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How to Enable Fabric in Power BI

Cody Schneider•

Thinking about flipping the switch to enable Microsoft Fabric in your Power BI tenant? You came to the right place. This guide walks you through the steps to unlock Fabric's unified data analytics platform and explains what to expect once you do. We'll cover everything from prerequisites to C-level settings, ensuring you can confidently integrate your existing Power BI setup with Fabric's powerful capabilities.

What is Microsoft Fabric and Why Should You Care?

Microsoft Fabric isn't just a new feature, it's a fundamental reimagining of how data analytics and business intelligence work together. Historically, you might have one tool for data warehousing, another for data engineering (extracting and transforming data), a separate one for data science, and then Power BI for visualization and reporting. Fabric bundles all these services into a single, unified software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, making the entire process more cohesive and efficient.

Here's a breakdown of what that means for you:

  • A Single Environment: Power BI, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Synapse Analytics are all integrated. This means your data engineers, data scientists, and business analysts can all collaborate within the same environment, breaking down silos between technical and business teams.

  • OneLake Data Hub: At the heart of Fabric is "OneLake" - think of it as OneDrive for your data. It provides a single, unified storage location for all your data, automatically indexed for discovery and sharing. This eliminates the need for creating endless copies of data for different analytics engines.

  • Power BI at its Core: Power BI is not simply attached to Fabric, it's a central pillar of the experience. All other Fabric workloads, like data engineering or warehousing, create items that are instantly available in Power BI. This tight integration lets you go from raw data to visualization faster than ever before.

By enabling Fabric, you're essentially putting your Power BI reports on steroids. You get access to a full suite of enterprise-grade data tools directly within the interface you already know, empowering you to tackle more complex data projects without a dozen different subscriptions or complicated integration work.

Prerequisites for Enabling Fabric

Before you jump into the admin portal, there are a few prerequisites you need to have in place. Ensuring these are covered will make the process smooth and prevent any frustrating roadblocks.

1. Appropriate User and Capacity Licenses

On your own account (as the admin enabling the feature), you’ll need a Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license. Here's what that enables:

  • Power BI Pro: The standard per-user license required for publishing reports, creating dashboards, and sharing content with other Pro users.

  • Power BI PPU: A stepped-up per-user license that provides most Premium capacity features, like larger datasets and more frequent refreshes, without requiring the purchase of a full P-SKU capacity.

Furthermore, to actually use the non-Power BI features of Fabric (like creating a Lakehouse or a Data Factory pipeline), your organization needs either a Fabric capacity or a Fabric trial capacity. This capacity is measured in "F" SKUs (e.g., F64). You can still enable the tenant setting without a paid capacity by leveraging the Fabric free trial, which is a great way to explore the platform's capabilities.

2. Administrator Permissions

This is the most critical requirement. You can’t change tenant-wide settings without the proper permissions. To enable Fabric, you must be assigned one of the following administrator roles in your Microsoft 365 or Azure environment:

  • Global Administrator: Has ultimate control over the entire Microsoft 365 suite.

  • Power Platform Administrator: Manages all aspects of the Power Platform, including Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate.

  • Fabric Administrator: A more specific role that is granted access to all administrative features of Microsoft Fabric, including tenant settings and capacity management. This is the ideal and most direct role needed.

If you don't hold one of these roles, you'll need to contact your IT department or organization's M365 administrator to either get the necessary permissions or have them perform the following steps.

Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling Microsoft Fabric

Once you’ve confirmed you have the correct permissions and licenses, turning on Fabric is actually very straightforward. It’s managed through a single setting in the Power BI Admin portal.

Step 1: Access the Power BI Admin Portal

First, log in to the Power BI service online (app.powerbi.com). In the top-right corner of the page, click the Settings gear icon. A dropdown menu will appear. From this menu, select Admin portal.

Note: If you don't see the "Admin portal" option, your account does not have the necessary administrator permissions listed in the previous section.

Step 2: Navigate to Tenant Settings

Once you're in the Admin portal, you'll see a navigation pane on the left side of your screen. Click on Tenant settings to view all the organization-wide policies you can configure for Power BI and Fabric.

