Data Activator: The best solution for data monitoring
In the digital era, where information is generated at an unprecedented speed, the real challenge is not collecting data, but knowing how to use it correctly and at the right time.
The difference between success and failure lies in the ability to detect opportunities and risks in real time, and this is where Fabric’s Data Activator comes in. This tool allows companies to anticipate, optimize processes, and make smarter decisions without manual intervention. We tell you all its secrets!
What is Data Activator?
Data Activator is a low-code experience built into Fabric that automatically performs actions when patterns or conditions are detected in changing data. It monitors data in Power BI reports and event streams to see when data reaches certain thresholds or matches other patterns.
This service enables customers to create a digital system that acts on all data, at scale and on time. They can use Data Activator to initiate email actions, Teams notifications, Power Automate flows, or third-party actions. Thus, they can meet their needs and reduce their dependence on internal IT and developer teams.
Data Activator Benefits
Data Activator in Fabric offers a wide range of options and benefits. Some of the main ones are:
- Automated monitoring: Allows automatic action to be taken when patterns or conditions are detected in changing data. Monitors data in Powe Bi reports and data streams and notifies when data reaches specific threshold values or matches other patterns.
- Wide range of possibilities: Enables the creation of digital monitoring systems that encompass all data. Users can independently define business conditions and trigger actions and processes for external companies.
- Code-free handling: the application can work with any type of data in Microsoft Fabric, from slow-moving data in warehouses to real-time streaming data in Azure Event Hubs. Once connected, it continuously monitors enterprise data to detect applicable patterns.
- Detect patterns and trigger actions: identifies patterns and triggers specific actions as needed. This improves data control and business performance, as well as immediate access to real-time information, the ability to respond quickly to issues, and improved business operations.
- Rapid response to market trends and changes: by analyzing monitored data, it enables rapid response to changing trends and market conditions, which can significantly affect a company’s competitiveness.
Activator’s main objects and concepts
Creation workflow
A common workflow starts with the creation of a new empty trigger in a work area and the use of the “Get events” option to connect to an event stream.
From this flow, objects and properties are created. A rule is then created based on these objects and properties. To make this last step possible, the designer sets the conditions, parameters, and aggregations that tell Activator when to trigger and what actions to perform when triggered.
Work areas
As with all Fabric workloads, Data Activator can be used by creating an item in a work area of the tool. These items are called “triggers” and work areas are places to collaborate with colleagues on specific content.
These areas contain collections of dashboards, reports, workflows, triggers, and so on. When an area owner provides access to an area, they can also grant permissions for viewing, editing, etc.
All of them have a space called “My workspace”, which is a personal isolated place..
Activators
A trigger contains all the information needed to connect to the data, monitor conditions, and take action. Normally, a trigger is created for each business process or area being monitored.
Events and event flow
For Data Activator, all data sources are event streams. These are observations on the state of an object, with some identifier for the object itself, a timestamp, and the values of the fields it is monitoring.
Event streams vary in frequency, and can be defined as an instance of the Eventstream element in Fabric. The event streams feature of the AI experience allows you to incorporate real-time events into Fabric, transform them, and route them to various destinations without writing code.
It also allows actions to be taken on patterns or conditions that are detected in the event stream data.
Objects
The objects to be monitored can be physical objects or less tangible concepts, such as campaigns, accounts, or user sessions. In the trigger, the object is modeled by connecting one or more event streams, choosing a column for the object identifier, and specifying the fields to be converted into object properties.
Rules
These define the conditions to be detected in objects and the actions to be performed when these conditions are met.
There are three types: rules in events, rules in events that are added to an object, and rules in the properties of an object.
When the conditions of a rule are met and an action is initiated, the rule is activated.
Properties
These are useful when you have to reuse logic in several rules. You can define a property on one object and then use that value in many rules.
Creation of an activator
There are several different ways to create an activator using Fabric Activator. As with all Fabric workloads, you can start using Activator by creating an element in a work area of the tool.
The steps to follow are:
- Accessing the left navigation panel of Fabric, select “Create-Real-time Intelligence-Activator”.
- Select “Test example”, which will load the sample package delivery.
- You can explore the sample trigger to familiarize yourself with flows, objects, rules, and rule definitions. It is a good opportunity for testing, as it does not damage the source sample.
Data Activator Fabric for Companies
As Microsoft says, data is only valuable when it is actionable. This implies generating information from it and transforming it into tasks.
There are still many companies that do this transformation by doing manual monitoring, which requires a lot of time and economic investment.
Data Activator enables companies to:
- Automate data monitoring.
- Faster detection of patterns and anomalies.
- Efficient operation supported by alerts.
- Customize notifications for the industry.
- Determine business-critical values.
- Seamless integration with other Microsoft Fabric services.
In a rapidly changing business environment, the ability to analyze data instantly has become a necessity, and thanks to it, companies gain the ability to monitor events in real time.
This allows you to react quickly to changes and solve potential problems. And at Plain Concepts we help you to get the most out of it.
We offer you a Microsoft Fabric Adoption Framework with which we will evaluate the technological and business solutions, we will make a clear roadmap for the data strategy, we visualize the use cases that make the difference in your company, we take into account the sizing of equipment, time and costs, we study the compatibility with existing data platforms and we migrate Power BI, Synapse and Datawarehouse solutions to Fabric. What are you waiting for to start giving a new meaning to your data?
