Announcing the Data Activator public preview
We are thrilled to announce that Data Activator is now in public preview and is enabled for all existing Microsoft Fabric users. If you have not already signed up for Fabric, then your administrator can enable Data Activator by signing up for the Fabric trial, then enabling “Data Activator (preview)” in your Fabric settings:
Figure 1: Enabling Data Activator for your organization
What is Data Activator?
Data Activator is the Fabric experience that lets you drive automatic alerts and actions from your Fabric data. With Data Activator, you can eliminate the need for constant manual monitoring of operational dashboards. Anyone in your organization can use Data Activator because it utilises a simple visual interface that requires no technical knowledge. You can create Data Activator alerts straight from your Power BI reports, so your business users can access it from within the reports that they are using today.
Figure 2: Creating a Data Activator alert from within a Power BI report
How can I use Data Activator in my organization?
You can use Data Activator whenever you need to monitor a set of business objects to check for conditions being met on those objects. This spans a wide range of applications, such as:
- Monitoring invoices that you have issued to check whether they are overdue, so that you can issue reminders to your customers.
- Checking shipments that you have made to your customers, to check whether they are running late, so that you can take proactive action.
- Measuring tire pressure in a fleet of vehicles using IoT sensors, to see whether the tires need inflation.
Data Activator can trigger alerts and actions automatically when these conditions are met, so that you and your team members can stop spending time monitoring for these conditions manually.
How does Data Activator work?
Data Activator:
- Monitors your Fabric data. Data Activator can monitor your Power BI report visuals, plus real-time data in Fabric Eventstreams.
- Detects actionable conditions that you define with a visual trigger designer. You can detect anything from simple threshold conditions to complex patterns over time, without writing code.
- Acts automatically when a trigger condition is met. Data activator can send alerts via email and Microsoft Teams. It can also trigger Power Automate flows, so that you can send alerts through 3rd party systems, log tickets, call your line-of-business applications, and more.
Figure 3: Data Activator’s no-code trigger designer
What has changed since we announced Data Activator in May?
In May, we announced the private preview of Data Activator. Thanks to feedback from our private preview customers, we have since streamlined the user experience, introducing a brand new and simpler trigger designer. You can now monitor a wider range of Power BI visuals, and we have also enhanced our integration with Microsoft Teams and Power Automate. We are delighted that we can now make Data Activator available to all Fabric customers along with these improvements.
How do I get started with Data Activator?
Once your tenant admin has enabled Data Activator (see introduction), Data Activator is ready to go, and you can select it from the experience menu in your Fabric homepage. Check out these links to learn more about how to get started with Data Activator:
