Add Pixies to Your Reports

The Add Pixies action in the BI Pixie item is where you select reports from your Fabric workspace and add tracking Pixies to them. This guide also covers Update Pixies and Remove Pixies, which you can invoke from the Managed Reports view after Pixies have been added.

Choosing Which Reports to Track

First time using BI Pixie? Start with a report that is not in production. This lets you explore how the Pixies work and confirm that events are being captured before tracking your live reports.

Already familiar with BI Pixie? Add Pixies in your pre-production workspace before promoting reports to production. If you use Power BI Deployment Pipelines or separate workspaces for dev/test/prod, add Pixies in the test stage and then deploy to production. If you don't use deployment pipelines and your reports are already in production, you can add Pixies directly to the production workspace.

Always keep a backup. Before adding Pixies, make sure you have a copy of your report so you can revert if needed. In emergencies, you can always remove the Pixies even without a backup — the Remove Pixies action is available from the Managed Reports view.

For mission-critical reports, you can use the Download with Pixies method to preview the changes before publishing them back to your workspace.

Step 1: Open the Add Pixies Flow

1. Open the BI Pixie item from your Fabric workspace.
2. Open the Managed Reports view from the sidebar and click Add Pixies.
3. The reports in the current Fabric workspace are loaded automatically. The workspace context is set by the BI Pixie item, so there is nothing to configure here.

Tip: Pixies are invisible to your report consumers and do not affect report performance. Because BI Pixie runs natively inside Microsoft Fabric, identity, workspace context, and data residency are all handled by Fabric — there is no separate connection to set up.

Step 2: Choose an Action

The action is automatically determined based on the reports you select. When you select reports without Pixies, the action is Add Pixies. When you select reports that already have Pixies, the action switches to Update Pixies.

To remove Pixies from a report, use the Remove Pixies action from the Managed Reports view.

Step 3: Select Reports

1. Use the checkboxes to select the reports you want to track.
2. Each report shows its current status (whether Pixies have been added or not).
3. A counter at the bottom shows how many of your plan's report slots are in use (e.g., "3 of 5 reports").

Note: If your plan's report limit is reached, you will see a message indicating the plan is fully used. Admins can click "Upgrade for more" to view available plans.

Step 4: Choose a Delivery Method

Choose how the updated reports are delivered:

You can expand "What's the difference?" to see a side-by-side comparison of both methods.

Step 5: Add Pixies

1. After selecting your reports and delivery method, click the action button (e.g., Add Pixies or Update Pixies).
2. A progress bar appears showing the progress for each report.
3. A real-time log shows details about each step (loading definitions, scanning, adding Pixies, saving).
4. When the process completes, open the Managed Reports view to see your newly tracked reports.

If you chose the Download with Pixies method, a download panel appears with instructions on how to publish the files to your workspace.

Tracking Settings

Before adding Pixies, the Add Pixies flow shows a Tracking Settings card that displays the effective tracking settings for the selected reports. These settings come from the Tracking Setup view. If you want to change what gets tracked (e.g., enable feedback or surveys), configure those settings first.

How It Works

When you add Pixies, BI Pixie performs these steps:

1. Load definitions: BI Pixie reads the definitions of your selected reports and semantic models from your Fabric workspace. Only the structural definitions are read — BI Pixie never reads the data in your semantic model and cannot import it.
2. Scan and analyze: BI Pixie scans the definition of the selected report, pages, and visuals to identify hyperlinks, filters, slicers, bookmarks, tooltips, and drill-through configurations. If a semantic model with the same name exists in the same workspace, BI Pixie also reads its definition to get broader context for features like link click tracking and RLS auditing.
3. Add Pixies: BI Pixie adds invisible Pixies (tiny native Power BI table visuals and hidden measures) to your reports. If feedback controls or surveys are enabled and a semantic model with the same name exists in the same workspace, BI Pixie also adds helper tables to the semantic model to support these features.
4. Save: BI Pixie writes the updated definitions back to your workspace, or prepares them for download.

What the Pixies Look Like

The Pixies are designed to be invisible to your report consumers while remaining organized and auditable for your BI team:

• Table visuals — Tiny (1x1 pixel) table visuals placed in one corner of each report page, grouped together under a { BI Pixie } group in the Selection pane.
• Hidden measures — Dynamic measures added at the report level, grouped in a { BI Pixie } folder and marked as hidden.

To inspect the Pixies in Power BI Desktop:

1. Open a report with Pixies in Power BI Desktop.
2. Select the View tab and open the Selection pane.
3. Find and expand the { BI Pixie } group at the bottom of the pane to see the Pixie visuals.
4. In the Data pane, click the ellipsis on any table and select View hidden. Then search for "pixie" in the measures search box to find the table where all the hidden measures are stored. They will be grouped under a { BI Pixie } folder.

Update Pixies

Every time you update Pixies on a report, BI Pixie will:

1. Remove all previous Pixies from the report.
2. Re-scan the report definitions to detect any changes (new pages, visuals, slicers, etc.).
3. Add fresh Pixies based on the current report definitions and your latest tracking settings.

You should update Pixies after any change to the report definition that goes to production, or when you change tracking settings. This includes adding or removing pages, visuals, slicers, bookmarks, or drill-through links. If visual-level tracking is enabled, even moving or resizing a visual requires an update so the heatmap positions stay accurate. You do not need to update Pixies after a data refresh — refreshes only update the data, not the report definition.

Note: Updating Pixies is not automatic. When a report definition changes, open the Managed Reports view, open the action menu for the report that has changed, and select Update Pixies. If you would like to automate this process, contact us to discuss automation options.

Using Deployment Pipelines

If you use Power BI Deployment Pipelines, we recommend this workflow:

1. Keep your original reports in the Development stage.
2. Deploy to the Test stage using the Deployment Pipeline.
3. Open the BI Pixie item in the Test workspace and add Pixies there.
4. Verify the tracked reports in the Test workspace.
5. Deploy the tracked reports from Test to Production using the Deployment Pipeline.

Expired Plan

If your plan has expired, adding and updating Pixies is not available. During the grace period, you can still use the Remove Pixies action to clean Pixies from your reports. Admins will see a "Renew your plan" button to restore access. After the grace period ends, access is suspended and your telemetry data is deleted in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

What's Next

• Managed Reports: View and manage your tracked reports.
• Test Events: Verify that events are flowing from your reports.
• Tracking Setup: Customize tracking settings before adding or updating Pixies.