Maximize Data Activator Potential in Microsoft Fabric

In this YouTube video, the author, Guy in a Cube, invites you to discover the potential of the Data Activator in a powerful tool, similar to Microsoft Fabric. Featured by Will Thompson, this tool offers benefits and features that are helpful whether you are a proficient Power BI user or a beginner.

• Using Data Activator, retailers can smoothly launch ad campaigns when sales decline. Hence, recovering from a dip in sales becomes easier and quicker.


• Data Activator takes proactive action by alerting store managers to move food from failing freezers, helping to prevent food wastage.


• Logistics companies can effortlessly find lost shipments by setting up an investigation workflow when there is no update about a package for an unexpected duration.

The Data Activator is currently in the preview stage in the tools identical to Microsoft Fabric. It is a no-code platform that automatically takes actions in response to detected patterns or conditions in evolving data. Power BI reports and Eventstreams items can be monitored for certain thresholds or pattern matches, which then trigger appropriate reactions.

The Data Activator lets businesses create a digital nervous system that reacts promptly and at scale to all their data. Business users can use this no-code experience to deploy actions like email alerts, teams notifications, and Power Automate flows without relying on internal IT or developer teams. This reduces costs and boosts agility. With the Data Activator, organizations don't require a custom in-house team for monitoring or alerting.

Common use cases include running ads when store sales decline, notifying store managers to relocate food in failing freezers, tracking customers' experiences through various platforms, and helping logistics companies locate lost shipments. It can also alert account teams when customers fall behind in payments and track data pipeline quality, rerunning jobs or alerting when pipelines fail.

Core Concepts in Data Activator

In the Data Activator, data sources are viewed as streams of events. These events are observations about an object's state, with identifiers for the object, a timestamp, and the values for fields being monitored. An event stream's frequency can range from several times per second for IoT sensors to more sporadic streams, like packages entering and leaving shipping locations.

Objects that you want to monitor could be physical items like vehicles or packages, or intangible concepts like advertising campaigns or user sessions. In your reflex item, you can model the object by connecting one or more event streams, choosing a column for the object ID, and designating the fields you want to make into object properties.

Triggers in the Data Activator are defined by the conditions you want to detect in your objects and the actions you want to take when those conditions are met. Triggers always activate for a specific object instance. For example, a trigger on a Freezer object might detect the freezer's temperature rising too high and send an email to the relevant technician.

Properties are helpful when you want to reuse logic across numerous triggers. For instance, a property on a Freezer object might average out the temperature readings over an hour period. You could then use this calculated value in multiple triggers.

With the Data Activator, you can get data from Power BI or Eventstreams, assign this data to your objects, and create triggers in design mode. This relatively new tool associated with Microsoft Fabric fosters businesses growth and optimization by managing data intelligently.