Release Notes
Arria for Power BI
For further information or help with any of these issues, please contact our Support Team.
Version 3.3.1.0
March 2022
New features and enhancements
Arria Answers: Support for single date fields
Arria Answers can now handle date values stored in a single column, as shown below. Spreading date components (year, quarter, month, and day) across multiple columns is no longer required.
Arria Answers: Two-digit year values
In addition to four-digit year values (e.g. 2022), two-digit year values (e.g. 22) are now supported.
Arria Answers: Support for additional aggregation types
Arria Answers now supports five aggregation types: Don't summarize, Sum, Average, Minimum, and Maximum. Previously, it supported Don't summarize and Sum aggregation only. This improvement increases your options for querying your data — see Query types for guidance.
Fixed issues
NLG Apps: Changing the aggregation type of a measure to an unsupported type resulted in errors or incorrect narratives
Previously, when Arria for Power BI displayed a generated narrative, changing a measure's aggregation type to one unsupported by the app resulted in errors or incorrect narratives. This no longer occurs.
Arria Answers now correctly handles values that contain asterisks
Arria Answers no longer generates an error message when a data field's name contains an asterisk.
Known issues
NLG Apps: Some narratives must be reconfigured after updating to Arria for Power BI 3.3.1.0
When you update to Arria for Power BI 3.3.1.0, the add-in replaces any pre-existing narratives generated using the Anomalies, Correlations, Describe a Pie Chart, Describe a Bar Chart, and Describe a Line Chart apps. More specifically, the update replaces the narrative with an error message or a narrative generated by a different NLG app.
To resolve this issue, you must reconfigure any narratives generated using these apps after completing the update.
Arria Answers: Hyphens are not supported in field names or values
Arria Answers does not recognize field names or field values containing hyphens.
Arria Answers: Empty cells (null values) in dimension fields result in error messages
If a non-time dimension field in your dataset — e.g. Country or Product — contains empty cells (null values), Arria Answers returns this error message:
I'm sorry, something went wrong. Please try again or ask for help.
If a time dimension field in your dataset — e.g. Date or Year — contains empty cells (null values), Arria Answers returns this error message:
I'm sorry, I can't understand your date column format. Please use an ISO-8601 format and try again.
To avoid these issues, please ensure that your dimension fields contain no empty cells.
Version 3.3.0
December 2021
New features and enhancements
New NLG Apps
Arria for Power BI 3.3.0 introduces two new out-of-the-box narrative types:
The Anomalies app generates a narrative that detects and contextualizes anomalies in one or more measures — at a single time point or across a time range — broken down by a number of dimensions. For example, the narrative may report unexpectedly high or low sales for a certain month when compared to all other months in the dataset.
See Anomalies for details.
The Correlations app generates an analysis of correlations between measures — at a single time point or across a time range — broken down by a number of dimensions. For example, for a particular product, the narrative may report a strong positive correlation between marketing spend and an increase in profit two months later.
See Correlations for details.
Version 3.2.2
August 2021
Fixed issues
Error when existing NLG Apps narratives updated to version 3.2.0 of Arria for Power BI
When existing NLG Apps narratives are updated to version 3.2.0 of Arria for Power BI, the following error may occur:
Please check the data you have provided. Missing time dimension. You have not supplied the measure selected for analysis as part of the dataset.
This has been fixed in Arria for Power BI 3.2.2.
Version 3.2.1
August 2021
Fixed issues
Incorrect sign-up URL on Welcome page
The Sign up here URL has been updated.
Version 3.2.0
August 2021
New features and enhancements
NLG Apps: Support for additional aggregation and entity types
Arria for Power BI 3.2 introduces NLG Apps support for measures aggregated by Average, Minimum, Maximum, and Count, and precalculated values such as percentages, ratings, and ratios.
See the Support for additional aggregation and entity types in NLG Apps topic for further information.
Important
Arria Answers currently supports only the
Sumaggregation type and theNoneandCurrencyentity types. When switching from an NLG Apps narrative to Arria Answers, make sure the measures chosen to generate the narrative meet these requirements. If they don't, Arria Answers will return incorrect responses.
Fixed issues
Using summarization with measures
When working with NLG Apps and Arria Answers in previous releases of Arria for Power BI, measures could only be aggregated using the Sum summarization type. Using other summarization types would result in erroneous narratives.
For NLG Apps only, support has been added for the Average, Minimum, Maximum, and Count summarization types. Arria Answers still supports only the Sum summarization type.
See the Support for additional aggregation and entity types in NLG Apps topic for further information.
Known issues
NLG Apps: Changing the aggregation type of a measure to an unsupported type results in errors or incorrect narratives
When on a generated narrative page, changing the aggregation type of a measure to one that is not supported by that app results in errors or incorrect narratives being generated.
To resolve the issue, change the aggregation type back to one that is supported.
For details of the aggregation and entity type combinations supported by your chosen app, see the relevant page in the NLG App Directory.
Version 3.1.0
March 2021
The following enhancements to NLG Apps are now available through Arria for Power BI 3.1.0.
Support for single column dates
NLG Apps no longer requires dates to be presented as a date hierarchy in separate Year, Quarter, Month and Day fields. Single Date fields are now supported.
See NLG Apps Data requirements for more information on supported date formats.
Support for custom date field names
NLG Apps no longer requires date fields to be named exactly Date, Year, Quarter, Month, and Day.
Now, for example, fields containing day values can be named either "d", "D", or any expression that contains the word "day", such as "day_name". This requirement is case-insensitive: any mixture of cases is acceptable. Therefore, "DAY_name" and "Day_Name" (to give two alternatives) are valid alternatives to "day_name".
See NLG Apps Data requirements for more information on supported date field names.
December 2020
New features and enhancements
Two new NLG Apps narratives
The NLG Apps feature introduces two new out-of-the-box narrative types:
Trend AnalysisGenerates a narrative that analyzes the changes in trend of a measure over time. The narrative highlights significant shifts, and drills down through multiple dimensions. For example, an analysis of the changes in Sales by Month, broken down by Country, Product and Market.
Ranking AnalysisGenerates an analysis of changes in the ranking of dimensions over time as they relate to a measure, and summarizes the top and/or bottom rankings of combinations of dimensions over the same time period. For example, an analysis of the changes in Profit over a Quarter, broken down by Country, Product and Segment.
See the NLG Apps reference for details.
Notable changes
Improvements to the Describe a Line Chart NLG App narrative
The structure of the Describe a Line Chart narrative has been improved so that the data insights are presented more concisely and clearly. For example, the Correlations section has been moved to the end of the narrative and is included only when multiple measures are selected.
Fixed issues
Arria Answers: calculated measures cannot be queried
In previous versions of Arria for Power BI, Arria Answers incorrectly treated calculated measures as dimensions. This issue has been fixed.
Arria Answers: renamed data columns not recognized
In previous versions of Arria for Power BI, Arria Answers incorrectly handled columns that had been renamed in the Fields pane and issued an error stating that the renamed column could not be found. This has been fixed.
Known issues
Measures narrated in reverse order of priority when using the Descriptive Statistics app
When the Ranking option of the Descriptive Statistics app is set to
Use order of dimensions set in Step 1, the order of the measures set in Step 1 of the wizard is reversed in the generated narrative.
Arria Answers generates error when a data value contains an asterisk
Arria Answers generates the error "I'm sorry, something went wrong. Please try again or ask for help." when asked about data fields that include values containing the asterisk character.
For example, the error is generated when asking about the Country data field, shown above, which includes the value
*Canada*:
Version 3.0.2
October 2020
New features and enhancements
Support for the Power BI context menu
Arria for Power BI now supports the Power BI context menu feature. The Power BI context menu is accessed by right-clicking in the add-in.
Users can now copy the visual using the Copy visual option and show the data being used to create the narrative using the Show as a table option.
Known issues
Using NLG Apps with the Private Cloud and Customer-Hosted deployment options
You may notice minor differences between the narratives generated using NLG Apps when working in a private cloud or customer-hosted environment and those generated when working in the public cloud environment.
This will be fixed in version 3.1.0.
Version 3.0.0
September 2020
Arria for Power BI 3.0.0 introduces a redesigned out-of-the-box experience, an all-new natural language query experience, and several user interface enhancements — making it even easier to add automatically-generated, natural-language insights to your reports and dashboards.
New features and enhancements
NLG Apps
NLG Apps (built from a feature that was formerly known as Configure Narrative) introduces three new, out-of-the-box narrative types. In addition to the existing Descriptive Statistics, Time-based Variance, and Target-based Variance analyses, you can now analyze and narrate your charts using the Describe a Pie Chart, Describe a Bar Chart, and Describe a Line Chart apps.
See NLG Apps for details.
Note
The Descriptive Statistics analysis now forms a discrete app, so this type of analysis can no longer be selected with Time-based or Target-based Variance to produce a single narrative. Instead, each analysis type and its corresponding narrative must be added to the dashboard separately.
Arria Answers
Arria Answers is a new, conversational-AI platform that integrates with Power BI dashboards to give businesses real-time access to key insights from data, using natural language queries.
See Arria Answers for details.
Support for larger datasets (payloads)
Previous versions of Arria for Power BI had a dataset limit of 30,000 rows. Improvements to the add-in mean that there is no longer a limit on the number of rows in your data.
Now, the only restriction on dataset size is the data payload limit imposed by Studio (20MB).
See Dataset size limits and performance for details.
Notable changes
New Arria for Power BI login
To configure Arria for Power BI, you are now required to log in to the add-in using your Arria NLG Studio or Arria for Power BI account credentials.
The new Arria for Power BI account's subscription model allows you to choose the core features (NLG Apps, Arria Answers, and Custom Narratives) you want to configure and make available to your dashboard viewers.
See Arria accounts and supported features for details.
Private Cloud and Customer-Hosted deployment options
Users of the Private Cloud (a.k.a. Dedicated Cloud) and Customer-Hosted (a.k.a. On-Premises) deployment options can no longer use the publicly available Arria for Power BI add-in.
Instead, a unique instance of the add-in, configured to call your exclusive Arria for Power BI services, must be downloaded from your private cloud or customer-hosted environment.
Contact your systems administrator for details.
Fixed issues
Comma-separated values now correctly handled when working with table-type custom narrative projects.
Comma-separated values in a single cell are now correctly handled when calling table-type Studio projects from the add-in.
Known issues
Supported browsers
Arria for Power BI 3.0.0 is supported in the Chrome and Edge browsers only.
Using summarization with measures
When working with NLG Apps and Arria Answers, measures can only be aggregated using the Sum summarization type. Using other summarization types will result in erroneous narratives.
When working with Custom Narratives, you may use any summarization type as long as the custom Studio project has been configured to handle it.
Arria Answers: calculated measures cannot be queried
Arria Answers incorrectly treats calculated measures as dimensions. You may receive errors such as "I'm sorry, I can't answer a question without a measure".
Arria Answers: renamed data columns not recognized
Arria Answers does not recognize columns that have been renamed in the Fields pane.
Although they are correctly identified as a dimension or measure in the question entered into Arria Answers (highlighted in pink or orange), you will receive an error stating that the column could not be found.
For example, renaming the Sales column as Actual Sales in the Fields pane results in this error:
