Capacity not turning on when a user accesses a report

Introduction

The cost optimization feature makes it easy to efficiently manage the capacity of Microsoft Fabric or Power BI Embedded.

This feature aims to reduce costs and adjust the capacity size to handle demand peaks, providing more effective administration, especially in usage-based billing models.

If you are using the Fabric trial period, you will not be able to start or pause the capacity, as it is an internal resource that you do not control.

This article only applies if you have already contracted your dedicated capacity in the Azure portal.

How capacity optimization works

• When this optimization is enabled, only users with user or group level permissions will be able to view a report if the capacity is turned off. If the capacity is off and the user has permission to reactivate it, the system will show the pop-up below and the capacity will be turned on on demand and the report will load automatically.\

  
• If a user without permission to automatically turn on the capacity tries to access a report while the capacity is turned off, they will not be able to view the report.\

  
• You can set the number of minutes during which your capacity can remain idle (i.e., with no open reports). When the system detects that no report has been accessed during that period, the capacity is automatically paused.

• During the period when the capacity is paused, you will not be charged. Although reactivating the capacity is fast and nearly imperceptible, some users may find the process inconvenient. To minimize this impact, you can schedule the reactivation of the capacity.

If the user is trying to access the report when the capacity is off and it is not being turned on automatically, you can follow the steps below to identify which configuration was not set up correctly.

1. Check if permissions were assigned in Azure

Visit the Azure Permissions page to see how to correctly assign permissions so that Power Embedded can control the capacity.

2. Check if the capacity was imported into Power Embedded

Access the Capacities page and verify that the contracted capacity appears in the list.

If it does not, click the Reload button to refresh the capacity list.

3. Check if the capacity is configured correctly

If you see the message "Not configured" next to the capacity, it means that the capacity needs to be configured to work in Power Embedded.

Need help? Visit the Configure the Capacity in Power Embedded page.

4. Check if the workspace is associated with the capacity in Power BI service

To associate a workspace with a contracted capacity, access Power BI service.

Access the workspace whose capacity you want to change and click the Workspace Settings button.

On the screen that opened, click on the License Information option and then click the Edit button

In the capacity list, choose your contracted capacity and then click the Apply button.

WARNING: Although not very common, these capacity changes during business hours can cause unavailability of reports in that workspace, as there may be cases where some models become locked, requiring a dataset refresh process to unlock them, which can take a considerable amount of time depending on the data model.

Also, be careful if you are changing the capacity to a SMALLER one than the previous one, or if you are migrating from a PRO or PPU capacity to a dedicated capacity (Fabric, Embedded, or Premium), as there may be a performance impact.

5. Check if the workspace is associated with the capacity in Power Embedded

After completing the previous process, it is important to access the Workspaces page and click the Reload button to confirm that the workspace is now associated with the correct capacity.

For cost optimization to be applied correctly, the capacity name must appear in the Workspace capacity field, as shown in the image below.

6. Check if the capacity cost optimization is enabled

After completing all the previous steps, click the Actions > Edit button.

By clicking the actions button and selecting "Edit", you will be able to define the cost optimization settings in the portal.

You need to toggle on "Enable cost optimization (Pause and start automatically)", select the inactivity time to pause the resource, and save the changes.

7. Check if the user has permission to turn on the capacity (or is in a group with that permission)

It is important to verify that the user trying to access the report has permission to turn on a disabled capacity.

To do this, access the Users page, click Actions > Edit, and look at the Permissions tab:

Check the groups this user belongs to and access the Groups page to check whether any of the groups has permission to turn on the capacity and also has access to that report.

Permissions granted to a user apply to ALL reports that user has access to. If you need to limit these permissions to specific reports, grant this permission using Groups.

8. Check that the global permission to block turning on the capacity is NOT enabled

Access the "Settings" page, navigate to the "Parameters" tab and expand the "Global Permissions" section.

Check that the "Cannot turn on report capacity" permission is NOT enabled.

After completing the steps above, the capacity will be configured and should turn on automatically when it is off and a user with permission to turn on the capacity tries to access the report.