Power BI

This blog post explains the advantages of using a Python notebook instead of a Spark notebook in Microsoft Fabric

If you were confused or felt lost with the Direct Lake mode in Microsoft Fabric, I have "great" news for you - things just got even worse! We now have TWO different Direct Lake mode "flavors" - Direct Lake on OneLake and Direct Lake on SQL. In this article, I'm sharing my initial thoughts about the new "on OneLake" enhancement.

IntroductionIn this blog, I will demonstrate how to use the TMDL view in Power BI, to generate multiple DAX measures simultaneously, intended for use in conditional formatting and to improve visual design.This TMDL script can be executed in any semantic model, as long as the TMDL preview feature is enabled. Instead of manually adding each measure one by one, this allows me to quickly replicate the entire set across multiple semantic models.As shown the screenshot below, I have prepared a TMDL sc

This article shows how AI can easily transform images directly to pipelines for Data Factory for Microsoft Fabric.

Using Service Principal and Managed Identity, along with private libraries for Fabric user data functions, makes working with data much easier and more secure. These features let developers customize workflows and use their own code to solve problems, boosting productivity and creativity in teams. As businesses grow and rely more on unique analytics and automation, these tools help simplify data management and improve operations. Check this blog post to learn more

Introducing Seamless Connectivity for Enhanced Data Analytics and Reporting. We are thrilled to announce a new SQL database integration with Power BI Desktop! This innovative feature is designed to empower users with streamlined access to their SQL databases, providing greater flexibility and precision for building insightful reports and dashboards. With this integration, users can now … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/fabric-sql-database-integration-unlocking-new-possibilities-with-power-bi-desktop/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Fabric SQL Database Integration: Unlocking New Possibilities with Power BI desktop”</span></a>

We are excited to announce the release of two powerful AI plugins for Eventhouse: AI Embed Text Plugin and AI Chat Completion Prompt Plugin. These plugins are designed to enhance your data analysis capabilities and augment your workflows with OpenAI models, providing more granular control to power users who seek precision over model output or wish to fine-tune … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-new-openai-plugins-for-eventhouse-preview/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Introducing new OpenAI Plugins for Eventhouse (Preview)”</span></a>

Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake data can be visualized and analyzed in Power BI without moving any data using the new Direct Lake storage mode. . Power BI Desktop users can now create these just like any Power BI solution, right in Power BI Desktop.

Data engineering often presents challenges with data quality or complex data analytics processing that requires custom logic. This is where Fabric User data functions can be used to implement custom logic into your data processes or pipelines. Here are the most common cases where Fabric User Data Functions

The Microsoft Azure Maps visual in Microsoft Power BI enables all Power BI users to visualize and analyze their data on maps to uncover patterns and trends.

We’re excited to unveil the Microsoft Fabric SKU estimator, now available in preview—an enhanced version of the previously introduced Microsoft Fabric Capacity Calculator. This advanced tool has been refined based on extensive user feedback to provide tailored capacity estimations for businesses. Designed to optimize data infrastructure planning, the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator helps customers and … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/empowering-businesses-with-smart-capacity-planning-introducing-the-microsoft-fabric-sku-estimator/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Empowering businesses with smart capacity planning: Introducing the Microsoft Fabric SKU estimator (Preview)”</span></a>

A summary of AI development, governance and end user updates as well as community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

We had such an exciting week for Fabric during the Fabric Conference US, filled with several product announcements and sneak previews of upcoming new features. Thanks to all of you who participated in the conference, either in person or by being part of the many virtual conversations through blogs, Community forums, social media and other … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/recap-of-data-factory-announcements-at-fabric-conference-us-2025/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Recap of Data Factory Announcements at Fabric Conference US 2025”</span></a>

Microsoft Fabric is changing how we handle data engineering and data science. To make things easier, Microsoft added some cool extensions for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) that help you manage Fabric artifacts and build analytical applications. By adding these Microsoft Fabric extensions to VS Code, developers can quickly create Fabric solutions and manage their … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/boost-your-development-with-microsoft-fabric-extensions-for-visual-studio-code/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Boost your development with Microsoft Fabric extensions for Visual Studio Code”</span></a>

Imagine a retail company that wants to gain insights into customer sentiment for each of its products. They also want to find their top-selling and least-selling products. Using Microsoft Fabric, they can build a powerful analytical application to transform their raw data into actionable insights. The process starts with ingesting raw data, such as customer reviews and sales figures, and ends with providing refined data through an API for internal use. This helps the company efficiently process customer feedback and make informed decisions to improve their products.<br /> In this blog post, we’ll dive into the architecture of an analytical application powered by Microsoft Fabric, as shown in the image, and provide a step-by-step guide on how to build it.

