BI Pixie Workload in Microsoft Fabric
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Add BI Pixie to Your Tenant

This page is for Microsoft Fabric tenant administrators. It walks you through enabling BI Pixie in Microsoft Fabric in your tenant so that workspace users can create BI Pixie items inside their Fabric workspaces. Once enabled, BI Pixie appears in the workspace Create menu alongside lakehouses, semantic models, and reports.

You only need to do this once per tenant. After BI Pixie is added, your users do not need any further setup — they can create BI Pixie items directly from any workspace they have access to.

Before You Start

  • You must be a Fabric administrator. Power Platform administrators and Microsoft 365 Global administrators are implicitly Fabric administrators too.
  • Your tenant must have at least one paid Fabric capacity (any SKU) or an active Fabric trial.
  • You should know which capacities or workspaces you want BI Pixie scoped to.

Step 1: Enable additional workloads

BI Pixie is in public preview and is available to every Fabric tenant directly from the Workload Hub — no access request is needed. One tenant setting must be on before you can add it.

Turn on the tenant setting. In Fabric, go to Settings > Admin portal > Tenant settings and find the Additional workloads section. Turn on Users can see and work with additional workloads not validated by Microsoft. The setting can be scoped to the entire organization or to specific security groups.

For background on this and related settings, see Microsoft Learn: Set up your environment — Tenant setting and development settings.

Looking ahead. The tenant setting above is required because BI Pixie remains "not validated by Microsoft" during public preview. Once BI Pixie completes Microsoft's workload certification and reaches general availability (GA), the setting is no longer required — tenants will be able to add BI Pixie with no admin pre-configuration beyond the standard Workload Hub permissions. Until then, the tenant setting is required.

Step 2: Open the Workload Hub

  1. Go to the Microsoft Fabric portal at app.fabric.microsoft.com and sign in with your admin account.
  2. In the left navigation, click Workload Hub. (If you do not see Workload Hub, switch to a workspace first or open Settings > Admin portal and verify that workloads are enabled for your tenant.)
  3. The Workload Hub lists all available workloads, including Microsoft-built and partner-built workloads.

Step 3: Find BI Pixie

  1. In the Workload Hub gallery, search for BI Pixie, or open the BI Pixie page in the Workload Hub directly.
  2. Click the BI Pixie tile to open its details page. You will see the publisher (DataChant), the description, screenshots, and a link to terms and privacy.
  3. Review the listed permissions BI Pixie requires. The mandatory Fabric.Extend scope is the standard dependency Microsoft requires of every Fabric workload (see workload publishing requirements). It lets the workload run inside Fabric and call Fabric APIs on behalf of the signed-in user.
  4. Confirm the tile shows the Add to Tenant button. As a Fabric administrator, you can make BI Pixie available across your entire tenant in one action — capacity admins see Add to Capacity and workspace admins see Add to Workspace instead. Tenant-level assignment is reserved for tenant administrators per Microsoft's How to consume workloads guide.

Step 4: Add BI Pixie to Your Tenant

  1. Click Add to Tenant (or Get) on the BI Pixie details page.
  2. If prompted, grant admin consent for the requested permissions. This is a one-time step and applies to all users in your tenant.
  3. After consent, BI Pixie appears in your tenant's added workloads list.

If your tenant has Conditional Access or restricted user consent policies, the Add to Tenant action will hand off to your Microsoft Entra ID consent flow. Approve there and return to the Workload Hub. The button changes from Add to Tenant to Manage once BI Pixie is added.

Step 5: Set the Distribution Scope

Microsoft Fabric lets you assign a workload at three levels: the entire tenant, specific capacities, or specific workspaces. Choose the level that matches how broadly you want BI Pixie available.

  • Add to tenant (tenant admins) — BI Pixie is available to every workspace in the tenant that runs on a Fabric capacity.
  • Add to capacity (capacity admins) — only workspaces assigned to the listed capacities see BI Pixie in their + New menu.
  • Add to workspace (workspace admins) — only the listed workspaces see BI Pixie. Useful for piloting before a wider rollout.

All three options are managed from the same Workload Hub UI. The button label on the BI Pixie tile changes to match your role: Add to Tenant, Add to Capacity, or Add to Workspace.

If you want to restrict who across the tenant can add or use partner workloads at all, review the Additional workloads tenant settings under Settings > Admin portal > Tenant settings. The relevant switches are Capacity admins and contributors can add and remove additional workloads and Workspace admins can add and remove additional workloads. These settings apply across all partner workloads and are not BI Pixie-specific.

Distribution changes can take a few minutes to propagate across regions.

Step 6: Verify BI Pixie Was Added

Confirm that BI Pixie is reachable from a normal user account before you announce it to your team.

  1. Switch to a regular Fabric user account (or use a private browser window) and sign in to app.fabric.microsoft.com.
  2. Open any workspace backed by a Fabric capacity that is in scope for the workload.
  3. Click + New (or Create) at the top of the workspace.
  4. In the create catalog, search for BI Pixie. You should see BI Pixie as a creatable item.

If the BI Pixie item appears, BI Pixie is added and ready to use. You do not need to create the item yourself — that is a workspace-level task for the report owner. See Create a BI Pixie item for the user-facing flow.

Troubleshooting

The BI Pixie item does not appear in the Create menu

  • Workspace is not on a paid capacity. Workloads only run on Fabric capacities (paid SKU or trial). Confirm the workspace is assigned to a capacity in Workspace settings > License info.
  • Assignment scope excludes this workspace. Re-check Step 4. If you used Add to capacity or Add to workspace, the user's workspace must be in the assigned set.
  • Propagation delay. Workload distribution changes can take up to 15 minutes to reach all regions. Wait, then refresh the workspace.
  • Browser cache. Sign out of Fabric, clear site data for app.fabric.microsoft.com, and sign back in.

Admin consent was not granted

  • Open Microsoft Entra admin center > Enterprise applications and search for BI Pixie.
  • If the application is missing or the consent state is incomplete, grant tenant-wide admin consent from the Permissions blade.
  • Re-open the Workload Hub and click Add to Tenant on the BI Pixie tile to complete the process.

Conditional Access blocks the workload

If your tenant has a Conditional Access policy that requires app protection or compliant devices, ensure BI Pixie is included as an approved cloud app or scope your policy to exclude the BI Pixie service principal. The workload registers a single Microsoft Entra app — there are no extra service principals to allow-list.

Private Link tenants

Microsoft Fabric currently disables external workloads in tenants that have Private Link enforcement enabled. This is a Fabric platform constraint, not a BI Pixie-specific limitation. Contact us if Private Link is a hard requirement for your environment.

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