New idea exchange ideas in Microsoft Fabric Community

Show all model view layouts

reiffaul — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:05:34 GMT

Allow users connecting to a PowerBI Semantic model via PowerBI Desktop to view all of the custom layouts provided. This will allow self service users to view smaller sections of the model as laid out by the model developers, making the relationships easier to understand.

A bonus option would be to be able to selectively hide layouts to users, similar to report pages.

Support QR codes in the barcode scanner in the Power BI app

Jaap_O_RFH — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:01:10 GMT

I was surprised to find that the barcode scanner inside of a Power BI report in the mobile app only supports scanning barcodes, not QR codes. Our warehouse uses QR codes everywhere, so I cannot use this feature.

I understand that QR codes in the powerBI app are used for something else (to go to a report), but it feels like it should be possible to accept QR codes as well when a user taps on the barcode button inside of a report in the app.

Allow enabling Lakehouse Schemas on an existing Lakehouse

AlessioAndriulo — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:48:55 GMT

Right now Lakehouse Schemas can only be turned on when you first create a Lakehouse. If you already have one running in production and later decide you need schemas, there is no way to enabled them on it. The only option is to create new Lakehouse with schemas turned on.

It would really help to have a supported way to enable schemas directly on an existing Lakehouse, without having to recreate it from scratch. Either a toggle that converts it in place, or an official migration path that keeps the same Lakehouse identity and just adds schema support, so all the existing references keep working.

Allow enabling Lakehouse Schemas on an existing Lakehouse, without recreating it

AlessioAndriulo — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:29:29 GMT

Today, Lakehouse Schemas can only be turned on when a Lakehouse is first created. There is no supported way to enable schema support on a Lakehouse that already exists — the only workaround is creating a brand-new schema-enabled Lakehouse and manually migrating every table into it.

This is a real blocker for teams running Lakehouses already in production. Schema support gates several features that matter for day-to-day engineering — Materialized Lake Views, schema-level access control (row/column security), cross-workspace four-part-name queries, and schema shortcuts. Adopting any of them on an established Lakehouse currently means:

Creating a net-new Lakehouse just to get the schema flag
Re-pointing every downstream notebook, pipeline, dataflow, and Power BI semantic model to the new item
Manually copying every table (losing Delta history unless you deep-clone)
A cutover with no natural rollback

Concrete example: wanting to use Materialized Lake Views on an existing medallion pipeline requires abandoning the current Lakehouse entirely, even though the transformation logic has nothing to do with the migration itself.

Ask: provide a supported, non-disruptive way to enable schemas in place on an existing Lakehouse — either a portal/REST toggle that converts it directly, or an official migration tool that moves the data while preserving the Lakehouse's identity (same ID, same downstream references), instead of forcing a net-new item every time.

Workspace Folder & Subfolder Inventory View for Power BI Reports and Apps

rijesh — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:29:05 GMT

Problem:

Many organisations use Power BI workspace folders and nested subfolders to organise reports by department, business area, project, or function. While this structure helps keep content organised, it becomes difficult to quickly identify:

How many reports exist within a workspace

Which folders and subfolders contain reports

Where a specific report is located

Which reports are included in a published App

Which reports are no longer used or duplicated

Currently, users must manually navigate through each folder and subfolder to locate reports. In large workspaces containing dozens or hundreds of reports, this process is time-consuming and inefficient.

Proposed Solution:

Introduce a Workspace Content Explorer or Folder Inventory View that provides a consolidated view of all workspace content, including:

Folder hierarchy and subfolder structure

Report count per folder

Complete list of reports with folder paths

Search and filter capabilities

App publication status

Ability to export the inventory to Excel/CSV

Option to view reports in a tree structure or flat list

Movable Header Icons for Visuals

AaronReasoner — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:25:49 GMT

Add ability in Power BI to reposition Visual Header Icons. Locking them to the top right forces unnecessary horizontal scrolling across wide or zoomed in visuals just to access essential controls like drill down or hierarchy level changes which slows down user analysis.

