How to Enable Fabric in Your Organization

In this comprehensive guide, Manuel Quintana walks through the steps of enabling Microsoft Fabric within a Power BI tenant. Microsoft Fabric brings a host of capabilities for your Power BI environment, and this post will help you set it up correctly.

Prerequisites for Enabling Microsoft Fabric

Before you can enable Microsoft Fabric, there are specific roles and permissions required. You need to ensure that you have the appropriate administrative access to modify tenant settings. Here are the roles needed:

• Power BI Administrator (soon to be renamed Fabric Administrator)
• Global Administrator – This role has all the permissions of the Power BI administrator, plus additional access to other services.
• Power Platform Administrator – This role can also provide access to the necessary settings.

If you don't have access to these roles, contact your IT team to get the required permissions.

Steps to Enable Microsoft Fabric

Follow these steps to enable Microsoft Fabric in your Power BI tenant:

1. Access the Power BI Admin Portal – You must access the Admin Portal in Power BI to make changes to tenant settings.
2. Tenant Settings – Once in the admin portal, go to the Tenant Settings section. You'll find an option to enable Microsoft Fabric for your organization.
3. Enable at Organizational or Capacity Level – You can enable Fabric at the organizational level, or for more granular control, you can enable it at a specific capacity level. Capacity is a licensing model that allows you to purchase specific resources and allocate them within your organization.

Understanding Capacity and Licensing

Microsoft Fabric uses a licensing structure called capacity, which allows your organization to purchase certain levels of resources for Fabric. The licensing system is tied to Power BI Premium, with options like the P1 SKU providing access to advanced features. You can enable Fabric within a specific capacity to control how it is used across the organization.

Microsoft Fabric also offers a per-user trial license, which is an easy way to get started with its features. However, you will need to purchase the correct capacity to continue using Fabric beyond the trial period.

Getting Started with Microsoft Fabric

Once you’ve enabled Fabric in your Power BI tenant, you’ll see the Power BI icon in the bottom left corner of your workspace. This icon allows you to access other Fabric services like:

• Data Factory
• Data Engineering
• Data Science
• Data Warehouse
• Real-time Analytics

Clicking on the icon will reveal more options, allowing you to explore the different services offered by Fabric. Once you’re in a valid workspace (either a Fabric trial workspace or one associated with a dedicated capacity), you can start creating Fabric artifacts like Data Marks, Lakehouses, and more.

Creating and Managing Workspaces

After enabling Fabric, you can create a new workspace for testing or production. When you create a new workspace, you can choose the trial mode or the dedicated capacity mode. The key difference is that dedicated capacity workspaces will support Fabric artifacts, while the trial mode will have certain limitations.

Billing and Costs

Microsoft Fabric is part of the Power BI Premium licensing system, and its cost is tied to the capacity unit (CU), which determines the performance level of your resources. The pricing is based on the region, and the cost structure includes options for both pay-as-you-go and reserved capacities. It's important to understand the different pricing models to choose the one that fits your organization’s needs.

Conclusion

Now that you understand the steps to enable Microsoft Fabric, you can start leveraging its powerful features for data management and analysis within your Power BI environment. If you need more information, look out for follow-up videos that will delve deeper into the aspects of licensing and pricing for Fabric.

For any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Stay tuned for more updates and tutorials!

Don't forget to check out the Pragmatic Works' on-demand learning platform for more insightful content and training sessions on Fabric and other Microsoft applications. Be sure to subscribe to the Pragmatic Works YouTube channel to stay up-to-date on the latest tips and tricks.