Edit

Get started with deployment pipelines

  • Article

This article walks you through the basic settings required for using deployment pipelines in Microsoft Fabric. It's recommended to read the deployment pipelines introduction, before you proceed.

Important

Microsoft Fabric is in preview.

You can also complete the Create and manage a Fabric deployment pipeline Learn module, which shows how to create a deployment pipeline.

Note

In a deployment pipeline, one Premium workspace is assigned to each stage. Before you start working with your pipeline in production, review the capacity requirements for the pipeline's workspaces.

Prerequisites

To access the deployment pipelines feature, you must meet the following conditions:

Note

You'll also be able to see the deployment pipelines button, if you previously created a pipeline, or if a pipeline was shared with you.

Step 1 - Create a deployment pipeline

To create a pipeline, select the Deployment pipelines button.

After the pipeline is created, you can share it with other users, edit, or delete it. When you share a pipeline with others, they are given access to the pipeline and become pipeline admins. Pipeline access enables users to view, share, edit, and delete the pipeline.

Create a pipeline from the deployment pipelines button in Fabric

To create a pipeline from anywhere in Fabric:

  1. From the Workspaces flyout, select Deployment pipelines.

    A screenshot of the deployment pipelines entry point.

  2. Select Create pipeline.

    A screenshot of the create pipeline button.

  3. In the Create a deployment pipeline dialog box, enter a name and description for the pipeline, and select Create.

Create a pipeline from a workspace in Power BI

From Power BI, you also have the option of creating a pipeline from inside an existing workspace, if you're the admin of that workspace.

  1. From the workspace, select Create deployment pipeline.

    A screenshot of the create a pipeline button in a workspace.

  2. In the Create a deployment pipeline dialog box, enter a name and description for the pipeline, and select Create.

Note

If the workspace isn't assigned to your organization's capacity, or to your PPU capacity, you'll get a notification to assign it to a capacity.

Step 2 - Assign a workspace

After creating a pipeline, you need to add the content you want to manage to the pipeline. Adding content to the pipeline is done by assigning a workspace to the pipeline stage. You can assign a workspace to any stage.

Follow the instructions in the link to assign a workspace to a pipeline.

Note

If you're creating a pipeline from a workspace, you can skip this stage as the workspace is already selected.

Step 3 - Deploy to an empty stage

When you finished working with content in a pipeline stage, you can deploy it to the next stage. Deploying content to another stage is usually done after you've performed some actions in the pipeline. For example, made development changes to your content in the development stage, or tested your content in the test stage. A typical workflow for moving content from stage to stage, is development to test, and then test to production, but you can deploy in any direction. You can learn more about this process, in the deploy content to an existing workspace section.

Deployment pipelines offer three options when it comes to deploying your content:

After you choose how to deploy your content, you can Review your deployment and leave a note.

Step 4 - Deploy content from one stage to another

Once you have content in a pipeline stage, you can deploy it to the next stage. Deploying content to another stage is usually done after you've performed some actions in the pipeline. For example, made development changes to your content in the development stage, or tested your content in the test stage. A typical workflow for moving content from stage to stage, is development to test, and then test to production. You can learn more about this process, in the deploy content to an existing workspace section.

To deploy content to the next stage in the deployment pipeline, select the deploy button at the bottom of the stage.

When reviewing the test and production stage cards, you can see the last deployment time. This indicates the last time content was deployed to the stage.

Deployment time is useful for establishing when a stage was last updated. It can also be helpful if you want to track time between test and production deployments.

To examine the differences between the two pipelines before you deploy, see compare content in different deployment stages.

Step 5 - Create deployment rules (optional)

When you're working in a deployment pipeline, different stages may have different configurations. For example, each stage can have different databases or different query parameters. The development stage might query sample data from the database, while the test and production stages query the entire database.

When you deploy content between pipeline stages, configuring deployment rules enables you to allow changes to content, while keeping some settings intact. For example, if you want a dataset in a production stage to point to a production database, you can define a rule for this. The rule is defined in the production stage, under the appropriate dataset. Once the rule is defined, content deployed from test to production, will inherit the value as defined in the deployment rule, and will always apply as long as the rule is unchanged and valid.

Read about how to define deployment rules.

Next steps

Assign a workspace to a pipeline stage