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Using Cognitive Services in Power BI

Posted on by Zubair Shaik

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Using Cognitive Services in Power BI – A Comprehensive Guide

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a suite of AI-powered APIs that bring advanced capabilities like text analytics, image recognition, sentiment analysis, language detection, and translation to applications. Power BI, a leading business intelligence tool, can integrate with Azure Cognitive Services to analyze unstructured data, extract insights, and visualize results seamlessly.

By using Cognitive Services in Power BI, businesses can:
✅ Perform sentiment analysis on customer feedback.
✅ Extract key phrases and topics from large text data.
✅ Detect language and translate text dynamically.
✅ Recognize faces, objects, and text in images.
✅ Enhance reports with AI-driven insights.

This step-by-step guide covers how to integrate Cognitive Services into Power BI, set up text analytics, sentiment analysis, and visualize insights in a meaningful way.

Step 1: Understanding Cognitive Services in Power BI

What Are Cognitive Services?

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services provides pre-trained AI models that allow applications to:
🔹 Analyze text (Sentiment Analysis, Key Phrase Extraction, Named Entity Recognition).
🔹 Process images (OCR, Face Detection, Object Recognition).
🔹 Understand speech (Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech).
🔹 Translate languages in real-time.

How Power BI Uses Cognitive Services

Power BI can connect with Azure Cognitive Services via AI Insights in Power Query to:
🔹 Analyze customer feedback for positive/negative sentiment.
🔹 Extract important phrases from product reviews.
🔹 Detect languages from multi-language datasets.
🔹 Recognize text from scanned invoices, receipts, or images.

Step 2: Prerequisites for Using Cognitive Services in Power BI

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

  1. Azure Subscription – Sign up at Azure Portal if you don’t have one.
  2. Azure Cognitive Services API – Create a Text Analytics API or Computer Vision API in Azure.
  3. Power BI Desktop (Latest Version) – Download from Power BI Download Center.
  4. Power BI Pro or Premium License – Required to use AI Insights and Cognitive Services in Power BI Service.
  5. Dataset (Customer Reviews, Survey Data, Image Files, etc.) – Power BI needs data for AI analysis.

Step 3: Setting Up Azure Cognitive Services

Before using Cognitive Services in Power BI, you must set up Azure Cognitive Services.

3.1 Creating a Cognitive Services Resource in Azure

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com).
  2. In the Search bar, type “Cognitive Services” and select it.
  3. Click Create to create a new Cognitive Services resource.
  4. Fill in the required details:
    • Subscription: Select your Azure subscription.
    • Resource Group: Create a new one or select an existing one.
    • Region: Choose the closest data center location.
    • Name: Provide a unique name (e.g., PowerBI-Cognitive-Services).
    • Pricing Tier: Select the Free (F0) tier for testing or a paid tier for production use.
    • Services Type: Choose the type (e.g., Text Analytics, Computer Vision, Language Service).
  5. Click Review + Create → then Create.
  6. Once deployed, go to Cognitive Services Resource → Keys and Endpoints.
  7. Copy the Endpoint URL and API Key – These will be required in Power BI.

Step 4: Connecting Power BI to Cognitive Services

Power BI allows you to use AI Insights (Power Query) to connect with Cognitive Services.

4.1 Enabling AI Insights in Power BI

  1. Open Power BI Desktop.
  2. Click File → Options & Settings → Options.
  3. Under Preview Features, enable “AI Insights”.
  4. Restart Power BI to apply the changes.

4.2 Loading Data into Power BI

  1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Home → Get Data.
  2. Select the data source (Excel, SQL Server, SharePoint, etc.).
  3. Load the dataset (e.g., customer reviews, feedback, social media comments).
  4. Click Transform Data to open Power Query Editor.

4.3 Applying Cognitive Services in Power BI

  1. In Power Query Editor, go to Add Column → AI Insights.
  2. Click Azure Cognitive Services.
  3. Select the Text Analytics API (if analyzing text) or Computer Vision API (if analyzing images).
  4. Enter the API Key and Endpoint URL copied from Azure.
  5. Choose the operation:
    • Sentiment Analysis – Determines if text is Positive, Negative, or Neutral.
    • Key Phrase Extraction – Identifies important words or phrases.
    • Language Detection – Detects the language used in text.
    • Image OCR (Optical Character Recognition) – Extracts text from images.
  6. Select the column containing text or images.
  7. Click Invoke – Power BI will call the API and return the AI results.

Step 5: Visualizing AI Insights in Power BI Reports

Once AI results are imported, create interactive visualizations.

5.1 Sentiment Analysis Visualization

  1. Drag Sentiment Score into a Column Chart to show positive/negative sentiment.
  2. Use a Pie Chart to display the proportion of Positive vs. Negative reviews.
  3. Add a Slicer to filter by sentiment categories.

5.2 Key Phrase Extraction Visualization

  1. Create a Word Cloud to display key phrases from customer reviews.
  2. Use a Table to show key phrases alongside original text.
  3. Apply Conditional Formatting to highlight key themes.

5.3 Language Detection Visualization

  1. Create a Stacked Bar Chart to show the distribution of detected languages.
  2. Use Filters to separate data by language.

5.4 OCR Image Recognition Visualization

  1. Display extracted text from images in a Table visualization.
  2. Use Filters to categorize images based on recognized content.

Step 6: Automating Cognitive Services Analysis in Power BI Service

To automate AI-powered reports in Power BI Service, follow these steps:

  1. Publish the Power BI Report to Power BI Service.
  2. Navigate to Dataset Settings → Scheduled Refresh.
  3. Enable Automatic Refresh at desired intervals.
  4. Authenticate Azure Cognitive Services again if prompted.
  5. Save and test the refresh process.

Now, Power BI will fetch real-time AI insights from Cognitive Services automatically.

Step 7: Sharing AI-Powered Reports with Others

  1. Open Power BI Service (https://app.powerbi.com).
  2. Click Share Report and enter recipient emails.
  3. Assign View, Edit, or Admin permissions.
  4. Click Share – Now, users can interact with AI-powered dashboards.

Use Cases of Cognitive Services in Power BI

Customer Sentiment Analysis – Analyze customer feedback for business insights.
Product Review Analysis – Extract key phrases and understand trends.
Social Media Monitoring – Detect language, tone, and engagement levels.
Invoice Processing – Use OCR to extract text from scanned documents.
Fraud Detection – Identify unusual text patterns in financial data.

Conclusion

By integrating Cognitive Services with Power BI, businesses can leverage AI-powered insights for better decision-making. This guide covered everything from setting up Azure Cognitive Services, connecting it to Power BI, applying AI models, visualizing insights, and automating reports.

If you need further guidance, feel free to ask!

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