By: Thenmozhi Sampath, Head of Azure Center of Excellence, Data & Analytics

Introduction

In today’s world, making decisions backed by data is key to thriving in business. Whether it’s adapting to market changes or planning for the future, data-driven insights pave the way for success. Recognizing this, companies worldwide are prioritizing access to data and analytics. However, many still struggle to leverage this access effectively. Enter Microsoft Fabric, a powerful cloud-based analytics platform designed to streamline this process and empower businesses with actionable intelligence.

Microsoft Fabric assists organizations in making decisions that propel their businesses with the right analytical tools, helping users monitor and analyze data effectively. Moreover, it offers a unified workspace where business users and data experts can generate seamless reports and work together to create data solutions. This blog will acquaint you with Microsoft Fabric’s breakthrough potential and its benefits in data-driven decision-making.

Streamlining business complexities with Fabric

Why is democratizing data so important to businesses? Dresner Advisory Services reports that 73% of companies agree that data democratization has improved their decision-making capabilities. About 69% of users said that data accessibility has improved organizational agility. The fundamental goal of data democratization is to address the data-related issues in business operations, such as implementing tools, managing change, drawing insights, and training the workforce.

Additionally, there are other data challenges that businesses face, such as:

• Lack of access to necessary data
• Unreliability of data
• Access to data but insufficient knowledge to identify errors
• Incompatibility of analytical tools provided by the company
• No assistance from data experts

Microsoft Fabric aims to integrate platforms and applications where users interact with information and can access and consume the data easily. The technology can also combine information from data lakes, warehouses, and legacy systems to provide a comprehensive, secure, and accurate picture of business performance. Let us dive deeper into the more innovative and business-friendly features of  Microsoft fabric that bridge the gap between data access and analysis.

Features of Microsoft Fabric

1. Dataflow Gen2

Dataflow Gen2 empowers business users with a low-code/no-code UI that has drag-and-drop elements to perform quick data transformations and ad hoc analysis. It abstracts the traditional ETL and ELT complexities associated with typical data transformations. These include managing orchestration logic, configuring compute and data providers to work together, and handling all the branches and exceptions. This dataflow provides a simple Power Query experience that business users are accustomed to in Power BI. It helps users expedite their ad hoc analysis with the required data.

2. Inbuilt data discovery and trust

When users log into the Fabric portal, one of the screens they view is the OneLake data hub. This central repository gives users a bird’s eye view of all the artifacts they have created or accessed. Users can also view the endorsement and sensitivity status of these artifacts. Business teams can use this endorsed content as the single source of truth and create subsequent reports or other artifacts based on it. By providing access to trusted and endorsed data sources, business users can focus on insights rather than worrying about the source or validity of the data. This feature within the Microsoft Fabric environment updates the tags and artifacts automatically. Users can discover, ingest, analyze, and get insights in the same environment.

3. Copilot for Power BI

The revamped Microsoft Power BI incorporates Copilot, which allows users to harness the power of AI. It lets them ask questions about their data in conversational language, generate and update DAX calculations, and customize reports in a matter of seconds. Additionally, it can provide insights into existing reports with easy-to-understand text summaries that further enhance the impact of business users. Additionally, it assists business users with:

Report generation

Users can now use natural language queries to define the insights and visualizations they want to include in their reports using Copilot. They can save time and effort by specifying their needs to Copilot, which builds the relevant visuals. The reports that Copilot creates serve as a starting point. Users can then modify them to make the exact report/visualization they need.

Narrating Reports

Copilot also helps to create a visual that generates a text summary of the data visualized in the report canvas. It is a personal assistant that allows users to understand the report by summarizing the result and highlighting interesting insights.

Data Exploration

Microsoft also plans to bring forth conversational analytics capabilities that enable users to explore their data with questions in the form of natural language queries. Copilot examines the data model and produces relevant visualizations and insights in response to these inquiries.

