🏭🎗️🗒️Microsoft Fabric: Activator [Notes]

Disclaimer: This is work in progress intended to consolidate information from various sources for learning purposes. For the latest information please consult the documentation (see the links below)! 

Last updated: 12-Mar-2025

Microsoft Fabric Activator [1]

[Microsoft Fabric] Activator

• [def] no-code experience for automatically taking actions when patterns or conditions are detected in changing data [1]
• monitors data in Power BI reports and eventstreams
• when the data hits certain thresholds or matches other patterns [1]
• it automatically takes appropriate action 
• e.g. alerting users, kicking off Power Automate workflows [1]
• [eventstream] takes actions on patterns or conditions that are detected in eventstream data [2]
• allows building a digital nervous system that acts across all the data estate, at scale, and in a timely manner [1]
• business users can describe business conditions in a no-code experience to launch actions and call into third party action systems [1]
• actions
• e.g. email, Teams notifications, Power Automate flows,
• business users can self-serve their needs and reduce their reliance on internal IT and developer teams [1]
• ⇒ no developers needed to manage and maintain custom in-house monitoring or alerting solutions [1]
• {concept} activator 
• the entity created by using Activator [2]
•  holds all the information necessary to connect to data, monitor for conditions, and act [2] 
• typically created for each business process or area monitored [2]
• {concept} event 
• an observation about the state of an object
• some identifier for the object itself
• a timestamp
• the values for fields monitored
• [Power BI] data observed from Power BI is treated as an eventstream [1]
• events are observations made of the data on a regular schedule that typically matches the refresh frequency of the semantic model [1]
• {concept} eventstream
• an instance of the Eventstream item in Fabric
• lets users bring real-time events into Fabric, transform them, and then route them to various destinations without writing any code (no-code) [2]
• {concept} objects
• the business objects that are monitored
• can be physical objects or less tangible concepts 
• the object is modeled by 
• connecting one or more eventstreams
• choosing a column for the object ID
• specifying the fields intended to make properties of the object
• created from streaming data
• identified by unique columns in one or more stream
• {concept} rules
• define the conditions to detect on objects, and the actions to take when those conditions are met [1]
• rules built on attributes are used to monitor how an attribute on an object ID changes over time [2]
• some limits are defined in terms of the number of distinct object IDs being tracked by Activator within the lookback period. 
• ⇐ Activator tracks active object IDs [2]
• an active object ID is an object where events are arriving within the stored period [2]
• {type} rules on events
• allows to get an activation for every event that comes in on an eventstream
• can track the state of something over time
• {type} rules on events that are added to an object
• one picks specific columns and the unique column to bundle into an object, and create rules that monitor events and report on either the arrival of that object, or the arrival of an object that meets a defined condition
• the rule activates every time a new event comes in on the eventstream object
• ⇐onecan identify which instance it came in for
• {type} rules on an object's properties
• allows to monitor a property on objects over time
• {concept} properties
• useful when reusing logic across multiple activators [1]
• {concept} lookback period
• the amount of historical data to be queried [2]
•  ⇐ Activator needs to track historical data to ensure that correct actions can be computed [2]
• depends on how a rule is defined and the data volume (events per second) of the data that is needed to evaluate the rule [2]

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References:

[1] Microsoft Learn (2024) Fabric: What is Activator? [link] 

[2] Microsoft Learn (2024) Fabric: Activator basic concepts [link] 

[3] Microsoft Learn (2025) Fabric: Real Time Intelligence L200 Pitch Deck [link]

Resources:

[R1] Microsoft Learn (2024) Microsoft Fabric exercises [link]
[R2] Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog (2024) Enhance fraud detection with Activator in Microsoft Fabric [link]

Acronyms:

KQL  - Kusto Query Language

MF - Microsoft Fabric

RT - Real-Time