***Note this post applies to Power BI for Office 365 (deprecated as of 12/31/2015). Though some concepts remain the same or similar, all details are not necessarily applicable to the new Power BI V2 service.***

Just a quick tip about where to locate the options in Power BI for doing Q&A optimizations. In the Power BI site, these are not where you might first think to look.

What is Q&A?

First, just a quick bit on what Q&A is and why you should care.  Q&A is also referred to as natural language querying, and essentially amounts to using a Bing-like search box in order to return a report.  This is interesting and important for your report consumers because it means the report author doesn't have to publish every single permeation of a report. 

This behavior of constructing reports on the fly relies upon certain things in the underlying data model (Power Pivot) for it to return results properly.  So the first thing you can do for Q&A is to have a proper data model and use Synonyms in the Power Pivot model. (See the link below for Part 2 for more info.)

In addition to proper modeling techniques, there are some optimizations that are now available in Power BI - i.e., available in the browser in the Power BI site. When done in the browser, these optimizations are written back to the original workbook. However, where to locate Q&A optimizations isn't quite as obvious as you might think.

Finding Q&A Optimizations in the Power BI Site

1. Go to the main page of Power BI.

2. Select the Q&A page within Power BI Site Settings.

3. Locate the workbook you wish to optimize, click the ellipses, and choose "Optimize for Q&A."

At this point, you have 4 options: the Overview, Synonyms, Phrasings, and Usage.

Synonyms can be done in either the Power Pivot workbook (assuming you have the correct version of Excel, that is...I discuss that more in this blog entry:  Getting New Power Pivot Features), or in the Power BI site. If you start doing Q&A optimizations in the Power BI site, make sure you re-download a new copy of the workbook before making edits and re-uploading it! (If this becomes an issue, you might think about turning on versioning in the document library to keep 1, or maybe 2, versions in change history.)

Phrasings, however, can only be done currently in the Power BI site. I would say that the Q&A functionality available in the cloud only, along with the new licensing model for Power Map, is one of Microsoft's ways of encouraging customers to purchase Office 365 and Power BI licenses.

Who Has Access to Q&A Optimization?

From what I understand, you will see the Q&A optimization page if (a) you are a Power BI Administrator, or (b) you are the one who uploaded the file. Now that doesn't cover a situation where Suzie uploads the file but John is taking over management of it. I figure in that case John can download it, delete it, and re-upload it. However, I'm hoping the permissions for allowing optimization become a bit more granular.  In my mind, the person who developed the model is the best person for optimizing it, but that of course depends on the optimizations.

Cloud Modeling?

In the documentation for Q&A from Office.com, they refer to Q&A optimizations also as cloud modeling. I personally have a very different definition of modeling. However, it's helpful to know what the lingo is if you are searching for help. Usage of the term cloud modeling makes me wonder if that means something more along those lines is coming at some point?  Hmmm.

Finding More Information

Introduction to Power BI Q&A (and Cloud Modeling)

Demystifying Power BI Q&A - Part 1  < An introduction

Demystifying Power BI Q&A - Part 2  < Discusses good modeling techniques & synonyms

Demystifying Power BI Q&A - Part 3   < Discusses phrasings