4. Data activator

Earlier, users were required to monitor key metrics to detect any breaches in thresholds constantly. Watching real-time data feeds necessitates immediate actions, which would result in either threshold breaches or users spending time observing metrics rather than attending to day-to-day activities. Microsoft’s low-code/no-code experience addresses this issue by simplifying the process of establishing triggers and alerts. It continuously monitors the KPIs/Metrics in Power BI reports and event streams and triggers alerts when the data reaches specific thresholds or fits other patterns. After that, it initiates Power Automate tasks or sends out suitable alerts to users automatically. This empowers users to create alerts on important metrics and helps them ensure that corresponding actions will be taken automatically when these thresholds are hit.

5. Integration with Office 365

Fabric enables users to drive agility, eases data-driven decisions, and extends natively into Office 365. Users can now use Power BI reports and datasets directly across Office 365 apps like Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, etc. This not only makes it easy to use but also makes collaborating and sharing ideas easier. The security and trust of Fabric-endorsed data extends itself downstream into all applications that use the tagged data. Users need not worry about security and access violations even when using the data and reports in their apps.  If business users are unfamiliar with any data transformation experiences within Fabric, they can analyze the data directly through Excel. This native integration of apps with data sources is a game changer for business users.

Key takeaways

The importance of data-driven decision-making is well-known to organizations across the globe. With the experience and solutions it provides, Fabric has emerged as a market disruptor. It has increased the end users’ agility and bridged the gap between their knowledge and skills through innovative technology and AI. Businesses can now leverage a future-ready and user-friendly data estate to drive decision-making, minimize risks, and maximize results. According to research presented by Gartner, by 2023, over 80% of data and analytics strategies and management programs will formally include data literacy as an essential and explicit driver of business value. Microsoft Fabric is a forerunner in driving this change. It will empower business users with the tools and technologies to leverage vast data within organizations.

A future where businesses can effectively harness the power of data to drive innovation and facilitate agile decision-making is what Microsoft Fabric promises to deliver. It seeks to build an inclusive analytics environment by addressing common problems that analysts and business users encounter while working with data.

References

Introduction to Microsoft Fabric and Business Central, Microsoft, October 11, 2023: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/admin-fabric

Security in Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft, January 31, 2024: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/security/security-overview

Understand Dataflows Gen2 in Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/use-dataflow-gen-2-fabric/2-dataflows-gen-2

Sensitivity label support in Microsoft Fabric and Power BI enables end-to-end information protection, Anna Chiand, Microsoft, July 18, 2023:  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/sensitivity-label-support-in-microsoft-fabric-and-power-bi/ba-p/3874178

Apply sensitivity labels to Fabric items, Microsoft, January 22, 2024: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/get-started/apply-sensitivity-labels

Introducing Microsoft Fabric and Copilot in Microsoft Power BI, Kim Manis, Microsoft Power BI Blog, May 23, 2023: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-ie/blog/introducing-microsoft-fabric-and-copilot-in-microsoft-power-bi/

What is Data Activation?, Microsoft, November 16, 2023: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-activator/data-activator-introduction

Microsoft 365 Data + Microsoft Fabric better together, Philip Li, Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog, May 23, 2023: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-US/blog/microsoft-365-data-microsoft-fabric-better-together/

The Future of Data Democratization is Here. Investors Are Poised to Benefit, Kate DuBois, Nasdaq, August 25, 2021: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-future-of-data-democratization-is-here.-investors-are-poised-to-benefit-2021-08-25

Microsoft Fabric 101: A Comprehensive Overview of Microsoft’s New Data Platform, Atlan, December 20, 2023: https://atlan.com/microsoft-fabric/

Data democratization: How data architecture can drive business decisions and AI initiatives, IBM Data and AI Team, August 4, 2023: https://www.ibm.com/blog/data-democratization-how-data-architecture-can-drive-business-decisions-and-ai-initiatives/

Data Democratization: Transforming Decision-Making in the Digital Age, Trantorindia, Trantorinc, October 26, 2023: https://www.trantorinc.com/blog/data-democratization