Tutorial: Create and activate a Fabric Activator rule

Fabric Activator in Microsoft Fabric allows you to take actions when patterns or conditions are detected in data streams. If you're new to Fabric Activator, see What is Fabric Activator. In this tutorial, you use the sample data included with Fabric Activator to complete the following tasks:

• Review a sample activator
• Explore the data
• Explore a rule
• Start the rule
• Create an object
• Create a rule

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need a workspace with a Fabric capacity. You can learn about Fabric workspaces in the Workspaces article. If you don't have Fabric, you're prompted to start a trial.

Create a sample activator

1. Navigate to the Fabric portal.

2. On the left navigation pane, select Create, and then select Activator in the Real-Time Intelligence section. If you don't see Create, select the ellipses(...), and then select Create.

   

3. On the Activator page, select Try sample.

   

Explore the data

In this step, we explore the eventstream data this sample is built on.

The new activator has an Explorer section. Scroll down and select the Package delivery events stream.

These events show the real-time status of packages that are in the process of being delivered.

Look at the incoming events and hover over the event data in the live table. Each data point contains information about the event. You might have to scroll to see it all.

Explore a rule

Use a rule to specify the event values you want to monitor, the conditions you want to detect, and the actions you want Fabric Activator to take.

The Explorer pane displays objects, like eventstreams, for this activator. Delivery events is one of the objects created from the Package delivery events eventstream.

1. In the Explorer pane, select the object called Delivery events. You can create rules about objects that use data from the Package delivery events eventstream. For example, a rule that checks packages for temperature.

   

2. Notice that the Events by object ID section is organized by Package ID. Package ID is the column ID that uniquely identifies each package. We use this unique ID to assign the Package events to Package objects.

   

3. Select the Temperature rule called Too hot for medicine.

   

4. In the right-most pane, see the Definition pane to see how the rule works. In the Monitor section, select Temperature. The temperature values come from the Temperature column in the Delivery events table. You can see the Temperature column in an earlier screenshot.

   

5. In the Summarization section, you see the window size, step size, and the aggregation operation (average) use. It basically looks for the average of temperature readings over 10-minutes window.

6. In the Condition section, you see the rule condition to monitor temperatures that are higher than 20 degrees Celsius.

7. Scroll further down to Property filter. Our rule applies only to packages containing medicine. In the Delivery events table, the rule looks at the column named Special care contents. In the Special care contents column, some of the packages have a value of Medicine.

   

8. Lastly, scroll down to Action. Our rule sends a Teams message if the condition is met.

   

We created a Fabric Activator rule. The rule is running against the Package delivery events eventstream. The rule looks for packages that have medicine and checks to see if the temperature is now greater than 20 degrees Celsius. When the temperature becomes greater than 20 degrees Celsius, a Teams message is sent.

Look at the other rules to learn how they work.

Start the rule

Now you're familiar with the events and objects used to create a rule. The next step is to start the rule.

1. Select Too hot for medicine.

2. Optionally, send a test message by selecting Send me a test action. First check that you're the Recipient.

   

3. You should receive a message similar to the following one:

   

4. Select Start. This causes the rule to become active. You receive a Teams message whenever a medicine package is too hot. The rule should trigger several times every hour.

   

5. Later, you can turn off the rule using the Stop button on the ribbon.

   

Create an object

Now it's time to create an object of your own. In this section, delete the Package object. Then, recreate it to track the status of packages in transit where the hours in delivery become greater than 25.

1. In the Explorer pane, right-click Package, and select Delete. On the Delete item window, select Delete.

   

2. Select the Package delivery events stream, and then select New object on the ribbon.

   

3. In the Build object pane to the right, follow these steps:

   1. Name your new object Package2.

   2. Choose PackageId as the unique ID.

   3. Select HoursInTransit and City as properties of the object.

   4. Select Create.

      

Create a new rule

Create a rule that alerts you if the transit time in delivery exceeds a threshold.

1. Select your new HoursInTransit property. From the ribbon, select New rule.

   

2. In the Create rule pane, follow these steps:

   1. For Condition, select Increases above.

   2. For Value, select 25.

   3. For Occurrence, select Every time the condition is met.

   4. For Action, select one of the options to send an email to message in Teams.

   5. Select Create.

      

3. You should see the rule under HoursInTransit in the Explorer pane. Select the rule. In the middle pane, select the pencil icon at the top, and update the name to Average transit time above target.

   

4. In the Definition pane to the right, select HoursInTransit. Then select Add summarization > Average.

   

5. Set an aggregation Window size of five minutes and a Step size of five minutes, and then select Save.

   

6. The Monitor chart updates to reflect the summarization, and your rule Monitor chart looks like this.

   

7. Test your rule by selecting the Send me a test action button. Make sure you get an alert. If using email, it might take a minute or two to arrive.

   

8. Start your rule by selecting Save and start in the Definition pane or by selecting Start on the ribbon.

   

   You created your first object and rule. As next steps, you might try setting up some other rules on the Package2 object. When you're ready to try using Fabric Activator on your own data, follow the steps in the Get data for Fabric Activator article.

Clean up resources

Once you finish with the rules you created as part of the tutorial, be sure to stop them. If you don't stop the rules, you continue to receive the rule notifications. You also might incur charges for background processing. Select each rule in turn and select the Stop button from the ribbon.

Related content

• What is Fabric Activator?

You can also learn more about Microsoft Fabric:

• What is Microsoft Fabric?