What to Know About Microsoft Fabric if you Already Have Power BI

For all of you out there wondering what the freshly launched Microsoft Fabric means if you’re already using Power BI, stay put.  

We’re going to cover what the impact of Microsoft Fabric is on your Power BI capabilities and what actions you need to take to ensure you’re leveraging your Microsoft tools to their fullest. 

Existing Power BI users are already familiar with this powerful platform and its ability to simplify the path to data-driven insights and decision-making thanks to interactive visualizations, easy data connectivity, mobile accessibility, and streamlined collaboration. 

But you’re not getting the most value from Power BI if you’re not taking advantage of Fabric, the new end-to-end analytics platform from Microsoft. Fabric’s purpose is to create holistic, synchronized SaaS experiences for data integration, data engineering, data science, business intelligence, real-time analytics, data movement, and data warehousing. 

Azure Data Factory, Power BI, and Azure Synapse Analytics are integrated as one cohesive product in Fabric, creating a one-stop shop for the entire analytics lifecycle and a foundation for AI. 

Microsoft Fabric’s integration with Power BI enhances and extends the Power BI platform, offering better performance and scalability for enhanced analytics and visualization. 

Accessing Fabric if You Have Power BI 

Existing Power BI customers can keep using all of the same functionalities and capabilities they’re already using without experiencing any disruption. If you’re a Power BI Premium customer, you can just turn the Fabric tenant setting on in your Power BI admin portal to start accessing extended capabilities. There’s no need to migrate content from Power BI to Fabric.  

What else to know: 

• Power BI shared capacity doesn’t support Fabric. 
• Power BI Premium per capacity can support all Fabric workloads and capabilities. 

• Power BI Pro customers need capacity trials to access Fabric functionality. 
• Fabric has opt-in or out-features found in the admin portal, but Fabric was automatically turned on for every Power BI tenant on July 1st. 
• Fabric experiences won’t detract from your usage capacity until August 1st and you can track the impact of Fabric on your capacity via the Capacity Metrics app. 

OneLake Transforms How You Work with Data 

We’ve discussed Microsoft Fabric extensively here, but it’s important to reiterate that Fabric’s experiences revolve around OneLake, Microsoft’s multi-cloud data lake. OneLake is like Microsoft 365’s One Drive, but for data instead of documents. It offers a unified storage system for all of the different workloads within Fabric. Plus, the ability to put your data into a lakehouse and then leverage it across the various engines in Fabric can help drive Power BI usage. 

What else to know: 

• Power BI reports can be built right on top of OneLake through the Analysis Services engine’s Direct Lake Mode.  
• Direct Lake Mode eliminates the need to copy the data or manage refreshes because the data never moves from the lake. You can upload data into Fabric Lakehouse rather than importing it into a Power BI data set, enabling you to adjust the data directly in Lakehouse and immediately see the changes in Power BI reports without any refreshing. 

The Power BI Administrator Role is Changing 

With the centralization of tenant and capacity level administration for all of the different Fabric experiences, the Power BI admin portal is now the Fabric Admin portal. The Power BI administrator role has also been renamed to Fabric Administrator to reflect the evolving responsibilities of the role. 

Copilot in Power BI Offers Intuitive AI Capabilities 

Copilot with Power BI (in preview) incorporates large language models that introduces a conversational element to how users derive data insights. Users can simply describe the type of insights and visualizations they want in everyday language and Copilot can generate customized reports from the right data. Its generative AI capabilities and features are designed to be infused into different analytics workflows. 

What else to know: 

• Copilot in Power BI can be used by data professionals to produce code, develop workflows and build machine learning models. 

• Users can produce DAX calculations, explore their data by asking questions, and build narratives that can be infused into reports.  
• Copilot can make intelligent recommendations and automatically produce tailored insights. 

Git Integration Streamlines Developer Workflows and Collaboration 

There’s a lot of buzz around Fabric’s Git integration, a version control system, that improves collaboration features for Power BI. The Git integration enables better teamwork between developers and other teams working on Power BI content and helps mitigate data conflicts by providing a single, trusted version of the content. By working with the latest and most accurate data, the entire application lifecycle is also easier to manage from development testing to deployment.  

What else to know:  

• Developers can work together more smoothly by tracking changes, going back to previous versions as needed, and combining updates from various team members into one content version. 
• Power BI Desktop can be used for creating reports and files that work well with source control. 
• Work can be saved as a Power BI project (.PBIP) in a specific folder vs a .PBIX file. 

• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) is supported, meaning that developers can set up quality checks before deploying their work to production environments.  
• Developers can perform code reviews and automated testing and builds to ensure everything works correctly before releasing content to end-users. 

One Ubiquitous Security and Governance Model 

Because Microsoft Fabric unifies Power BI, Synapse, and Data Factory in a SaaS platform, it provides a centralized approach to governance, compliance, security, and administration. This aims to resolve the complexity typically associated with developing analytics solutions and disparately managing things like security, workspaces, user roles, and data ingestion. 

What else to know: 

• OneLake offers out-of-the-box governance, including certification, impact analysis, data protection, and data lineage, with all data controlled by a tenant administrator. 
• Granular control per business unit is provided via domains that accommodate federated governance. 
• The unified governance experience simplifies the ability to switch between tools and collaborate within a team.  

Succeed with Microsoft Fabric  

Microsoft Fabric marks a significant change to Power BI and there’s a lot of new features that can help optimize your analytics workflows and processes, as well as how everyone across your organization consumes data insights.  

Microsoft consultants can help you get a running start with Fabric so you can get more from Power BI - and the entire suite of Fabric features. CloudServus is an experienced, top-tier Microsoft Solutions Partner with specialized consultants who can streamline your Microsoft Fabric journey and experience. 

We can even help you determine if Fabric is the right solution for your particular objectives, needs, and analytics environment. Our services are designed to maximize your Power BI investment and harness Fabric’s full potential - from integration with other systems and establishing security policies to best practices and troubleshooting. 

Reach out to us at CloudServus to get started with Microsoft Fabric or learn more about the impact of Fabric on Power BI.