FAQ for analysis assist (preview)

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

These frequently asked questions (FAQ) describe the AI impact of the analysis assist feature in Business Central.

What is analysis assist?

Analysis assist is a copilot that provides assistance for working with the data analysis mode in Business Central. The data analysis mode enables you to organize, aggregate, and summarize data on pages and queries to make it more suitable for analyzing and extracting meaningful insights. With analysis assist, you can automatically construct the view of the data you want to analyze by expressing your needs in simple, natural language, like "show vendors by location sorted by number of purchases." Analysis assist makes it easier to work with data without the need for complex technical skills.

What are capabilities of analysis assist?

Analysis assist is built on the developer tools for Copilot in Business Central. It uses Azure OpenAI Service to convert unstructured instructions into a structured design for displaying data in the analysis mode, without creating, modifying, or updating customer business data itself.

What is the intended use of analysis assist?

Analysis assist helps create analysis tabs in the data analysis mode to present data in a manner that makes it easier to draw conclusions. However, it's important to note that analysis assist doesn't provide direct insights or conclusions about the data. It's a tool to help users organize and view their data. It's up to the user to extract actionable information, discover trends, and make informed decisions to drive business value.

How was analysis assist evaluated? What metrics are used to measure performance?

• The feature underwent extensive testing based on Business Central's demonstration data and other fictitious product catalogs. Copilot was given numerous prompts in the supported English locales. The prompts covered a broad range of data analysis instructions and styles of expressing intent. The outcomes were evaluated against accuracy, relevance, and safety.

• The feature is built in accordance with Microsoft's Responsible AI Standard. Learn more about responsible AI from Microsoft.

How does Microsoft monitor the quality of generated content?

Microsoft has various systems in place to ensure that content generated by Copilot is of the highest quality, detect abuse, and ensure safety for our customers and their data.

Users have the opportunity to provide feedback to every Copilot response and report inaccurate or inappropriate content to help Microsoft improve this feature.

• If you encounter inappropriate generated content, report it to Microsoft by using this feedback form: Report abuse

• We analyze user feedback on the feature and use it to help us improve responses.

  You provide feedback by using the like (thumbs up) or dislike (thumbs down) icon on the Copilot pane in Business Central.

• Microsoft might disable the Copilot-driven features for selected customers if abuse of the functionality is detected.

What are the limitations of analysis assist? How can users minimize the impact of the analysis assist limitations when using the system?

• General AI limitations:

  AI systems are valuable tools but they're nondeterministic. The content they generate might not be accurate. It's important to use your judgment to review and verify responses before making decisions that could affect stakeholders like customers and partners.

• Available languages

  This Copilot feature was validated in English only. While it can be used in other languages, it may not function as intended. Language quality may vary based on the user’s interaction or system settings which may impact accuracy and the user experience.

  The quality of answers can also be lower if the language setting for the user in Business Central differs from the primary language of the business data in the Business Central database.

• Geographical limitation:

  The feature is available in all supported Business Central countries/regions. However, the feature uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which is currently available for Business Central in some geographies. If your environment is located in a country/region where Azure OpenAI Service isn't available, administrators must allow data to move across geographies. Learn more about Copilot data movement across geographies.

• Certain industry, product, and subject limitations:

  Organizations that operate in some business domains, such as medical, drugs, legal, and weapons, might experience lower quality of service.

What data does analysis collect and how is it used?

The analysis assist capability collects the minimum data required by Business Central to offer the service. Microsoft doesn't use your company data, including the text you send to Copilot, to train the foundational models for the benefit of others. For more information, see Dynamics 365 terms for Azure OpenAI-powered features.

It also collects data from the feedback users can provide using the like (thumbs up) or dislike (thumbs down) icons in the analysis assist Copilot page. The data is anonymous and includes the choice of like or dislike, the dislike reason if provided, and the Copilot feature the feedback applies to.

See also

Analyze data with Copilot (preview)