Welcome back to Episode 3 of the Fabric Threads podcast, the show where we explore the world of Microsoft Fabric and unravel this powerful platform. We hope that tuning into these episodes (or blog posts) is helping you become a savvier, more confident Fabric user.

Without further ado, let’s dive right into four of the most exciting announcements from the Microsoft Fabric June 2024 update.

FabCon Europe

It feels like we’re throwing it back to the very first episode of Fabric Threads where we were fresh off of FabCon in Las Vegas.

Well, now we have some great news for all of our European Fabric users out there: FabCon is coming to Stockholm Sweden September 25-27!

FabCon Europe is a learning event that’s specifically hosted for Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQL, and AI enthusiasts. Attendees get access to a combination of speaker sessions, networking opportunities, and hands-on workshops. There will also be tons of Fabric partner booths there so that attendees can meet with the partners and make some great connections.

If it’s anything like FabCon Vegas, this definitely isn’t your basic tech event. It’s such a great, interactive opportunity for anyone who has their hands in Fabric development, whether they’re data engineers, data analysts, or even end users.

And the whole Collectiv team will be at FabCon Europe, so make sure to say hi if you see us!

Visual Calculations Update

This month, Microsoft announced an improvement to a Power BI feature called visual calculations. Before this feature existed, you had to create complex DAX measures that you used inside of your visualizations to get the end result you wanted.

What visual calculations make possible is building dynamic calculations directly inside of your visualization instead of developing those DAX measures. This creates a really dynamic interface where you can reference other calculations within those visuals.

Although visualizations have been announced over the last six months, the June Microsoft Fabric update covered additional visualization capabilities. Now, you can use visual calculations inside of all of your scatter plots in maps.

This is a really big update, and I’m crossing my fingers that Microsoft expands this capability to every out-of-the-box visual. As of now, it’s available in tables, matrices, charts, scatter plots, and maps.

Download Large Semantic Models

Up until now, users haven’t been able to download large semantic models within Power BI. But this update finally gives everyone this critical capability.

Organizations that have a lot of very large Power BI files with a lot of data flowing into Power BI can now turn on the large dataset format feature. This lets you host all of that data within your Power BI environment. Teams will have more efficient data processes as well as a lot more flexibility to do things offline.

Previously, you had to live connect to that model to be able to modify it and build additional reports on top of it. But now that you can download the model to the Power BI .pbix file, you can actually author on top of your really large datasets (we’re talking gigabytes of file sizes) directly within the Power BI desktop.

This update is pointed toward larger organizations that have a lot of data flowing into their Power BI interface and work with large semantic models.

Of course, there are still file size limits. If you have a truly exponentially large Power BI file, you may not be able to download it with this feature, or it may just take a very long time. So, we don’t live in a perfect world, but this is still a huge improvement that will fit the needs of most organizations.

Copilot for Fabric Warehouses

I saved the best for last, so I’m ready to talk about my favorite Fabric update of this episode. Microsoft Copilot is now available for Fabric Warehouses!

Copilot within Microsoft Fabric is an AI tool that leverages large language models to help you ask questions about your data and pull out insights automatically.

Previously, Copilot was only available in Power BI—you could use it to ask questions about your semantic models, generate reports, and use the Q&A feature. Although this was extremely useful, this update fully integrates the power of Copilot into the Fabric environment.

Now that Copilot is available in Fabric warehouses, users can use it to write large language model prompts directly on their warehouses without needing to interact through SQL or Power BI semantic modeling. This is a huge leap forward for data engineers since it essentially gives them a built-in brainstorming buddy when they’re working with their data.

Fabric warehouses are crucial for storing enterprise data, and with this new feature, even users unfamiliar with SQL can interact with and extract insights from their data. While advanced users may still prefer traditional methods, the ability for end users to discover insights independently is a big step towards making data more accessible.

As with all other AI tools, you need to put good in to get good out. The effectiveness of Copilot’s responses depends heavily on the quality of your prompts. Asking the right questions is key to leveraging this to its full potential.

Collectiv’s Real-World Fabric Expertise Recognized by Microsoft

Recently, Collectiv was awarded the prestigious designation of a Fabric Featured Partner. Microsoft created this elite-level status to highlight consulting firms with proven, real-world implementation client success.

As one of the select few partners worldwide, this exclusive recognition from Microsoft reflects our team’s commitment to excellence and positions us as a leader in Microsoft Fabric consulting firms.

We’ve proven ourselves through real-world experience and a rigorous certification process that demonstrates our deep understanding and commitment to mastering the platform. If you’re looking for a trusted partner to help nail your Fabric implementation, Collectiv is ready to help you succeed.