In Power BI development in Microsoft Fabric, understanding and utilising source control mechanisms is crucial for efficient collaboration and version management. This blog post delves into the essential aspects of source control for Power BI. This blog also includes the recording of my session at Saudi Arabia’s Excel User Group on the 26th of August 2023. The event was organised by Microsoft MVP, Faraz Sheik, where we walked through all the topics discussed in this blog.
Understanding Source Control
At its core, source control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time. This lets developers recall specific versions later, ensuring efficient collaboration and error management. It’s particularly vital for development teams, allowing multiple contributors to work on the same codebase without overwriting each other’s work.
For Power BI developers, this means tracking changes made to reports, and data models that are the most crucial components of every Power BI project.
In a previous post I explained how to manage the capacity costs of a Fabric F capacity (under Pay-As-You-Go pricing model) using Logic Apps to Suspend and Resume it.
A customer who read my previous blog asked me “Can we use a similar method to scale up and down before and after specific workloads?”. This blog post is to answer exactly that.
I want to make some important points clear first and before we dig deeper into the solution:
The method described in this post works with Fabric F SKUs under Pay-As-You-Go pricing model.
If you have a Power BI Premium capacity, then this method is not valid for your case. But you might be interested in the autoscale option for Power BI Premium capacities.
Depending on your current workload, scaling down may not work due to resource unavailability.
Depending on your workload, this method may take a while to go through.
You need to be either a Capacity Admin or a Fabric Admin to successfully implement this method.
This method works based on user authentication, however, you may want to use Service Principal or Manage Identity which require more effort but could be a more desirable method in many scenarios.
This post explains a very basic scenario, you’re welcome to scale it to your specific needs.
You can consider this post as a continuation of the previous post. So if you are unsure you correctly understand what this blog is trying to explain, then I suggest you read my previous post first where I explain the Logic Apps implementation in more detail.
The Problem
I have an F Fabric capacity and I want to upscale it to an upper tier between the pick-time from 8 AM to 12 PM local time, then downscale it to its original tier.
The Solution
There are many ways to do this including using Azure Resource Manager APIs, Manage Azure Resources in PowerShell, or using Azure Resource Manager connector that can be used on Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate Premium, and Power Apps Premium. This post explores the use of Azure Resource Manager connectors in Azure Logic Apps. With that, let’s begin.
If you are evaluating Microsoft Fabric and do not currently own a Premium Capacity, chances are you’re using Microsoft Fabric Trial Capacities. All Power BI users within an organisation or specific security groups given the rights can opt into Fabric Trial Capacities. Therefore, you may already have several Trial Fabric Capacities in your tenant. Your Fabric Administrators can specifically control who can opt into the Fabric Trial capacities within the Fabric Admin Portal, on the Help and support settings section, and enabling the Users can try Microsoft Fabric paid features setting as shown in the following image:
Enable Users can try Microsoft Fabric paid features for specific security groups via Fabric Admin Portal
The authorised users can then opt into Fabric Trial by following this process:
Click the Account Manager on the top right corner of the page
Click the Start trial button
Click the Start trial button again
Provide the required details
Click the Extend my free trial button
The following image shows the preceding steps:
Start Fabric Free Trial
As you see, opting into Fabric Trial is simple, unless it isn’t!
There are cases where authorised users cannot start their Fabric Trial because their tenant has already exceeded the limit of available trial capacities. In that case, the users get the following message:
In Nov 2023, Microsoft announced Microsoft Fabric’s general availability and Public Preview of Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. In a previous post, I explained what Copilot means to Power BI developers, which is valid for other Fabric developers such as data engineers and data scientists as Copilot for Fabric helps with those experiences as well. But the main focus of this blog post is to discuss the requirements, how to enable Copilot, and how to use it from a Power BI development point of view. So, this blog will not discuss other aspects of Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. With that, let’s begin.
Requirements
Right off the bat, Copilot is only available on Power BI Premium capacities or their equivalentFabric capacities. So, NO it is NOT available on Power BI Pro or Premium Per User or Power BI Embedded Analytics. So the Power BI items you want to use Copilot on must be in a Workspace assigned to a Power BI Premium P1 or Microsoft Fabric F64 capacities or higher.
You also need to have a Contributor role on the premium workspace.
To use Copilot, your Microsoft Fabric Administrator must enable it from the Fabric Admin Portal. This setting is not available in all regions yet, but Microsoft is gradually rolling it out to more regions.
As mentioned before, your Fabric Administrator must enable Copilot features within the Admin Portal. Follow these steps to enable Copilot on your tenant after logging into Microsoft Fabric:
Click Settings (the gear icon on the top right of the page)
Click Admin portal
Ensure that the Tenant setting tab is selected
Scroll all the way down to the Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service (preview) section
Note
You can also use the search box and search for OpenAI to find the Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service (preview) section.
Enable the Users can use a preview of Copilot and other features powered by Azure OpenAI
Click the Apply button
Enable the Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your tenant’s geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance
Click the Apply button again
That is it. You enabled the Copilot capabilities on your tenant.
