instead of manual edits, use the “Adjust your summary” dialog with prompts such as “Make it more formal” or “Focus on trends.” The body text isn’t directly editable in Copilot mode, but you can switch to classic Smart Narrative for full control.

Visual Interactions and Filtering

Smart Narratives are interactive and respond to report interactions:

• Cross-Filtering: Select a data point in a visual, and the narrative updates to reflect the filtered context
  • Select Accessories from Category

• Slicers and Filters: Apply report-level filters, and the summary refreshes automatically
  • Select East Region

• Dynamic Updates: Narratives regenerate on data refresh or page changes. In Copilot mode, use the refresh button after applying filters

This interactivity makes Smart Narrative especially useful for exploratory analysis and dynamic dashboards.

Adding a Smart Narrative Icon to a Visual

For on-demand summaries without permanently pinning the narrative:

• Select the visual
• In the Format pane, expand General >> Header icons >> Icons
• Set Smart narrative to On

You can now hover over the visual and click the icon to view a temporary narrative pop-up. This improves accessibility (for example, for screen readers) but cannot be pinned to the report canvas.

Considerations and Limitations

• Supported Visuals: Works with most standard visuals (bar, line, pie charts), but not with many custom visuals, R or Python script visuals, maps with non-aggregated latitude/longitude, certain Key Influencers setups, or complex table/matrix groupings
• Data Sources: Not supported for Publish to Web, Power BI Report Server, on-premises Analysis Services (non-live connections), or multidimensional sources
• Other Limits: Cannot be pinned to dashboards, does not support conditional formatting of dynamic values, limited to 16 summaries per page, and may not handle renamed fields or ad hoc calculations cleanly
• Copilot-Specific: Requires manual refresh after changes, cannot be edited directly, and is limited to supported regions and capacities
• Best Practices: Use clear measure and column names, test with sample filters, and combine with other AI visuals such as decomposition trees for richer insights

Conclusion

Smart Narrative transforms Power BI reports from collections of charts into clear, data-driven stories. By combining automatically generated insights with manual customization, you can deliver clarity, speed, and confidence to report consumers. It is especially useful for executive summaries, highlighting trends, and improving report accessibility.

Start by summarizing a single visual, then expand to summarizing the entire report. With thoughtful customization and well-structured data, Smart Narrative becomes a powerful communication layer on top of your analytics.