Data Pipeline - Semantic Model Refresh Activity - Wipe Out

Hi dcrnojevac 

I wanted to share some context and a possible workaround for the issue where the Semantic Model Refresh activity in a Data Pipeline appears to lose its configured semantic model after saving or reopening.

After setting up the activity (including the semantic model selection), everything seems fine at first. But once the pipeline is closed and reopened, the semantic model field shows up blank, and the datasetID also disappears from the JSON. Even opening the pipeline in an incognito browser didn’t prevent this.

From what I’ve observed, this seems to be a known behavior—possibly a UI bug or a syncing issue where the configuration doesn’t persist properly.

Here’s what helped in my case:

• After selecting the semantic model, try clicking outside the component to let the UI register the change.

• Then save the pipeline, publish it, and only then close the pipeline tab.

• If the field still resets, you can open the pipeline in JSON view and re-add the datasetID manually, then re-save and publish.

If this still doesn’t work, an alternate approach is to trigger the semantic model refresh using a notebook or REST API call. It gives you more control and avoids depending on the UI entirely.

Hope this helps someone else facing the same problem. And if the issue continues, I’d recommend opening a support case with the Fabric team and sharing the pipeline export + screenshots—they’ll likely want to look into it deeper.

Happy to help further if needed!

Best Regards,
Cheri Srikanth