Rather than just displaying data as a dashboard does, this Real-Time Intelligence tool in Microsoft Fabric reacts to it. You define rules without writing code, and once a pattern or condition is spotted it can send an email or Teams message, or start a Power Automate flow or Fabric pipeline.
Also called Fabric Activator, Data Activator, Reflex.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Activator in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Dashboard
Page in VCF Operations built from widgets that display object metrics, properties, alerts and relationships. Predefined and custom dashboards exist, and either kind can be shared.
- Real-Time Intelligence
Microsoft Fabric's workload for data in motion. Using eventstreams, eventhouses with KQL databases, the Real-Time hub, Real-Time Dashboards and Activator, it takes in events, processes, stores and analyses them, and acts on them.
- Chat message roles
Labels on chat messages: instructions go under system, the person's input under user, the model's previous answers under assistant, and results returned by a called tool under tool (or function).
- Microsoft Fabric
Analytics platform from Microsoft delivered as SaaS on top of OneLake, offering capabilities including Direct Lake and shortcuts.
- DEFINE
An optional keyword at the start of a DAX query, placed before the first EVALUATE, for declaring things such as measures and variables that exist only for that query. A measure declared this way replaces a model measure with the same name just while the query runs.
- Pattern
A reusable answer to a recurring problem that places building blocks in context, explaining when, how and why to apply them and what compromises are involved.
- Power Automate
Microsoft's service for building automated workflows. Placing its visual on a Power BI report gives readers a button that triggers a flow, which can receive the data currently filtered on the page.
- Flow
The unit of work inside a Lakeflow pipeline that takes data from a source, transforms it and lands it in a destination like a streaming table. Streaming flows either append or update, and
CREATE FLOWlets you declare a flow apart from the table it feeds.
Related terms
- Azure Blob Storage events
Notifications in Real-Time hub, for instance
Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreatedorMicrosoft.Storage.BlobDeleted, that fire when a blob or directory changes in a general-purpose v2 or Blob Storage account. They describe changes rather than carrying business records, and can drive an eventstream or an Activator alert. - Azure events
One of the Real-Time hub's categories, listing system-level events emitted by Azure services (Blob Storage events, say). Each can be streamed into an eventstream, or Activator can raise alerts on it.
- Capacity Overview Events
Real-Time hub events emitted by a Fabric capacity. Twice a minute a Summary event reports smoothed CU use and how much throttling is happening, and a State event fires on pausing, resuming or overload; Activator can alert on them, or an eventhouse can keep them as history.
- Fabric events
Events raised by Fabric itself and listed in Real-Time hub, for example about workspace items, OneLake, jobs or capacity overview. An eventstream can carry them onward, or Activator can raise alerts from them.
- OneLake events
Notifications Fabric emits on file or folder creation, deletion or renaming inside OneLake; Microsoft.Fabric.OneLake.FileCreated is one such type. Real-Time hub can forward them into an eventstream or let them trigger an Activator alert.