Step 3: Locate and Enable the Fabric Setting

The list of tenant settings can be quite long. Scroll down until you find the section titled "Microsoft Fabric". Here, you'll find the main switch for the platform: Users can create Fabric items.

Click the dropdown arrow to expand this section. You'll see an "Enabled/Disabled" slider. By default, this might be disabled for your tenant.

Step 4: Define Who Can Use Fabric

Once you slide the toggle to Enabled, you'll have options to control the rollout for your organization. This is a crucial step to avoid overwhelming users or accidentally granting access to everyone at once.

You have three choices:

  • The entire organization: As the name implies, this will turn on Fabric capabilities for every licensed user in your tenant. Use this option only if you are ready for a full-scale deployment.

  • Specific security groups: This is the recommended approach for a phased rollout or pilot program. You can select one or more Microsoft 365 security groups. Only members of these groups will be able to create and use Fabric items. This is perfect for a small team of data professionals or a designated "Fabric Champions" group to test things out.

  • Except for specific security groups: This option enables Fabric for everyone in the organization except for members of the security groups you specify. This is useful if you want a near-total rollout but need to restrict access for certain departments or user roles.

For your initial test, start with "Specific security groups" and a small, dedicated pilot team.

Step 5: Apply and Save Your Changes

After selecting your preferred rollout option, don’t forget to click the Apply button at the bottom of the section. Your changes are not saved until you do. Microsoft indicates it may take up to 15 minutes for the new policy to be rolled out across your entire tenant.

What Happens After You Enable Fabric?

Once the change has propagated, your users (or the pilot group you selected) will notice several exciting changes in their Power BI experience:

  • New "Persona Switcher": A new icon will appear in the bottom-left corner of the Power BI service. Clicking this icon reveals the different "personas" or experiences within Fabric, such as Power BI, Data Factory, Data Science, and Data Warehouse. This is your primary navigation method for switching between Fabric's various toolsets.

  • Upgraded Workspaces: Workspaces get an upgrade. When you create new Fabric items (like a Lakehouse) or launch a trial, your Personal Workspace and other workspaces are automatically associated with a trial Fabric capacity. You'll also see new options like "Lakehouse," "Notebook," and "Data Pipeline" when you click the "+ New" button in a workspace.

  • From Datasets to Data Items: You'll see a unified view of all your assets. Power BI datasets will appear alongside Lakehouses, SQL Endpoints, and other Fabric items, all stored cohesively in OneLake.

Your Next Steps: Exploring New Fabric Capabilities

Now that Fabric is enabled, the real fun begins. Here are a few things you and your team can try right away:

  • Start a Fabric Trial: If you don't have a paid Fabric capacity, a trial lets any user explore all the features for 60 days. This is the easiest way to get started without any financial commitment.

  • Create a Lakehouse: Follow a tutorial to create your first Lakehouse. By ingesting some sample data, you can see how OneLake centralizes storage and how the auto-generated SQL analytics endpoint and default Power BI dataset work.

  • Experiment with Direct Lake Mode: Connect a new Power BI report to your Lakehouse dataset using Direct Lake mode. This groundbreaking feature allows Power BI to directly query the data stored in OneLake without needing to import or duplicate it. You'll feel the incredible performance of this mode, bridging the gap between the speed of Import mode and the real-time nature of DirectQuery.

Final Thoughts

Enabling Microsoft Fabric in your Power BI tenant is the first step toward building a truly unified, end-to-end analytics solution. By following the simple steps in the Admin portal, you can unlock a suite of powerful tools that empower your entire team - from data engineers to business analysts - to collaborate and drive insights more effectively than ever before.

While Power BI and Fabric are incredibly powerful for large-scale enterprise data projects, sometimes you need immediate answers about your sales and marketing performance without the steep learning curve. At Graphed you can connect directly to your most critical sources, like HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Shopify, letting you create dashboards and pull reports using simple, natural language. It's like having a data analyst on your team who works in seconds, not hours.