How to get Fabric on PowerBi P1

[jragan]

Hello, having trouble getting started with Fabric in an existing Power Bi Premium (P1) environment. I read @TomMartens post Setup Microsoft Fabric with Premium Capacity (P1)  and followed all the steps in his links closely but it didn't solve my issues.

Specifically, my understanding is that as we have a P1 this automatically maps to a F64 fabric license which begs the larger question - Does this mean our P1 Capacity is already "fabric-enabled" and we should be using it for Fabric workloads or does it mean that we need to setup a new/standalone F64 Fabric Capacity.

Tom's links and others seem to indicate that we should be fabric-enabling the P1 however even after following all the proper steps for the PowerBI tenant, if I try to do anything fabric-y from the New drop down, we're met with a modal that says we must "Upgrade to a Paid Fabric Capacity." However if I go into the workspace settings and change the capacity to a Fabric Capacity, then I'm required to select a an actual F-sku and not a P-sku which would push us towards scenario 2 (that we need to stand up our own Fabric Capcity).

We're fine standing up a "real" Fabric Capacity - but how do we make sure it's mapped to our P1 as our "included" (free) Fabric Capacity? (or am I totally missing what's actually included with a P1...?)

Thanks! 

[Greg_Deckler]

@jragan You should not need a separate Fabric capacity. Announcing Microsoft Fabric capacities are available for purchase | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsof...

The article is quite clear that P capacities automatically get the ability for all Fabric workloads and that P and F SKU's are both valid purchasing options for Fabric. So, unless Microsoft is gonig back on its word, then your P capacity is all you should need.

You could check the Issues forum here:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/idb-p/Issues

And if it is not there, then you could post it.

If you have Pro account you could try to open a support ticket. If you have a Pro account it is free. Go to https://support.powerbi.com. Scroll down and click "CREATE SUPPORT TICKET".

[jragan]

Thanks @Greg_Deckler - Are there specific workloads that require an F-Sku versus a P-Sku? For example, "Data Pipeline", "Data Flow Gen2", and "Lake house" all result in the "You must upgrade to a paid Fabric Capacity" modal even though the workspace is using a P1 capacity and all fabric-features are enabled for the tenant...

[Greg_Deckler]

@jragan No, P is full F. This is the exact wording:

"Fabric capacities and Power BI Premium capacities offer two purchasing options for you to get access to the complete range of Microsoft Fabric capabilities. Fabric capacities are similar in their behavior to existing Power BI Premium capacities and existing Power BI Premium customers will feel right at home with the Fabric capacities. Moreover, all Power BI Premium capacities are automatically upgraded to support all the Fabric workloads."

So if it is not working, then it is a support issue.

[jragan]

@Greg_Deckler Thanks - I'm currently in a support chat with MSFT. My guess is when we upgraded to a P1, something didn't update somewhere.

[jragan]

@Greg_Deckler  Apparently we've stumped support. Even though we have P1, Fabric isn't enabled at some high level for our organization or something (a hint to this fact is that all users have the "Free Trial" button in their profile menu - even those with a PBI Pro license - after that button is clicked and a Trial is started, things start working). But, correct me if I'm wrong, if we have a P1, do we still have to buy/add on something else to our subscription to get Fabric access or is something just messed up with our subscription?

[Greg_Deckler]

@jragan I'm not aware of anything extra that you need. All P SKU's were supposed to automatically be provisioned for all additional Fabric features. I mean, you need at least 1 Pro license to be able to publish content but after that, everyone can view stuff for free as long as the workspace is assigned to a Premium capacity.

[jragan · Accepted solution]

@Greg_Deckler So a couple of interesting things have happened since my last response...

1. Discovered a work around where if you create a Trial Fabric Capacity/License, reassign your workspace to that trial, then reassign it back to the original P1 that didn't allow fabric workloads, then the fabric workloads will now work.

2. Our P1 wasn't supporting Fabric Workloads because it is in a region that doesn't support fabric yet (CentralUS). Error messaging around this reason should really be more obvious - if it had I wouldn't have ended up on this wild goose chase.

3. It's interesting that the workaround in step 1 works - either behind the scenes the workspace is still using the trial capacity even though it shows as using the P1 or somehow I've discovered a back-door to enabling fabric in a region that doesn't support it.

[Greg_Deckler]

@jragan Nice troubleshooting and detective work!