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Get data for Data Activator from Power BI

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You can get data for use in Data Activator from many sources. This article describes how to get notifications from streaming data in Power BI.

Important

Data Activator is currently in preview.

Use Data Activator to trigger notifications when conditions are met about data in a Power BI report. For example, if you have a report displaying daily sales per store, send a notification at the end of the day if daily sales for any store fall beneath a threshold you set. Send notifications to yourself or to others in your organization. This section explains how notifications can be created and triggered.

Prerequisites

Before you begin:

  • You need a Power BI report that is published online to a Fabric workspace in a Premium capacity.
  • To trigger a Data Activator rule, select a report that has live data.

Create a Data Activator trigger for a Power BI report visual

Open a report and select a visual to monitor. You'll create a Data Activator trigger that sets conditions for sending a notification. The notification can be sent in email or in Microsoft Teams.

  1. Open your Power BI report.
  2. Choose a visual on the report for Data Activator to monitor.
  3. Select the ellipsis (…) at the top-right of the visual, and choose Set alert. You can also use the Set alert button in the Power BI menu bar.

The following image shows an example of how to trigger notification from a report visual that displays today’s sales for each store in a retail chain:

Screenshot of sales by store in Power BI report.

  1. Enter the condition to monitor. For example, select Sum of Today's sales as the measure. And, set the rule to notify you via email when the value drops below 60,000. Whenever this condition is met, Data Activator sends a notification.

    • If your visual has a dimension, fill out the For each dropdown with the dimension to monitor. Data Activator checks the value of the measure separately for each value of the For Each dimension that you select.
    • Fill out the Where to save section, to tell Power BI where to save your Data Activator rule. Choose an existing Data Activator item, or create a new one.
    • Optionally, uncheck Start my alert if you want to refine your rule in Data Activator before making the rule active.

    Screenshot of create an alert window showing daily sales rule.

Optional: edit your trigger in Data Activator

When your trigger is ready, Power BI notifies you and gives you the option to edit your trigger in Data Activator.

Screenshot of rule successfully created.

Use Data Activator to fine tune your trigger and set complex conditions that are more granular than is possible in Power BI. Another reason to use Data Activator is if you want to trigger a Power Automate flow when your trigger is activated. Refer to Create triggers in design mode for information on how to edit triggers in Data Activator.

Related content

You can also learn more about Microsoft Fabric: