BI Pixie Cloud User Guide
BI Pixie is a telemetry and AI Readiness platform for Power BI. It works on three assets in your estate: your reports, your semantic models, and your Fabric data agents.
Your reports get Pixies, invisible tracking pixels native to Power BI. Pixies are tiny, native Power BI visuals and hidden measures, and through them BI Pixie captures how your audience uses each report: page views, visual clicks, filter selections, bookmark navigation, tooltip views, drill-through actions, surveys, and feedback responses. BI Pixie sends these events to its hosted infrastructure, where you analyze adoption, engagement, and user satisfaction using the BI Pixie Dashboard. BI Pixie collects viewer user names only when you turn on Capture user identity, and until then it counts viewers by a masked IP address. When you turn it on, you choose on the Account page whether BI Pixie keeps each viewer's email address, a masked ID or nothing.
Your semantic models and your data agents get assessed for AI Readiness: how well prepared they are to answer questions correctly through Copilot and Fabric data agents. Each assessment gives a score from 0 to 100 and a ranked list of what to fix, and BI Pixie applies the fixes you approve. Semantic model scoring is read-only and follows fixed rules, with no AI model judging your semantic model, so a second assessment is a reliable before-and-after check on the changes you make.
To prove the result, a Benchmark asks Copilot, a Fabric data agent, or another AI agent questions whose correct answers are computed from your own data. An A/B test runs the same benchmark on two versions of your semantic model or your AI, and shows whether a change made more answers correct.
The two connect, and that connection is what makes BI Pixie different: when a semantic model's reports are tracked, its AI Readiness score is grounded in what people actually click, which sharpens the score and decides which fixes matter most.
How BI Pixie Works
BI Pixie is a fully hosted service. There is nothing to install or deploy in your Azure or Power Platform environment. If you prefer to host BI Pixie in your own environment, see the Self-Hosted guide. Here is how the hosted service works:
- Sign in: Go to app.bipixie.com and sign in with your Microsoft work or school account. Your account is provisioned automatically.
- Connect to Power BI: In the BI Pixie portal, connect your Power BI account to browse your workspaces.
- Add Pixies to your reports: Select a workspace, choose the reports you want to track usage from, and click to add Pixies. BI Pixie adds the Pixies to your reports.
- Collect engagement data: Once your tracked reports are in use, the Pixies send usage and engagement events to BI Pixie's hosted infrastructure as your audience interacts with the reports.
- Analyze your audience: Install the BI Pixie Dashboard from the portal into your own Fabric workspace, and use it to analyze adoption, engagement, user satisfaction, and more.
- Score your semantic models: Open AI Readiness and assess one semantic model or many at once. You get an AI Readiness score with a ranked list of what to fix. This needs no Pixies and no waiting, so it is the fastest thing to try on your first visit, and it gets sharper once your reports are tracked.
