At the recent Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced significant updates to its unified data analytics platform – Fabric. These updates focus on empowering organizations with AI capabilities, strengthening data security and governance, and delivering a more robust platform. Some of the Key announcements are:
1. Expanded Access to Copilot – Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot is now available for all Fabric SKUs.
2. Copilot Integration – Copilot is now integrated with Purview in Fabric and OneLake Catalog.
4. Code Migration Assistant – AI powered tool to migrate different warehouses into Fabric
5. OneLake Security – Centralized Security for your data in OneLake
Copilot Updates
Microsoft announced significant expansions to its flagship AI assistant Copilot, demonstrating a commitment to democratizing artificial intelligence and empowering users at every level. By broadening access to Copilot in its unified data platform Fabric, organizations of all sizes can now leverage an intelligent agent to accelerate insights, streamline workflows and boost productivity across all business functions.
Fabric Copilot available in all SKUs
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In a major expansion, Microsoft’s natural language AI assistant Copilot is now accessible with every Fabric subscription. Previously limited to the highest tier, broadening Copilot access opens its capabilities to more organizations of all sizes. This moves aims to democratize AI by empowering data analysts, developers and business users alike with Copilot’s problem-solving abilities.
Immersive Copilot Experience in Power BI
A preview of an enhanced conversational interface promises to deliver a more intuitive experience exploring and analyzing data in Power BI using Copilot. By embedding AI-assisted Q&A directly into reports and dashboards, users will be able to easily uncover insights simply through natural dialog. This chat-focused workflow aims to simplify analytics for users of all skill levels.
Copilot OneLake Catalog Integration
Microsoft is enhancing data discovery and exploration with the introduction of Copilot capabilities to OneLake catalog in Microsoft Fabric. As part of Fabric preview announcements at the recent Fabric Community Conference, Microsoft revealed new AI-powered insights for the Explore tab of OneLake catalog.
What is OneLake Catalog?
OneLake Catalog is a centralized repository in Microsoft Fabric that helps users discover, explore, and govern their data assets.
The OneLake Catalog features two main tabs:
- Explore Tab: Displays a list of all available data items stored in OneLake, allowing users to browse, search, and filter with ease. Contextual details for each item are shown without disrupting the overall view.
- Govern Tab: Offers governance insights into your OneLake data, analyzing its governance posture and suggesting recommended actions to improve status.
Key benefits
- Enhanced Data Understanding: Users will receive curated descriptions and summaries of their data sources, making it easier to understand the structure and relevance of data.
- Improved Data Navigation: The Copilot experience aids in exploring and navigating data sources effectively, streamlining the process of data discovery.
- Seamless Data Exploration: Users can now access the OneLake catalog directly from Excel, eliminating the need to switch between platforms.
- Unified Data Access: This integration complements the existing Microsoft Teams integration, providing a cohesive and comprehensive data access experience across commonly used Microsoft applications.
Purview Copilot Integration
Microsoft has announced the preview of Purview integration with Copilot in Fabric, starting with Power BI. This integration is aimed at enhancing data governance and auditing capabilities, ensuring a more secure and compliant environment for AI-assisted operations.
Why integrate Purview with Fabric
- Enhanced Data Governance – The integration allows users to detect sensitive data in prompts and responses, ensuring comprehensive data governance.
- Security Recommendation – Copilot provides security recommendations to help protect sensitive data and mitigate potential risks.
- Risk Investigation – Leverage Insider Risk Management to monitor, investigate, and address potential risks associated with AI usage.
- Compliance Assurance – Ensure compliance with Purview’s audit, eDiscovery, retention policies, and non-compliant usage detection, enhancing overall data security and regulatory adherence.
New AI Powered Features
Microsoft announced new AI-focused capabilities for its unified data analytics platform, Fabric. These updates aim to unlock richer insights and streamline data workflows through expanded intelligent assistance and conversational tools.
Code Migration Assistant
Migrating data warehouses can be a complex and time-consuming process, often involving significant manual effort to convert schemas, rewrite code, and ensure data integrity. To simplify and accelerate this process, Microsoft has introduced the preview of the Code Migration Assistant. This innovative tool is designed to streamline the migration of SQL Server, Synapse dedicated SQL pools, and other data warehouses to the Fabric Data Warehouse, making modernization efforts more efficient and less error-prone.
Why should you use this?
1. Automated Schema and Code Conversion: Converts source database schemas and code to the Fabric Data Warehouse format automatically, reducing manual effort and minimizing errors.
2. Data Migration Assistance: Facilitates the transfer of data from the source database to the Fabric Data Warehouse, ensuring data integrity and consistency.
3. AI-Powered Assistance: Utilizes AI to provide recommendations and optimizations during the migration process, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.
4. Support for Multiple Data Warehouses: Designed to support migrations from SQL Server, Synapse dedicated SQL pools, and other data warehouses, offering flexibility and versatility for various migration needs.
Fabric Data Agent
The introduction of a centralized Fabric Data Agent promises to deliver a more streamlined conversational experience when working with Fabric’s AI tools. By acting as a single point of integration and management for services like Copilot, the new Agent aims to simplify how users discover insights through natural language interactions. This unified approach could help large enterprises avoid disjointed questioning and response workflows across different apps and services. A sales organization, for example, may be able to train Copilot once on product datasets and terminology, and then seamlessly retrieve recommendations or answers from the AI in platforms like Power BI, Excel or CRM systems.
Security Updates
Protecting sensitive information as it moves across platforms and applications can be a daunting task. Companies often struggle to maintain robust security when data is dispersed, resulting in either excessive restrictions or accidental exposure. This is where OneLake Security makes a difference—a groundbreaking solution designed to tackle these challenges head-on.
What is OneLake Security?
OneLake brings all your data together in one place, like a big filing cabinet, making it easier to keep everything secure. OneLake ensures that all your data stays organized, no matter how or where it’s accessed.
Real-world example
Consider a retail company that has migrated its data warehouse to Microsoft Fabric from an on-premises solution. The marketing department uses Power BI reports to analyze campaign performance, while the data science team loads models into an Azure Synapse workspace for advanced analytics. Both teams need access to transactional records, including customer PII. However, for GDPR compliance, the marketing team should only see aggregated metrics, while data scientists need access to individual records for model training.
Why choose OneLake Security
- Simplified Security Management – Define access permissions once, and Fabric enforces them consistently across all analytics engines.
- Granular Permissions – Control access at both the row and column levels, protecting sensitive information, such as PII.
- Consistent Data Access – Security configurations propagate automatically, ensuring users only see authorized data across platforms.
- Scalability and Efficiency – OneLake security scales with your organization, offering secure and efficient data access.
- Enhanced Data Governance – Centralized controls through Fabric simplify governance workflows and enforce strict “need to know” access.
Get early access now
OneLake Security is set to enter preview soon, but you can gain early access by joining the Insider Ring early adopter program. Sign up to stay ahead in data protection and governance with OneLake Security.
Conclusion
With constant innovation, Microsoft Fabric is fulfilling its promise as a comprehensive, AI-powered platform. By unifying, strengthening and democratizing analytics capabilities, Fabric empowers organizations everywhere to maximize their data potential.
By centralizing security with OneLake, accelerating code migrations with AI-assisted tools, and unifying data models, Microsoft is setting the stage for smarter, more efficient business operations. For organizations aspiring to lead in a data-driven world, adopting these innovative Microsoft Fabric capabilities is essential. The question isn’t whether to adopt these changes, but how quickly you can integrate them to stay competitive.
To learn more about how AVASOFT can help you harness these new features in Microsoft Fabric, please contact us to schedule a meeting.