Support JSONL files in the lakehouse preview

Tom_Fosterbi — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:30:28 GMT

Currently JSONL files cannot be previewed within a lakehouse, supporting this would improve any workflow with these files

Copy results as markdown from data grid

Tom_Fosterbi — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:45:51 GMT

When copying results from a query on the SQL Endpoint or Data Warehouse I often have to convert from the tab delimited table to markdown for sharing the results via services like teams or github.

It would make sharing data much easier if I could just click a "copy results as markdown table" button in addition to the existing options.

Deployment Pipelines - Remember selected stage

PeterDaniels — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:08:10 GMT

Every time we go into a deployment pipeline, it defaults to selecting the Development stage. I believe that it would be very rare to have a user select the Development stage. It would be helpful if deployment pipelines remembered which stage I had selected before as the target.

Informix support for Incremental Load

nusratrehana — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:22:36 GMT

Microsoft Fabric Copy Job connector support matrix for Informix connector supports Full Load operations, but it does not currently support Incremental Load (watermark-based) operations

Because Fabric Data Factory Copy Jobs don't yet support incremental/delta copy for IBM Informix, we've had to build a custom pipeline (rather than using a native Delta Copy Job) to approximate delta loads from our Informix/Pronto ERP data. This pipeline-based approach consumes considerably more Capacity Units than a native delta copy job would and may not fit sustainably within our Fabric capacity. If it doesn't, we'll be forced back to daily full copy jobs — a significant regression from the hourly delta refresh our legacy SSIS job was able to achieve.

The CU cost of running delta via a pipeline (versus a native Copy Job) means the refresh cadence we can sustain is at risk of dropping from hourly to daily. In practice this means data that previously updated every hour now risks sitting stale for most of the day, with no clear way to restore that cadence without native incremental support for Informix.

Requesting to add Informix to support Incremental Load as it is crucial part of the operation sustainability and efficiency.

Exported PDF from PowerBI to not have any indents/borders

EliShalev — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:06:28 GMT

Currently, using the "Export to PDF" option in PowerBI results in two consistently buggy results:

A white border/indent is generated, increasing the size of the page from 8.5x11 to 9x11.5
Sometimes shrinking the contents of the page within that same changed-size letter page.

Screenshots below. It seems like this is a known issue with PowerBI, but not sure I have seen anything suggesting it will be fixed anytime soon. At least if the option to print was offered, we could configure a print to PDF setting that would remove these issues.

Comments field for Power BI Gateways

rijesh — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:41:11 GMT

It would be helpful to have a dedicated Comments field for Power BI Gateways. This would allow administrators to add notes or relevant information about a specific gateway such as its purpose, maintenance notes, special configurations etc. Having a comments field would improve gateway management, documentation and knowledge sharing across teams especially in environments with multiple gateways.

Comments field for Power BI Gateways

rijesh — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:39:47 GMT

It would be helpful to have a dedicated Comments field for Power BI Gateways. This would allow administrators to add notes or relevant information about a specific gateway such as its purpose, maintenance notes, special configurations etc.

Having a comments field would improve gateway management, documentation and knowledge sharing across teams especially in environments with multiple gateways.

Support Native SQL LIKE / NOT LIKE Wildcard Filtering Across Power BI Reports

Seeralan — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:38:01 GMT

Description

Currently, Power BI does not provide a native way for report consumers to perform dynamic SQL-style wildcard filtering using patterns such as

LIKE '____' - Above return all values with exactly four characters

LIKE '__A_' - Return all four-character values where the third character is "A"

Many enterprise reporting scenarios require users to enter dynamic search patterns similar to SQL LIKE and NOT LIKE functionality. While workarounds using DAX, calculated columns, custom visuals, or custom logic may be possible for individual fields, these approaches are not scalable when reports contain hundreds of filterable columns.

Current Limitation

After engagement with Microsoft Support, Advisory, and Architecture teams (Case #2606220040001996), it was confirmed that:

Power BI currently has no native runtime implementation of SQL LIKE / NOT LIKE filtering.
Existing alternatives do not adequately support large-scale implementations with hundreds of columns.
Third-party visuals such as Smart Filter do not fully support SQL-style wildcard matching (for example _ as a single-character wildcard).
This has been identified as a current product limitation.

