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:

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 the ellipses (...), and then select Create.

   

3. On the Create page, under the Real-Time Intelligence section, select Data Activator.

   

4. 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. In the right-most pane, see the Definition pane to see how the rule works.

   

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

   

6. 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.

   

7. Lastly, scroll down to Action. Choose one of the following actions if the condition is met:

   1. Send email notification: Sends an email to yourself or to others in your organization.

      1. For Select action, select Send email.
      2. For To, enter email addresses of receivers or use the drop-down list to select a property whose value is an email address. By default your email is populated here.
      3. For Subject, enter the subject of the email notification.
      4. For Headline, enter the headline of the email notification.
      5. For Notes, enter notes for the email notification.

         Note

         When entering the subject, headline, or notes, you can refer to properties in the data by typing @ or by selecting the button next to the text boxes. For example, @BikepointID.

      6. For Context, select the values for the drop-down list you want to include in the email notification.

      

   2. Send Microsoft Teams notification: Sends a Microsoft Teams message to yourself. You can customize the title and message content.

      1. For Select action, select Teams --> Message to individuals or Group chat message, or Channel post.
      2. Follow one of these steps depending on your selection:
         • If you selected the Message to individuals option, enter email addresses of receivers or use the drop-down list to select a property whose value is an email address. When the condition is met, an email is sent to specified individuals.
         • If you selected the Group chat message option, select a group chat from the drop-down list. When the condition is met, a message is posted to the group chat.
         • If you selected the Channel post option, select a team and channel from the drop-down lists. When the condition is met, a message is posted to the selected channel.
      3. For Headline, enter the headline of the Teams notification.
      4. For Notes, enter notes for the Teams notification.

         Note

         When entering the subject, headline, or notes, you can refer to properties in the data by typing @ or by selecting the button next to the text boxes. For example, @BikepointID.

      5. For Context, select the values for the drop-down list you want to include in the Teams notification.

      

   3. Run Fabric activities: To configure the alert to launch a Fabric pipeline, Spark job, or notebook when the condition is met, follow these steps:

      1. For Select action, select Run Pipeline, Run Spark job, Run Notebook, or Run Function (preview).

      2. On Select Fabric item to run, select the Fabric item (pipeline, notebook, Spark job, or function) from the list.

      3. Select Add parameter and specify the name of the parameter for the Fabric item and a value for it. You can add more than one parameter. You can pass parameters from the alert data by typing @ or by selecting the button next to the text box. For example, @BikepointID.

         

   4. Custom actions: To configure the alert to call a custom action when the condition is met, follow these steps:

      1. For Select action, select Create custom action.

         

      2. As mentioned in the Action section, create the rule first, and then complete the custom action setup by following steps from Trigger custom actions (Power Automate flows).

      3. After you create the custom action, in the Definition pane, select your custom action from the Select action drop-down list.

   5. Select Create to save your Activator rule.

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 Definition pane, follow these steps:

   1. For Monitor, choose the attribute to monitor and optionally add filters.

   2. For Condition, select the type of condition and occurrence.

   3. For Action, select one of the options to send a message in Teams or email.

   4. Select Save.

      

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?