BI Pixie Workload in Microsoft Fabric
Generally Available

Getting Started

This guide walks you through your first five minutes with BI Pixie inside Microsoft Fabric: create a BI Pixie item, add Pixies to a Power BI report, verify events are flowing, and connect the dashboard to start analyzing engagement.

Before You Start

Make sure you have the following in place:

  • A Microsoft Fabric capacity attached to your tenant, either a paid SKU or an active Fabric trial.
  • A Fabric workspace where you have Contributor, Member, or Admin role.
  • BI Pixie added to your Fabric tenant. A Fabric tenant admin adds it from the BI Pixie page in the Fabric Workload Hub by selecting Add to Tenant, which makes the BI Pixie item type available across the tenant. See the Add BI Pixie to Your Tenant page for the admin steps.
  • At least one published Power BI report in the workspace you want to track.

Step 1: Create a BI Pixie item

  1. Open Microsoft Fabric and navigate to a workspace where you want the BI Pixie Dashboard to live. The reports you track can be in any workspace you have access to. They do not need to be in this one.
  2. Click + New in the workspace toolbar and choose BI Pixie. If you do not see it, use the search box in the dialog or check that the workload is enabled in your tenant.
  3. Give the item a name (for example, My BI Pixie) and click Create.
  4. The BI Pixie item opens on the Overview view with the workspace context already established. There is no separate sign-in step. Fabric provides your identity automatically.
Fabric workspace with the + New item button highlighted on the toolbar. The New item dialog is open with 'BI Pixie' typed into the search box (also highlighted). A BI Pixie (preview) tile appears, showing the description: Track user engagement across your Power BI reports. Admins get cross-workspace management, analytics, and licensing; members see a scoped view for their assigned license.

Step 2: Add Pixies to a Report

  1. In the BI Pixie item, open the Managed Reports view from the sidebar and click Add Pixies.
  2. BI Pixie lists the Power BI reports in the current workspace. To track reports from a different workspace, use the workspace selector at the top of the view to switch to any other workspace where you have Contributor, Member, or Admin role. Select one or more reports you want to track.
  3. Choose how to apply the changes:
    • Auto-Save to Power BI: BI Pixie saves the changes directly to your workspace.
    • Download & Publish: get the modified report as a ZIP to publish yourself.
  4. Click the action button. Adding Pixies runs as a background job, so you can keep working in the BI Pixie item while it completes. Progress appears right inside the item.
  5. When the job finishes, the report appears in the Managed Reports view as a tracked report.
The Add Pixies view inside the BI Pixie item. The left panel holds a Workspace dropdown set to BI Pixie Demo SaaS and a list of three reports with checkboxes, two of them marked Pixies Added and the third, MC - After Prep, selected. The right panel holds a collapsed Tracking Settings section, a delivery method choice between Download and Publish and Auto-Save to Power BI with the second selected, a Use bulk mode checkbox marked Preview and turned off, an Add Pixies to 1 report button, and a status line reading 2 reports have Pixies, of 50 allowed.

Step 3: Verify Events Are Flowing

  1. Open Managed Reports and click Open report. The report opens in a new Fabric tab.
  2. Interact with the report: change a slicer, click a visual, switch pages.
  3. Return to the BI Pixie item, and in Managed Reports, select the report. Then click Check for events in the Events pane.
  4. Your interactions typically appear as events within a few seconds: page views, visual clicks, filter changes, and so on. During heavy ingestion you may see delays of up to a minute. Each row shows the event type, the visual type, the page, and the timestamp.
The Managed Reports view inside the BI Pixie item, listing two tracked reports in the BI Pixie Demo SaaS workspace with columns for report, workspace, added by, status, date, and actions, both reading Pixies Added. The Marketing Campaigns row is selected, and the Events pane below the list is headed Events: Marketing Campaigns with a Check for events button. It reads 28 events, last updated Aug 24, 2026, above a table of the most recent ones with time, event, visual type, page, and details columns. The event column carries color-coded pills for Slicer Click, Interaction, Feedback, Page View, and Visual Click, and the details column shows the filter values behind each one, highlighted in gold.

Step 4: Connect the BI Pixie Dashboard

The BI Pixie Dashboard is set up automatically in the same workspace when you create the BI Pixie item. There are no credentials to set up: the Dashboard reads your engagement data with Direct Lake, and the first time you open the item you may see a one-time Microsoft consent prompt to approve. To load your engagement data, see Set up BI Pixie Dashboard.

Score Your First Semantic Model

Tracking answers how people use your reports, and it needs a few days of activity before the answers get interesting. AI Readiness answers a different question immediately: how well prepared your semantic models are for Copilot in Power BI and for Fabric data agents. There is nothing to wait for, so this is the fastest useful thing you can do in a new BI Pixie item.

  1. Open AI Readiness from the item's sidebar.
  2. Click Start assessment and pick a semantic model. You can select several and assess them in one run.
  3. Read the AI Readiness score, 0 to 100, with its band. One score covers Copilot in Power BI and Fabric data agents alike; descriptions, AI Instructions, and the AI data schema all move it.
  4. Open Why this score? for the per-dimension breakdown, then work down the ranked findings.

Scoring is read-only: nothing is written to your semantic model, and it runs on BI Pixie's side rather than on your Fabric capacity. Once the semantic model's reports are tracked and have collected some usage, reassess it: the score becomes grounded in what people actually click, which sharpens both the score and the order of the findings.

What's Next

  • AI Readiness: Score, fix, and benchmark your semantic models for Copilot and Fabric data agents.
  • Tracking Setup: Customize tracked event types, enable feedback controls, and configure project-level defaults.
  • Embed Surveys: Embed NPS, business value, and time-saved surveys directly inside your Power BI reports.
  • Overview: Tour the full BI Pixie item and feature set.

Resources