Suggested Enhancement

Provide native filtering capabilities that support standard SQL wildcard expressions within Power BI report filters and slicers, including:

% for multi-character matching
_ for single-character matching
LIKE and NOT LIKE style filtering behavior
User-entered runtime pattern matching
Consistent functionality across all text columns without requiring custom DAX or calculated columns

Example Scenarios

User Input	Expected Result
____	Return all values with exactly 4 characters
__A_	Return all 4-character values where the third character is A
%ABC%	Return values containing ABC
A%	Return values starting with A
%XYZ	Return values ending with XYZ

Business Impact

This enhancement would provide significant value for organizations with large-scale enterprise reporting environments by:

Reducing reliance on custom DAX and calculated columns
Improving report usability for business users familiar with SQL-style searches
Enabling dynamic filtering across hundreds of columns without additional development effort
Improving scalability, maintainability, and performance of enterprise Power BI solutions

Supporting Information

Microsoft Support has confirmed that there is currently no supported native Power BI solution for dynamic SQL LIKE wildcard filtering at scale and recommended submitting this requirement through the Microsoft Fabric Ideas portal for product team evaluation.

Retain Matrix/Table Scroll Position When Returning from Drillthrough

Pruthviraj15 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:24:29 GMT

Description:
Currently, when users drill through from a Matrix or Table visual to a detailed page and then use the Back button to return, the report navigates back to the source page but resets the Matrix/Table to the top instead of preserving the user's previous position.

This can be frustrating when working with large datasets, especially when the selected row is far down in a long Matrix or Table. Users must manually scroll and relocate the exact item they were analyzing before continuing their work.

Suggested Enhancement: When returning from a Drillthrough page, Power BI should restore the original visual state, including:

Scroll position within the Matrix or Table
Expanded/collapsed hierarchy levels
Selected row or record
Visual focus and viewport location

Benefits:

Improved user experience and navigation
Faster analysis of large reports
Reduced need for repetitive scrolling and searching
More intuitive drillthrough workflow, similar to modern web applications that preserve page state

Example Scenario: A user scrolls to row 250 in a Matrix visual, drills through to view transaction details, and then clicks Back. Instead of returning to the top of the Matrix, the report should restore the view to row 250 with the same hierarchy expansion state, allowing the user to continue analysis seamlessly.

Business Impact: This enhancement would significantly improve usability for enterprise reports containing thousands of rows and deeply nested hierarchies, where users frequently drill through multiple records during analysis.

Power BI Desktop on macOS

norbert_lokkos — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:41:12 GMT

Description

Many organizations are increasingly adopting macOS as a primary endpoint platform. However, Power BI Desktop remains available only for Windows, forcing macOS users to rely on virtual machines, remote desktops, Windows devices, or limited web-based alternatives.

We would like Microsoft to provide a native version of Power BI Desktop for macOS, enabling Power BI developers and analysts to create, edit, and publish reports directly from their corporate Mac devices.

Business Impact

Large enterprises are deploying growing numbers of managed macOS devices.
Data analysts, controllers, and business users working exclusively on macOS cannot use the full authoring capabilities of Power BI Desktop.
Current workarounds (Windows VMs, Azure Virtual Desktop, remote Windows PCs) introduce additional licensing, infrastructure, support, and security complexity.
Web authoring in Power BI Service and Microsoft Fabric is improving but does not yet provide full parity with Power BI Desktop.
A native macOS application would improve user experience, reduce operational overhead, and strengthen Power BI adoption in organizations with mixed Windows/macOS environments.

Thank you for considering this request!

Retain Matrix/Table Scroll Position When Returning from Drillthrough

Pruthviraj — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:39:02 GMT

Suggested Enhancement: When returning from a Drillthrough page, Power BI should restore the original visual state, including:

Scroll position within the Matrix or Table
Expanded/collapsed hierarchy levels
Selected row or record
Visual focus and viewport location

Benefits:

Improved user experience and navigation
Faster analysis of large reports
Reduced need for repetitive scrolling and searching
More intuitive drillthrough workflow, similar to modern web applications that preserve page state

Expose Data Agent schema, question interpretation, and generated query through MCP

Antoine1733 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:51:02 GMT

I would like to request additional context and metadata capabilities for the Microsoft Fabric Data Agent MCP server.