This blog post and accompanying code are inspired by this article on Towards Data Science, which walks through extracting dominant image colours using Python. The challenge From a Nightgale Data Visualisation challenge using the Bob Ross dataset, the goal was to extract dominant colours from each episode’s painting. These colours were then analysed to find… Continue reading Extracting dominant colours in Fabric Notebooks

For nearly three years, Microsoft’s internal Azure Data team has been developing data engineering solutions using Microsoft Fabric. Throughout this journey, we’ve refined our Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) approach by experimenting with various branching models, workspace structures, and parameterization techniques. This article walks you through why we chose our strategy and how to implement it in … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/optimizing-for-ci-cd-in-microsoft-fabric/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Optimizing for CI/CD in Microsoft Fabric”</span></a>

Overview of the Admin monitoring workspace The admin monitoring workspace is an out-of-the-box solution that installs automatically when a Fabric admin accesses it. You can share the entire workspace or individual reports/semantic models with any user or group. Use the reports for insights on user activity, content sharing, capacity performance, and more in your Fabric … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-public-preview-of-content-sharing-report/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Content Sharing Report (Preview)”</span></a>

In today’s data-driven landscape, organizations are constantly seeking ways to streamline their data integration processes, enhance productivity, and democratize access to powerful data engineering capabilities with Copilot for Data Factory. At Microsoft, we’re committed to empowering data engineers and analysts with intelligent tools that reduce complexity and accelerate development. We’re excited to share the latest … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/ai-powered-development-with-data-factory-microsoft-fabric/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “AI-powered development with Data Factory Microsoft Fabric”</span></a>

Transform data storytelling with data point annotations added to Power BI visuals in PowerPoint. The new Annotations feature enables you to communicate insights with greater efficacy and enhance the engagement and informativeness of your presentation. By adding data point annotations to visuals in your slides, you can provide contextual explanations or highlights attached to the relevant data points, which improves communication and understanding of the data being presented.

We are excited to introduce one-click experiences that make it easier than ever to start using Fabric notebooks and semantic link to analyze your semantic models on the web! With pre-configured notebooks, you can effortlessly run Best practice analyzer and Memory analyzer to improve design, performance, and memory optimization of your semantic models. Additionally, explore and submit your notebook creations in the Power BI Community notebooks gallery to share notebooks that enhance your Power BI data analysis and reporting with the rest of the Power BI community.

In this blog post find overview of the latest updates and future plans for org apps (preview) in Power BI. Highlighting new customization options, Git support, and deployment pipelines that enhance the development and deployment of org apps. Additionally, this post outlines upcoming features such as support for Pro workspaces, paginated reports, mobile app viewing, and audience-based content display. This post aims to inform and guide customers on how to leverage new and upcoming capabilities to meet their organization’s data distribution and consumption needs.

I usually do not write about announcements and new features until we have had time to try and test them in the real world. However, there are always excepti

Today, we are announcing new types of Functions in Fabric Data Warehouse and Lakehouse SQL endpoint. Continue reading to find out more and if interested refer to sign up form for Functions preview in Fabric Data Warehouse. About functions Functions in SQL encapsulates specific logic that can be executed by invoking the function within queries, … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/functions-in-data-warehouse/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Another dimension of Functions in Data Warehouse”</span></a>

We’ve made several significant updates to our Fabric Data Factory artifacts stories, including Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) and APIs support! These updates are designed to automate the integration, testing, and deployment of code changes, ensuring efficient and reliable development. In Fabric Data Factory, we currently support two key features in collaboration with the Application Lifecycle … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/data-operations-in-fabric-data-factory/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “DataOps in Fabric Data Factory”</span></a>

We are excited to announce the preview of Fabric User Data Functions! This feature is made to empower developers to create functions that contain their business logic and connect to Fabric data sources, and/or invoke them from other Fabric items such as Data pipelines, Notebooks and Power BI reports. Fabric User Data Functions leverage the … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-fabric-user-data-functions-in-public-preview/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Announcing Fabric User Data Functions (Preview)”</span></a>

Co-Author – Gyani Sinha, Abhishek Narain Overview A well-architected lakehouse enables organizations to efficiently manage and process data for analytics, machine learning, and reporting. To achieve governance, scalability, operational excellence, and optimal performance, adopting a structured, metadata-driven approach is crucial for lakehouse implementation. Building on our previous blog, Demystifying Data Ingestion in Fabric, this post … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/playbook-for-metadata-driven-lakehouse-implementation-in-microsoft-fabric/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “Playbook for metadata driven Lakehouse implementation in Microsoft Fabric”</span></a>

Here is the March 2025 release of the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.262.5)

We are excited to announce support for SHOWPLAN_XML in Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse in preview. This capability allows users to generate and view the estimated query execution plan in XML format, a tool for analyzing and optimizing SQL queries. Whether you’re troubleshooting performance bottlenecks or refining query strategies during development, SHOWPLAN_XML offers a granular, detailed … <p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/query-plans-in-fabric-data-warehouse/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> “SHOWPLAN_XML in Fabric Data Warehouse (Preview)”</span></a>