Tag: PowerBI

Agentic AI, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Desktop

Agentic AI in Power BI and Fabric, Part 2: Getting Started with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and Safe MCP Setup

Agentic AI in Power BI and Fabric, Part 2 Getting Started with VS Code, GitHub Copilot

A Personal Note Before We Continue

Before I continue this series, I want to briefly share why it took me so long to publish this second blog.

As many of you who follow me on LinkedIn already know, I lost my mum about six months ago, only nine months after I lost my dad. I was still trying to recover from those deeply painful losses when more devastating news arrived from Iran.

On 8 January 2026, reports started emerging of mass killings during the violent crackdown in Iran, and the situation continued for the following two days. Many people described those days with words that are hard even to repeat. Then the war involving Iran, Israel, and the United States escalated further, and it is still ongoing as I write this blog post.

I am trying not to stay in the dark, but I am human after all. Being surrounded by grief and bad news for such a long time takes a real toll, and dealing with it has simply been hard.

That said, I still wanted to continue this series. Partly because I believe the topic matters, and partly because getting back to writing feels like one small way to keep moving forward.

Quick Recap of Part 1

In the first blog of this series, I focused on the concepts and terminology behind Agentic AI in the context of Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. We looked at ideas such as agents, tools, skills, MCP, guardrails, memory, prompts, planning, and actions.

That first post was intentionally conceptual. I did not want to jump straight into tools and demos before building the right mental model. If the foundations are unclear, the setup work quickly turns into confusion.

This follow-up post is where we move from concepts into practice, starting with the environment setup.

What This Blog Will Cover

In this post, I want to keep the scope practical and narrow enough to remain useful. We will cover:

  • why VS Code is a good starting point for agentic workflows
  • how to get started with GitHub Copilot in VS Code
  • which VS Code extensions make sense for Power BI and Microsoft Fabric work as of today (Apr 2026)
  • why you should be careful with local MCP servers
  • why Windows Sandbox or a virtual machine can be a very good idea before you start experimenting
  • how to make sure GitHub Copilot, tools, and models are ready before you start a real workflow

There is already a lot in that list, so I will deliberately keep the hands-on Power BI modelling walkthrough for the next post.

f you like to listen to the content on the go, here is the AI generated podcast explaining everything about this blog 👇.

Why VS Code Is a Good Starting Point for Agentic AI

VS Code is a very practical place to begin with agentic AI workflows. It is lightweight, extensible, well documented, and increasingly well integrated with GitHub Copilot. More importantly, it gives us a working environment where prompts, files, plans, tools, MCP-based capabilities, and extensions can all come together in one place, which is very handy.

For Power BI and Microsoft Fabric work, that matters a lot. We are usually not just asking random questions. We are trying to work with semantic models, project files, metadata, documentation, notebooks, configuration, and sometimes real environments. Therefore, we need a setup that can easily provide different mechanisms to access to Microsoft Fabric and Power BI in structured workflows. VS Code gives us exactly that.

A clean VS Code window ready for setup
A clean VS Code window ready for setup


A clean VS Code window ready for setup

Download and Install VS Code

If you do not already have VS Code installed, you have two ways to download it:

I am not going to explain the installation steps in this blog because that is not the focus here. The important point is simply to get VS Code installed and ready.

If you already use VS Code, make sure it is up to date before going further.

VS Code download options

Official VS Code download options

Continue reading “Agentic AI in Power BI and Fabric, Part 2: Getting Started with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and Safe MCP Setup” →
Agentic AI, Business Intelligence - BI, Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI

Agentic AI in Power BI and Fabric, Part 1: Concepts, Terminology, and How to Think About It

It has been a while since I published my last blog and YouTube video. Life got a bit busy, and to be honest, finding enough focused time became harder than I expected. But here I am, on the very last day of 2025.

I do not really see this blog as the final post of 2025. I see it more as an opening for what is coming next. In a couple of hours, we will be in 2026. Looking back, 2025 was a year full of ups and downs. Some very good moments, some sad ones too. But all in all, as Brian May from Queen once said, “The Show Must Go On”.

So let us start the next year with a topic that has been on my mind a lot recently. Agentic AI, and how it can realistically help us in Microsoft Fabric and Power BI projects.

If you like to listen to the content on the go, here is the AI generated podcast explaining everything about this blog 👇.

Why this topic needs a series, not a single blog

Before we go into any definitions, I want to explain why I am turning this into a multi-part series.

Agentic AI is a broad topic. It touches tooling, process, safety, productivity, and also mindset. Trying to cover all of this properly in a single blog post would either make it too shallow, or too long and hard to follow. Neither is useful.

So I decided to break it down into a series:

  • This first blog is about concepts and terminology
  • The next blog will cover initial setup and tools
  • The following one will focus on hands-on Power BI scenarios

This first part intentionally stays away from tools and demos. The goal is to build a solid mental foundation first.

What this series is and what it is not

Agentic AI is one of those topics where expectations can easily go in the wrong direction. So it is important to be very clear.

