Power BI November 2020 release anomaly detection new AI visual

Last month we had smart narratives which was amazing. This month we get another AI feature. Anomality detection. So lets have a look at how this works.

Its still in preview at the moment so make sure you go to File > Options and Settings > Options to try it out

First, lets create a line chart for every days sales (I am using Adventureworks data)

make sure the X Axis type is continuous rather than categorical. Now you can turn on Find Anomalies from the Analytics pane

If your data goes outside of the expected boundary it shows as an anomoly

You can also format the anomaly information

I increased the sensitivity to 75%

Another thing you can do it to get an explanation of the anomaly’s

Click on the anomaly icon to get possible explanations (If there are any).

Adding Data items into the Explain by will restrict the Explain by to those specific fields. Without anything in Explain by, Power BI will use all the data to ‘Explain by’ so this is a good way of removing items that you know you aren’t interested in.

Unfortunately there are no explanations for these anomalies but it will be interesting to try thin on other line charts

lets switch to our internet sales and try again

Again, no luck with the explain but lets publish to see what happens

Great. You wont see the explanation in desktop but once published, the user can click on the anomaly and see the possible explanations.

Here we have added Explain by categories for Product. It looks like the explanation is based around low value clothing products.

If you are going to use the line chart against your lowest level time series data, this is a great feature to use.