Using Microsoft Fabric Home to Navigate Your Items

Innovation is a constant force driving change and improvement. Among the advancements that have left a notable mark, Microsoft Fabric emerges as a dynamic and transformative concept. By understanding how to navigate through Microsoft Fabric Home organisations can manage their data estate and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. It can also empower the employees to create and innovate raw data into BI models. 

According to a 2022 Statista report on Big Data Analytics, the global market is expected to see significant growth crossing 512 billion GBP by 2029. This forecasted value validates the growing necessity of organisations to extract and catalogue data and make informed decisions. This is where Microsoft Fabric comes into play. 

But how to use this platform effectively? Worry no more. Read this blog to learn about how to navigate through Microsoft Fabric Home to access your objects and perform actions. 

Table of Contents 

1) A brief introduction to Microsoft Fabric 

2) How to navigate your items in Microsoft Fabric Home? 

    a) Priority content at a glance 

    b) Utilise the navigation pane 

    c) Locate and open workspaces 

    d) Find and access other experiences 

    e) Find answers in the Help pane 

     f) Get help and support 

3) Conclusion 

A brief introduction to Microsoft Fabric 

Microsoft Fabric Home is a Data Analytics platform built on the foundation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), bringing together the data and analytics tools from various vendors required for an organization’s needs, including those managed by Microsoft Fabric Admin.

The tool integrates various technologies such as Azure Data Factory, Synapse Analytics and Power BI. It is designed to empower data and business professionals, helping them harvest the potential of their data. Furthermore, Microsoft Fabric Home comprises five key areas that take it a step ahead of its competitors in the global market. These five key areas are: 

a) A complete Data Analytics platform 

b) Lake-centric and open 

c) AI-driven tools 

d) Empowered business users 

e) Reduced costs through combined vendor capacity 

Moreover, services like Data Lake, Engineering and integration are offered in a single suite, allowing users to utilise their tools under one umbrella. More importantly, Microsoft Fabric provides the curated experience onto a shared SaaS foundation. The integration offers users with some key advantages that are as follows: 

a) Shared user experiences across various others that are easy to learn 

b) Easy access to assets and their reusability for developers 

c) Centralised system of governance and administration across all user experiences 

Fulfill your enterprise’s analytics requirements, by signing up for our Microsoft Fabric Training now! 

The key components of Microsoft Fabric 

Microsoft Fabric Home provides users with a complete set of data analytics experiences. These experiences are designed to function together in a seamless manner. Moreover, each of these experiences is also customised to a specific persona and a task. The Fabric comprises of various key components to fulfilling an organisation’s end-to-end Data Analytics need: 

a) Data Engineering: The Data Engineering experience in Fabric Home offers users an industry-standard Spark platform which includes great authoring experiences. These experiences allow Data Engineers to conduct data transformation on a large scale. 

b) Data Factory: The Azure Data Factory in Fabric Home merges its power and scale with the simplicity of Power Query. Users can utilise over 200 native connectors to connect to the data sources on-premises and on the cloud. 

c) Data Warehouse: This experience in Fabric Home offers SQL performance and scale on an industry-standard level. Computing is fully separated from storage, allowing both components to be independently scaled. 

d) Real-time Analytics: Observational data is the fastest growing category of data. It is typically collected from different sources like apps, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, human interactions and so on. Such data is generally semi-structured in formats like JSON or Text. 

e) Power BI: The world’s best Business Intelligence platform, Power BI, ensures that business owners have quick accessibility to all the data present in Fabric. The immediate access helps them make better decisions with the data. 

f) Data Science: The Data Science experience in Fabric Home helps users build, deploy and operationalise their machine learning models. These models are seamlessly integrated with the Fabric experience. Azure Machine Learning is also integrated here to offer users with features like built-in experiment tracking. 

Learn about big data and deploy applications by signing up for our Big Data Analytics & Data Science Integration Course now! 

How to navigate your items in Microsoft Fabric Home? 

Each of Fabric’s experiences has its own ‘Home’ with shared commonalities. Users can view the items that they create and the ones which they are permitted to use. These viewable items come from the workspaces that the users have access to. 

Furthermore, in Microsoft Fabric Home, the word ‘item’ is used for apps, Lake Houses, Warehouses, Reports and more. These items are accessible and viewable for users from the ‘Home’ section. 

Once a user has created one new Workspace, been granted access, or added an item to ‘My Workspace’, navigating directly to the Workspace becomes convenient for them. 

Now one method for a user to navigate to their workspace is by utilising the ‘Nav’ pane and workspace selector function. Furthermore, they can access ‘Home’ by selecting it from the top of the left navigation pane. 

Here is a list of the further key elements that users can navigate to in the ‘Home’ section, described as follows: 

Priority content at a glance 

The items that are accessible to a user appear in the ‘Home’ section. If their Home workspace gets cluttered with items, they can utilise Global Search to locate what they need. 

Additionally, the layout and content in the Home section differ for each user and every experience in Microsoft Fabric Home. However, there are numerous similarities as well, namely the Left Navigation Pane, Selector, Top Menu Bar, Creating New Items, Links to Content, and Organised Items. 

Utilise the navigation pane 

The Navigation or ‘Nav’ pane is a narrow vertical bar on the left side of the workspace. The Nav pane comprises of options depending on the user’s experience selection. It is also designed to organise the actions the users can take with their items in ways that help them navigate quickly. 

Users can also find and access their workspaces using the bottom section of the Nav pane. Home gives them the option of Workspace Selector to view the list of workspaces. 

Locate and open workspaces 

Workspaces are places for users to collaborate with their colleagues to create collections of various items, such as Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric, Warehouses, and Reports. Additionally, Fabric offers users various ways to locate and access workspaces. Users can search using the name or by selecting the ‘Workspaces’ icon in the Nav pane and choose the workspace they need to open. 

The Workspace then opens on their canvas, and its name is listed on the Nav pane. When the users proceed to open a Workspace, they can view its content which includes items like Notebooks, Pipelines, Lake Houses and Reports.


 

Find and access other experiences 

While users are on Microsoft Fabric Home, they can select their experience and activate it by navigating to the Experience Selector icon. This way, users can view all available experiences in Microsoft Fabric Home. 

Additionally, they can perform global searching by name, item, workspace, keyword and more. These are basically various ways that users can search for, sort and filter their items on their canvas. 

Find answers in the Help pane 

Users can select the ‘Help’ icon denoted by a question mark to access the context-based Help pane. They can utilise this pane to search for answers to their questions. Additionally, Fabric offers contextual help to users on the right side of their canvas browser. The Help pane displays the automatically updated list of recent articles which others have shared. 

Furthermore, users can also find community posts that are related to the current view under ‘Forum Topics.’ Fabric allows them to work with the Help pane open and utilise the suggested topics for learning to use Fabric’s features and terminology. 

Get help and support 

Users may not find the answers to all their questions using the contextual Help pane. In this case, they can access the bottom of the pane for extra resources. Fabric provides links for users to seek community help or to connect with Fabric’s customer support. They can also find their account information and Microsoft Fabric License from the ‘Account Manager’ section.

Conclusion 

We hope that you have now understood how to Navigate Microsoft Fabric Home and view your most recent items and shared content with other user experiences. By understanding Microsoft Fabric’s product experiences, users can harness their potential for Data Analytics and integrative workflows.  

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