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| AI Readiness | |
| Semantic model assessments & optimizations | Score your semantic models from 0 to 100 against Microsoft's guidance for Copilot and Fabric data agents, then apply the descriptions, AI Instructions, AI data schema, display folders, and field defaults you approve. |
| Data agents assessments & optimizations | Score your Fabric data agents from 0 to 100 against Microsoft's published guidance, then apply the changes you approve to each data agent's configuration. |
| Benchmarks | Measure how accurately Copilot, a Fabric data agent, or another AI agent answers questions about your semantic model, with correct answers computed live from your own data. |
| A/B tests | Find out whether a change to your semantic model or your AI made more answers correct, by running the same benchmark on both versions. |
| Tracked Events | Track page views, visual clicks, filter selections, bookmark clicks, tooltip views, drill-through actions, and link clicks across all your Power BI reports. |
| Feedback Controls (Pro) | Add thumbs-up/down or smile/frown feedback buttons to your reports and measure user satisfaction. |
| Embedded Surveys (Pro) | Embed fully customizable surveys directly inside your Power BI reports, including NPS, business value, time-saved, decision-making, issues, and email questions. |
| RLS Auditing | Audit Row-Level Security (RLS) to detect misconfigurations, overexposed data, and potential security risks. |
| Data Management | Search, preview, and delete tracked user data. Configure data retention periods and delete end-user activity records upon request for GDPR compliance. |
| User Adoption and Attrition | Monitor who uses your reports, how often, and identify users who stopped engaging. Distinguish between active users (clicks, slicer selections) and passive users (page views only). |
| Dashboard KPIs | Track key metrics out of the box: active users, engagement rate, sessions, average session duration, pages per session, NPS, satisfaction rate, estimated business value, and estimated time saved. |
| Time Intelligence | Analyze engagement trends over time, track adoption and attrition patterns, and measure the impact of report design changes on user behavior. |
| Custom Analytics | Connect to the BI Pixie semantic model from Power BI Desktop to build your own custom report pages, visuals, and navigation links tailored to your organization's needs. |
| License Assignment (Enterprise) | Assign licenses to business units or cost centers, so each unit's usage is separately attributable, enabling decentralized tracking across your organization. |
| Per-License Data Isolation (Enterprise) | Each license gets its own isolated storage, ensuring strict data separation between business units or teams. |
| Data Residency & BYOS (Enterprise) | Keep telemetry in your own environment for data-residency and regulatory requirements. See the Data Residency overview: Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS) stores it in your own Azure Data Lake, and on Microsoft Fabric, OneLake delivery routes it to your lakehouse. By default, BI Pixie auto-assigns the region closest to your Power BI home. |
| Team Collaboration | Invite team members with Admin or Member roles, manage access requests, and control who can configure tracking settings. |
The BI Pixie Portal
The BI Pixie portal at app.bipixie.com is where you manage everything. The portal sidebar provides access to these pages:
| Page | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Overview | Your home page with onboarding checklist, plan usage, and BI Pixie Dashboard installation. |
| AI Readiness | Score your semantic models for Copilot and for Fabric data agents, apply guided fixes, and run a benchmark to prove the result. |
| Managed Reports | View all tracked reports and manage report tracking. Use "Check for events" to verify in real time that the Pixies are working and capturing engagement data from your reports. |
| Schedules | Run AI Readiness assessments automatically, against the semantic models you choose, at the times you set. Schedules are available on the Enterprise plan. |
| AI Assistants | Create the BI Pixie data agent, connect the MCP server, and set up your AI, which writes descriptions and AI Instructions for you. |
| Tracking Setup | Configure tracking options, feedback controls, and surveys at the account, workspace, or report level. |
| Data Management | Manage data retention, search user data, and delete activity records. |
| Account › Team tab | Invite members, manage roles, and approve access requests. Only admins on your BI Pixie account can open this tab. |
| Account › Licenses tab | Create and assign licenses to business units or cost centers. Each license gets its own isolated storage, enabling chargeback and decentralized tracking across your organization. Only admins on your BI Pixie account can open this tab, and it is available on the Enterprise plan. |
| Account › Plan tab | Compare plans, upgrade or downgrade your subscription, and manage billing. Only admins on your BI Pixie account can open this tab. |
| Account | View plan and usage, manage tracking keys, edit profile, and request a data region change or vote for a new region. |
The Add Pixies page is accessible from the Managed Reports page but does not appear in the sidebar.
What You Will Need
- A Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) work or school account
- Power BI reports published to workspaces where you have Contributor, Member, or Admin role
What's Next
- Getting Started, sign in and complete your first setup in the BI Pixie portal.
- Add Pixies to Your Reports, track usage by adding Pixies to your Power BI reports.
- AI Readiness, score how ready your semantic models are for AI agents and fix what holds them back.
- Benchmarks, test how accurately an AI answers real questions from your semantic model.
- Schedules, run AI Readiness assessments automatically on the semantic models you choose.