This series is not:

  • A story about replacing engineers, analysts, or architects
  • A full AI or machine learning theory course
  • A generic prompt list without context

This series is:

  • About improving productivity in real delivery projects
  • About assisting people, not replacing them
  • About using AI in a controlled and responsible way
  • Focused on Microsoft Fabric and Power BI implementations

If you are expecting magic or shortcuts, this series is probably not for you.

Where Agentic AI fits today in the Microsoft Fabric world

Before going further, one important clarification is needed.

At the time of writing this blog, Agentic AI is not available in the built-in Copilot experiences in Microsoft Fabric or Power BI. Copilot today is mainly a conversational assistant. It does not plan tasks, use external tools freely, or execute multi-step workflows in the way Agentic AI does.

Everything discussed in this series is about agentic setups, for example using tools like VS Code, external agents, and Model Context Protocol servers, which we will cover later in the series.

This distinction is important, otherwise expectations will be wrong from the start.

Continue reading “Agentic AI in Power BI and Fabric, Part 1: Concepts, Terminology, and How to Think About It” →
Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS

Power BI Desktop Versions Demystified: Part 1, Power BI Desktop and Power BI Desktop RS

If you are a Power BI power user, you may have wondered: how many versions of Power BI Desktop are there? The quick answer is: it depends!

Depending on your organisation’s preferences, data governance requirements, and the platforms you intend to use for report deployment you may use either Power BI Desktop, the “standard version”, or Power BI Desktop RS (Report Server). Power BI Desktop has variations tailored to meet specific needs, such as cloud-based analytics or on-premises reporting. While many users might only encounter the standard version, there’s another important variant for specialised scenarios.

Power BI Desktop comes in two primary versions:

  1. Power BI Desktop:
    This is the standard version most users rely on. It’s the go-to tool for transforming data, creating semantic models, and building interactive reports. This version is designed to seamlessly integrate with the Power BI Service hosted on Microsoft Fabric, enabling cloud-based sharing, collaboration, and advanced features like Direct Lake, AI-driven insights, and more. Regular updates ensure that this version includes the latest features and innovations, such as new Power Query and DAX functions, enhanced visuals, and cutting-edge integrations.
  1. Power BI Desktop RS (Report Server):
    This is a specialised version of Power BI Desktop designed to work exclusively with Power BI Report Server, a locally hosted reporting platform. It is tailored for organisations that prefer to keep their data and reports on-premises due to regulatory, security, or strategic reasons, avoiding reliance on cloud services like the Power BI Service on Microsoft Fabric. Although the two versions look nearly identical in functionality, they serve distinct purposes. Power BI Desktop RS is specifically aligned with the capabilities of Power BI Report Server, supporting features available up to the latest release cycle of the server. For instance, Power BI Desktop RS updates are less frequent; typically released every few months, in line with Power BI Report Server’s update schedule; making it slightly behind the standard version in terms of cutting-edge features. However, it ensures stability and compatibility for on-premises deployments.
Continue reading “Power BI Desktop Versions Demystified: Part 1, Power BI Desktop and Power BI Desktop RS” →
Fabric Administrator, Microsoft Fabric, On-premises Data Gateway Personal Mode, Power BI, Power BI Governance, Self-Service BI, Synapse Data Engineering, Synapse Data Science, Synapse Data Warehouse

Microsoft Fabric Connections Demystified

Managing data connections in Microsoft Fabric can be challenging if you’re unsure where to start. This blog post and its detailed YouTube video will help you find, manage, and share the existing data connections, making your workflow more efficient and streamlined. A meaningful use case for this feature is to reuse the existing connections leading to more controlled connections to the data sources. More on this later in this blog.

Understanding Data Connections in Microsoft Fabric

In Microsoft Fabric, a data connection links the platform to various data sources, whether in the cloud or on-premises. Different items in Microsoft Fabric, such as Data Factory Pipelines, Dataflows, Paginated reports, Semantic Models, KQL databases, and Mirrored Azure SQL databases (currently in preview), create these data connections.

Finding Data Connections

To find data connections in Microsoft Fabric:

  1. Click on Settings at the top right of the page.
  2. Select Manage connections and gateways.
  3. Navigate to the Connections tab.

This tab displays all the connections shared with you or created by you. From here, you can check the status of each connection, remove old connections, and manage them as needed.

Manage connections and gateways in Microsoft Fabric
Manage connections and gateways

This page used to be called Manage Gateways where we could configure and manage on-premises data gateways. I have a very old blog post explaining the gateway setup and configuration in the cloud and on your local server here. While it’s an old post, the topics are still relevant, so check it out if you are interested in the gateway configuration.

Note

As the preceding image shows, the Data page is currently in public Preview, hence, it is subject to change. It is also worthwhile to mention that not all connections are currently accessible via this page such as connections that are natively created by KQL databases within Fabric.

Check Connection Status

To check the connection status, click the status button of each connection. The result shows if the connection is online or offline.

Check connection status
Check connection status
Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric Connections Demystified” →