We’ve been very impressed with this new technology from Microsoft.
Inspired by how their customers used Bing to search for information, Microsoft has developed a way for users to ask questions of their data.
By typing your search terms into a dialog box you can easily query huge amounts data and enjoy immediate visual results. Natural Language Query interprets your question and generates an answer in the form of interactive graphs, tables or charts.
This is a new and intuitive way to interact with your data, removing the need to scan through multiple sets of data and compile your own answers. Natural Language Query saves you time and effort by building charts automatically to reflect the information you need, these charts change dynamically as you modify your question, enabling you to quickly refine your results.
Plus, you can give others access to do the same. You no longer have to predict the various questions other people may ask of your report – they can ask the data themselves to see exactly what they are interested in. For example this would be useful across departments or teams, whose KPI’s are linked to the same data but need to be reviewed from different points of view.
Natural Language Query is part of the Power BI suite of tools, which include PowerPivot, Power View, Power Query and Power Maps. These tools combine to provide impressive self-service BI, enabling users to easily create interactive dashboards, quickly utilise data from multiple sources, clearly communicate the results and share them with the organisation or clients.
To see some of these tools in action join our webinar Powerful Business Intelligence with Self-service Tools – Friday 28th March
