Copilot on Power BI service not able to understand the synonyms and linguistic relationships.

[Ani26]

Hi Team,

I am facing an issue with using the Copilot on Power BI service. 
I have defined synonyms and linguistic relationships on my models measures and fields.
It identifies the same when I ask a question using the Q&A. But when I ask the same using Copilot it doesnt give me the expected answer. It also says, "I'm sorry, but I cannot refer to the synonyms defined in your Power BI model. You need to specify the exact measure or column that 'flow turnover' refers to."
For example: I have defined a synonym on a measure as Turnover. If I ask a question in Q&A mentioning the word turnover it shows me the results. However, the copilot cannot interpret the word and doesnt show expected results.

Any idea whether this a known issue?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ani26 ,

I’d like to acknowledge the valuable input provided by the @audreygerred . Their initial ideas were instrumental in guiding my approach. However, I noticed that further details were needed to fully understand the issue. 

There may be occasions where Copilot misunderstands your question. This could either be because it was not able to find the right data field or it misunderstood your intention. In order to improve Copilot’s understanding, here are some suggestions and tips to get better results:

• Use descriptive column names – Try and avoid using columns which are not spaced or camel case
• Use synonyms – if a column can have more than one meaning, use copilot synonyms found in the Q&A settings to automatically add business domain terms
• If you have a very specific type of question that needs answering, create a visual on a report and use the title field to describe the question it answers. Then copilot will find this visual and use this as its basis for answering.

Ask Copilot for data from your model - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

With Power BI Q&A tooling, you can improve the natural language experience for your users. 

Intro to Q&A tooling to train Power BI Q&A (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

If your Current Period does not refer to this, please clarify in a follow-up reply.

Best Regards,

Clara Gong

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[audreygerred]

Hi! Have you checked to make sure that your semantic model is set up in a way to meet the criteria listed on this page: Update your data model to work well with Copilot for Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

[Ani26]

Hi @audreygerred 
Yes, we have taken care of that.
The weird thing what I am noticing is, it sometimes considers the synonyms and linguistic relationships, but at times it doesn't.