Fabric Weekly

Issue 9

1st September 2026

👋 Welcome to issue #9 of Fabric Weekly!

This week, on the official side:

From the community:

And, some events over the next couple of weeks:

  • Wednesday 2 September, Birmingham - #PBIBRUM host Vlad Mihanta on Power BI Embedded, and Neil Rowlands on building a Power BI training programme.
  • Tuesday 8 September, online - Devon & Cornwall Power BI on MCPs, Skills and Plugins - what these building blocks are and why they matter.
  • Tuesday 15 September, online - Devon & Cornwall Power BI - Kane Snyder demos Semanticus, a VS Code workbench for building, testing and shipping semantic models.

🤖 Copilot, AI & Agents

📊 Reporting & Insights

  • Bring Fabric Maps into Real-Time Dashboards (Preview) by Naor Biton · 3 min read The new integration allows embedding a Fabric Map directly into Real-Time Dashboards, offering geospatial context with unified map logic, layers, and styling for easy updates.
  • Real-Time Dashboards - Live Visualization by Matthias Falland Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Dashboards provide 10-second refresh intervals and Activator alerts, offering a faster alternative to Power BI for streaming data visualization.
  • Referencing Images And Other Files In Power BI Reports Using OneLake URLs by Chris Webb · 3 min read Power BI now allows referencing images and other files directly from OneLake URLs, enabling secure storage alongside data without slowing refreshes or increasing model size.
  • Reacting to Business Events with Activator and Eventhouse by Roberto Cervantes · 1 min read Fifth in an eight-part Fabric Business Events series: use Activator for immediate action (alerts, flows, pipelines), Eventhouse for durable queryable analysis (KQL, dashboards, trends), and both together (fanout) when an event needs immediate response plus historical context.
  • A Power BI Tenant From 10 Years Ago? A Complete Mess by Aleksi Partanen Vesa Tikkanen reveals that legacy Power BI tenants are often chaotic, advocating for enhanced governance tools to better manage large-scale environments.
  • SQLBI Whiteboard by SQLBI · 1 min read SQLBI Whiteboard provides a free Windows 11 whiteboard with pen-first ink support, live app capture, and syntax-highlighted DAX and SQL snippets for teaching data modeling without cloud integration or collaboration.
  • No-Code Power BI Report Authoring — GitHub Copilot + Fabric Skills + Power BI Desktop Bridge by Reza Rad · 10 min read AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, Fabric’s Report Authoring Skills, and the Power BI Desktop Bridge allow users to create full Power BI reports with minimal coding.
  • How Much Does Direct Lake Cost in Microsoft Fabric? by Vojtěch Šíma · 1 min read Direct Lake in Microsoft Fabric shows lower costs than Import due to its refresh mechanism, though DAX queries incur higher expenses and add overhead to the Lakehouse architecture.
  • Testing DAX measures by using AI by Marco Russo · 1 min read AI helps pinpoint essential test cases in Power BI’s DAX measures, enabling the creation of consistent and automated testing workflows.

⚙️ Data Engineering

  • Common dbt job patterns in Microsoft Fabric (Preview) by Megha Sony · 2 min read The guide describes four dbt job patterns for structuring data pipelines in Microsoft Fabric focusing on warehouse-only, lakehouse landing with transformation, lakehouse refinement with serving, and lakehouse-only architectures while stressing to keep orchestration decisions apart from architecture.
  • From factory floor to Fabric: Securely stream private data with Eventstream by Vaibhav Shrivastava · 4 min read Eventstream securely streams real-time data from private sources such as factory MQTT brokers and Azure virtual networks, enabling data teams to process operational information without exposing public endpoints while preserving network administrator control.
  • Five Business Event scenarios and the pattern they share by Roberto Cervantes · 1 min read The article reveals a common architectural pattern underlying five distinct business event scenarios in Microsoft Fabric, enabling seamless transformation of key business moments into actionable insights.
  • Microsoft Fabric Just Got Another HUGE Update by Aleksi Partanen Microsoft Fabric received a major update with native Spark 4.1, Delta Lake 4.2, enhanced Git integration, advanced DAX generation, GPT-5.1 powered data agents, improved query usability, and expanded OneLake security features for SQL analytics.
  • Fabric August 2026 Feature Summary by Katie Murray · 35 min read Fabric August 2026 launches governance improvements, platform performance upgrades, and advanced AI visualizations to enhance workflow efficiency and expand real-time analytics and security capabilities.
  • Dynamically changing the Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse SQL Pools for cost and performance by Gilbert Quevauvilliers · 1 min read This article shows how to dynamically adjust SQL Pool configuration in Fabric Data Warehouse to optimize cost and performance based on expected query load.
  • IDENTITY columns support for Identity Insert (Generally Available) by Peri Rocha · 2 min read IDENTITY_INSERT and reseed support for IDENTITY columns in Fabric Data Warehouse are now generally available, enabling explicit value insertion and more reliable migrations and backfills.
  • "It's an Oracle. What Else Do You Need to Know?" by Aleksi Partanen Fabric Eventstreams gained an Oracle CDC connector, but the panel notes the announcement doesn't clarify licensing — a real concern given Oracle's typically costly licensing terms.
  • Materialized Lake Views in Production? 1 of 4. And It Wasn't His Idea by Aleksi Partanen Vesa Tikkanen reveals he's the only panelist using materialized lake views in production, despite not initiating the idea, highlighting their practical benefits over traditional Delta tables.

🏛️ Storage & Platform

  • Fabric Migration Assistant for SQL database (Generally Available) by Subhojit Basak · 3 min read The Fabric Migration Assistant for SQL databases is now generally available, offering a comprehensive workflow that validates schema incompatibilities, provides AI-assisted fixes, and ensures secure, seamless data transfer to Azure's serverless SQL database.
  • Users Can't View Direct Lake Reports? Here's the Fix. by Alex Ward The video shows that unresolved report access issues in Microsoft Fabric usually result from missing data source permissions and explains how to adjust OneLake security settings to fix the "Something's wrong with one or more filters" error.

🔐 Governance & Security

💰 Management & Cost

  • New CI/CD resources for Microsoft Fabric: from concepts to end-to-end automation by Nimrod Shalit · 4 min read The new Microsoft Fabric CI/CD resources offer comprehensive guidance from basics to advanced automation tools, with tutorials for automating full workflows, local deployments, Azure DevOps pipelines, and Git-driven bulk imports, aiding teams in confidently implementing continuous integration and deployment across development, testing, and production environments.
  • On-premises data gateway August 2026 release by Goutham Upadhyaya · 2 min read The August 2026 on-premises data gateway version 3000.330 improves manageability, security, and compatibility with the latest Power BI Desktop for reliable connectivity to Azure Fabric services.

📅 Community & Events

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