As a Power BI user, I am always interested in how to use the latest and greatest tools from Fabric along with Power BI. One of those new tools is Data Activator. While Power BI already has the ability to send alerts or subscriptions the new capability of Data Activator in Fabric could be a game changer. One of the nice features of this tool is that it is low code/no code method.
Data Activator is a part of Real-Time Intelligence and acts as a method to generate automatic alerts and actions from your Fabric data. Even though Data Activator is considered a part of “real-time” (aka “in-motion”) data, you can use Data Activator for slower moving data as well.
At a high level, you use Data Activator to connect to your data (including Power BI Datasets if desired) then you set it to detect conditions and trigger actions from your data. This is a great diagram of the process provided by Microsoft:
It is important to note that for Data Activator to work with Power BI the report must be using live data, and the report is published to a workspace in the Power BI Service.
You may be used to setting up an alert in a Power BI dashboard but using Data Activator allows you to set up an alert in the report itself. This functionality is set up in the Service and not in the Desktop.
The first step is to select the ellipses on the visual that has the information that you will be using for the Data Activator. You start out by using the “Set Alert” option.
And then you set the alert. Note that in my case I am asking for an alert when the Growth Rate by Manufacturer in my data goes over 5% and notice that I am asking for the data to be sent to me in Teams.
After creating the alert, there is an option to use the Data Activator.
After opening in Data Activator, I get the options to add more filters, modify the message being sent to Teams and some other editing options. This article is about the general process so I won’t delve into all of the options at this time.
Since I did turn this on, and the criteria was met, I did get the notice in Teams. Note , I get the notice for EVERY individual stream. In my example, I had four streams of data and three of them met the criteria. That is why I have three separate messages.
With Data Activator, there are many other options for how to send information, including using Power Automate. But, this is one example of using Power BI without any coding or special expertise and getting the notice in Teams.