Lesson 3 – Getting started with Microsoft Fabric

03/12/2023

This blog helps you to start hands-on with Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric is now generally available, offering a unified platform for data integration, engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and business intelligence.

You can try Microsoft Fabric for free by signing up for the trial version. The trial gives you access to a wide range of product features and resources, allowing you to create, manage, and host various Fabric items as you explore the platform.

About Users
Microsoft Fabric now incorporates Power BI as one of its core components, allowing you to access Power BI features directly within Microsoft Fabric through your free trial account. Unlike before, where you had to go through Power BI to access Fabric, you can now create a Microsoft Fabric trial account directly from the Fabric portal.

How to start Fabric free trial?
Follow the below steps to start with free fabric trial.

  • Click start trial in the Account Manager.
  • A prompt window appears, suggesting an upgrade to the Fabric trial. Click “Start trial” within the prompt window to proceed.
  • Provide your details and click “start my free trial “to initiate a free Fabric trial.
  • After clicking “Start trial,” you’ll see a prompt confirming that your Fabric trial capacity is ready. Click on “Fabric home page” to navigate to your tenant’s home page.
  • Your homepage will resemble the figure below.
  • Reopen your Account manager. You’ll notice a new section called “Trial status.” This area shows how many days are left in your trial period. You can also see the trial status displayed in the menu bar.

Cancel free trial

You are allowed to cancel your free trial in Microsoft fabric any time from the Account Manager.

  • You have the option to cancel your trial from the Account manager., by selecting Account Manager–>Cancel trial.
  • If you choose to cancel your free Fabric (Preview) trial, all trial capacity, including its workspaces and their contents, will be deleted.
  • If you cancel your trial, you might not be able to start another one. To keep your data, continue using Microsoft Fabric, you can buy a capacity and move your workspaces there.

Navigating to your items from Microsoft fabric home

In Microsoft Fabric, the term “item” indicates apps, lakehouses, activators, warehouses, reports, and more. These items are accessible and visible within Microsoft Fabric, and the Home page is typically the best place to begin. However, after creating a new workspace, gaining access to one, or adding an item to My workspace, you may find it more convenient to start directly within a workspace. One way to navigate to a workspace is by using the navigation pane and workspace selector.

To open Home, select it from the top of your navigation pane.

On the left side, you’ll find a narrow vertical bar known as the nav pane. It organizes the actions you can take with your items, making it easier to reach your desired location quickly. At times, using the nav pane is the fastest way to access your items.

In the bottom section of the nav pane is where your active workspaces and items are listed. In this example, our active items are Trial workspace, Demo pipeline and KQL databases.

To add a button back to the nav pane, begin by selecting the ellipses (…). Then, right-click the button and choose “Pin.” If there’s limited space on the nav pane, the pinned button may replace an existing one.

Home page:

The things you create and access are displayed on the Home page. If your Home view becomes cluttered, use the global search feature to quickly locate what you’re looking for. The design and content on Fabric Home vary for each individual user.

  • The left navigation pane (nav pane) provides access to various views of your items and creator resources. You can customize it by removing buttons to match your workflow.
  • The selector allows you to switch between Fabric and Power BI. When u click on the icon then you will switch between power BI or Fabric.
  • The options for creating new items are readily available.
  • The top menu bar helps you navigate through Fabric, search for items, access help, and provide feedback to Microsoft. The Account manager button is essential for managing your account information in Fabric.
  • Learning resources are available to help you get started with Fabric and item creation.
  • When you click show less you can see your items are organized by recent workspaces, recent items, and favourites for easy access.

Workloads:

The Workload hub is a central space where you can view all the available workloads. To access it, select “Workloads” from the nav pane. Microsoft Fabric will display a list along with descriptions of the available workloads. Click on a workload to open it and explore further.

If your organization gives you access to additional workloads, your Workload hub displays additional tabs.

Microsoft Fabric offers context-sensitive help in the right rail of your browser. For instance, when we select “Browse” from the nav pane, the Help pane automatically updates to show articles related to the features of the Browse screen. This includes topics like “View your favorites” and “See content that others shared with you.” If there are community posts relevant to the current view, they will appear under “Forum topics.”

The Help pane is also a great place to search for answers to your questions. Type your question or keywords in the Search field.

Above are the essential things to understand to get started with navigating Microsoft Fabric.