Microsoft Fabric is a complete data analytics platform that competes with the likes of Snowflake, Databricks and GCP BigQuery. With Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Science and BI engines, Fabric is a one-stop shop for all your data needs. More importantly, every engine in Fabric is now augmented with Generative AI capabilities. In this piece we highlight some of those AI Capabilities that Fabric offers.

Table of Contents

AI in Fabric

• AI Features in Microsoft Fabric

• Copilot for Power BI

• Copilot for Data Science and Data Engineering

• Chat Magic

• Copilot of Data Warehouse

• Copilot of Data Factory

• Dataflow Gen2

• Data Pipelines

• Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence

• AI Skill

• Conclusion

AI Features in Microsoft Fabric

Copilot for Power BI

Copilot for Power BI makes it easier for business users and report authors to interact with data by using generative AI. It simplifies report creation, data analysis, and key insight summarization. Available by default in Power BI, Copilot works for both desktop and online.

Features:

●        Business Users:

•     Generate report summaries in the Copilot pane.

•     Ask questions about report content and get answers.

●        Report Authors:

•     Write DAX with AI help.

•   Summarize semantic models and generate docs.

•     Create narrative visuals for pages or reports.

• Generate Q&A synonyms for better data exploration

Copilot for Data Science and Data Engineering

Copilot for Data Science and Data Engineering in Microsoft Fabric is a collaborative AI assistant that simplifies data analysis and visualization. It works with Lakehouse tables, Power BI Datasets, and pandas/Spark/Fabric dataframes to let you ask questions in natural language or request code snippets in notebooks.

Features:

●        Natural Language Queries: Ask questions about your data and Copilot will give you answers or code.

●        Dataframe Awareness: Copilot knows your data schema and can analyze data in dataframes.

●        Code Generation: Create charts, filter or transform data, and apply machine learning models.

●        Notebook Integration: Get insights or generate Python and Spark code snippets in your notebooks.

●        Seamless Workflow: Automates repetitive tasks so data scientists and engineers can work faster.

Chat Magic

Chat Magic boosts productivity in Microsoft Fabric notebooks by simplifying navigation, improving code quality, and adapting to multilingual code environments. It uses Azure OpenAI capabilities while keeping data private,  to help the user focus on solving hard problems without cognitive overload.

Copilot of Data Warehouse

The Copilot of Data Warehouse speeds up productivity by using metadata like table names, column names, and keys to generate T-SQL code. It doesn’t use actual table data, making your data safe.

Features:

●        Natural Language to SQL: Ask a question and get the SQL.

●        Code completion: Get AI-assisted code suggestions to speed up your workflow.

●        Quick actions: Fix or explain SQL with instant smart feedback.

●        Intelligent Insights: Get insights tailored to your warehouse schema.

For users of all levels, Copilot accelerates warehouse development through contextualized automation.

Copilot of Data Factory

Copilot of Data Factory lets you design dataflows with natural language. It’s a subject-matter expert (SME) that works with you to build data integration solutions in Dataflow Gen2 making complex data processes easier. Whether you’re a citizen developer or a data engineer this AI-powered tool automates workflows by generating Mashup code for data transformations and provides code explanations so you can understand complex queries better.

Features:

●        Natural language input: Create dataflows by describing what you need in plain English.

●        Mashup code generation: Generates code to transform data based on your input.

●        Code explanations: Provides insights into complex queries and tasks to help you understand what’s happening.

●        Dataflow Gen2: Integrates with Data Factory to simplify data integration and transformation.

Dataflow Gen2

Dataflow Gen2 is the latest version of dataflows in Microsoft Fabric. It has more capabilities and a simpler experience to create dataflows. It builds on top of Power BI Dataflow (Gen1) with auto-save, background publishing, and improved monitoring. The authoring flow in Dataflow Gen2 is faster with fewer steps, it’s more user-friendly. Also, it integrates with data pipelines and has high-scale compute for large datasets, making it good for both beginners and pro users.

Features:

●        Auto-save and background publishing: Saves your progress to allow you to exit and come back later.

●        Data destinations: More data destinations to choose from.

●        Monitoring and refresh history: Better tools to track and refresh data.

●        Integration with data pipelines: Seamless pipeline support.

●        High-scale compute: Process large datasets efficiently.

Data Pipelines

Data pipelines in Microsoft Fabric let you organize and manage tasks by grouping activities. An activity is a unit of work, like copying data, running SQL queries, or executing Python notebooks. Pipelines can handle multiple activities connected by dependencies, giving you a chance to create efficient data workflows. For example, a pipeline can ingest data from an Azure Blob, trigger Dataflow Gen2 for analysis, and clean the data. It can also move data between Azure Blob and Azure SQL databases and then execute stored procedures for further processing.

Features:

●        Multi-activity pipelines: Ingest and transform data.

●        Connected dependencies: Run tasks in sequence or based on dependencies.

●        Data tools: Azure SQL and Python notebooks.

Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence

Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence is an AI tool that changes the way you interact with data by converting natural language into Kusto Query Language (KQL). For data pros and citizen data scientists alike, it makes data exploration easier and more intuitive. It uses OpenAI’s language models to remove technical barriers and accelerate analysis.

Features:

●        Natural Language to KQL: Ask business questions and get KQL queries.

●        Dynamic Query Refining: Refine the KQL with follow-up questions.

●        Conversational Interactions: Ask follow-up questions and clarify without losing context.

●        Increased Productivity: Faster data analysis with user-friendly interactions.

AI Skill

Microsoft Fabric AI Skill lets you ask natural language questions about your data and get answers. This is in preview and uses generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to parse the questions and answers. You can configure the AI Skill to accept plain English questions from colleagues to allow nontechnical users to interact with complex data.

The AI Skill works by letting users ask questions through the AI Skill in Microsoft Fabric. The system sends relevant data information, such as table and column names, to the LLM. Then, the AI generates T-SQL queries based on this schema and the question. Queries are parsed and executed to ensure no changes are made to the data. Finally, the results are displayed, to the user.

Features:

●        Generative AI and LLMs: T-SQL queries are automatically generated to answer user questions.

●        Data query execution: Generated queries are safe and don’t alter data.

●        Collaborative usage: After configuration, the AI Skill can be shared with colleagues.

●        Custom configuration: You can provide instructions and example question-query pairs to fine-tune the AI.

Conclusion

AI is getting real and Microsoft Fabric is the platform for data management and analytics. From business analysts with Power BI to complex data engineering tasks, Fabric’s AI makes hard stuff easy. Discover all Microsoft Fabric jobs today at Happy Techies, where we strive to bring you the latest and greatest job opportunities. All you need to do is sign up on our platform. Your next opportunity is just a search away!