It would be very useful if the MCP server could expose more information about the Data Agent itself and how it processes a user's question.

1. Expose the Data Agent data schema

It would be useful to retrieve through MCP the data schema available to the Data Agent, including information such as:

Tables or semantic model entities
Columns and fields
Data types
Relationships
Measures
Descriptions and metadata
Other relevant schema information available to the Data Agent

Ideally, this information could be exposed through a dedicated MCP resource or tool.

This would allow an MCP client to understand what data the Data Agent has access to without having to maintain a separate copy of the schema.

2. Expose the interpreted or reformulated question

It would also be very useful to retrieve information about how the Data Agent understood the user's question.

For example:

Original question:
"How many customers did we lose last month?"

Reformulated / interpreted question:
"Calculate the number of customers who became inactive during the previous calendar month."

If available, it would also be useful to expose structured information such as:

Original user question
Reformulated or normalized question
Detected intent
Relevant tables or entities
Relevant columns or measures
Filters and conditions identified from the question

This would help developers understand how the Data Agent interpreted the request.

3. Expose the generated and executed query

It would also be very valuable to expose the query generated by the Data Agent to answer the user's question.

Depending on the underlying data source, this could include:

SQL
DAX
KQL
Other query languages supported by Fabric Data Agents

For example, the MCP response or a dedicated MCP resource could expose:

Query language:
SQL

Generated query:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Customers WHERE ...

Or:

Query language:
DAX

Generated query:
CALCULATE(...)

It would also be useful to know:

Which query language was selected
The generated query
The final query that was actually executed, if it differs
The data source or semantic model targeted
The tables, measures, or entities used by the query
Execution status
Query execution duration, when available
Query errors or warnings, when applicable

This information would be extremely useful for debugging, auditing, observability, and explaining how the Data Agent produced its answer.

Why this would be useful

Ideally, an MCP client could retrieve a structured execution context such as:

Original question
→ Reformulated / interpreted question
→ Relevant schema and entities
→ Selected query language (SQL / DAX / KQL / etc.)
→ Generated query
→ Executed query
→ Result
→ Final Data Agent answer

The goal is not to expose the model's private internal reasoning, but rather to expose the structured interpretation, generated query, schema context, and execution metadata that can safely be shared with the MCP client.

These capabilities would make the Fabric Data Agent MCP server much more useful for building transparent, debuggable, auditable, and context-aware applications.

Could Microsoft please consider exposing the Data Agent schema, structured question interpretation, and generated/executed queries through the MCP server?

Real-time progress streaming for Fabric Data Agent MCP server

Antoine1733 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:47:43 GMT

I would like to request true real-time progress streaming for the Microsoft Fabric Data Agent MCP server.

Currently, when calling a published Fabric Data Agent through MCP using call_tool with a progress_callback, I receive progress events such as:

analyze.database.fewshots.loading
analyze.database.nl2code
analyze.database.execute
Message created

However, these events are usually not delivered during the actual execution.

For example, the request can take 15–20 seconds with no updates, and then several progress notifications arrive almost at the same time, immediately before the final response.

It would be very useful if the Data Agent MCP server could emit and flush progress notifications incrementally as each step happens.

Ideally, applications could display statuses such as:

Understanding the question
Generating the query
Executing the query
Processing the result
Preparing the final answer

This would allow developers to build a much better real-time user experience instead of showing only a loading indicator during long-running requests.

The MCP transport already supports streaming and the client can receive progress notifications. The missing part appears to be real-time delivery of the Data Agent execution progress from the server.

Could Microsoft please consider supporting true incremental progress streaming for the Fabric Data Agent MCP endpoint ?

Connections Shows Offline

v-beeras — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:40:20 GMT

We are able to create a shortcut connection to ADLS Gen 2 storage account with private endpoint enabled and public endpoint disabled, from lake house.

but the connections shows offline in the manage connections and gateway.

as per the below document it was a limitation that connections to firewall-enabled Storage accounts have the status Offline in Manage connections and gateways.

Is there any Road map or future update that the connections will show online in Manage connections and gateways or this was fixed limitation.