Monitoring, Governance, and Endorsements in Microsoft Fabric.

In today’s data-driven world, organizations rely on trusted, secure, and well-managed data to make strategic decisions. But as data volumes grow and analytics environments become more complex, managing data effectively requires more than just good tools; it requires a solid framework for governance, monitoring, and trust. 
Microsoft Fabric delivers on this need by offering a unified analytics platform where monitoring, governance, and endorsements are not just features, they’re foundational pillars working together to ensure compliance, operational visibility, and data confidence. 
This blog explores how these elements interconnect in Microsoft Fabric to support a robust, transparent, and reliable data ecosystem so your teams can operate with both speed and control. 

The Foundation: Governance in Microsoft Fabric 

Governance in Microsoft Fabric is the backbone of ensuring data quality, security, compliance, and discoverability across the data estate.  

Governance in Fabric is about establishing control and visibility over your data assets, across workspaces, reports, datasets, notebooks, pipelines, and more. It helps ensure: 

• The right people have the right access 

• Data is discoverable and documented 

• Sensitive information is protected 

• Actions are auditable and traceable 

Key governance features in Microsoft Fabric include: 

• Data Discovery & Cataloging: Everything you build in Fabric: reports, datasets, and notebooks is automatically cataloged. Users can search, tag, and document assets to improve collaboration and reduce duplication. 

• Data Lineage: Fabric provides end-to-end lineage so you can trace where data comes from and where it flows. This is critical for understanding the impact before making changes. 

• Microsoft Purview Integration: Microsoft Purview offers a unified governance portal where you can view lineage, data classifications, glossary terms, and more. It connects governance across Fabric, Azure, Power BI, and other platforms. 

• Role-Based Access Control: Assign granular permissions to users, ensuring only authorized access to sensitive data. 

• Auditing and Monitoring: Fabric activities, like sharing, publishing, and editing, are captured in Microsoft 365 audit logs, making it easier to meet compliance and security standards. 

• Sensitivity Labels & DLP: Apply sensitivity labels (e.g. Confidential, Internal) to protect sensitive data. Labels are integrated with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies and extend across Power BI and Microsoft 365. 

Best Practice: 

• Enforce naming conventions and workspace structure 

• Apply sensitivity labels where appropriate 

• Use least-privilege access with RBAC roles 

• Document datasets with descriptions and tags 

• Review lineage before modifying pipelines or models 

• Monitor usage via audit logs and workspace metrics 

Endorsements: Building Trust and Discoverability 

Endorsement is a key governance feature that builds trust in your data assets by marking Fabric items as reviewed and approved. Endorsed items display a badge, signaling to users that these assets are reliable. Endorsement helps users trust the data, and it also helps you as an admin manage the overall growth of items across your environment. 

In Microsoft Fabric, Endorsement is a way for you as an admin to designate specific Fabric items as trusted and approved for use across the organization. 

How Endorsements Work: 

• Visibility: Endorsed items display their badges on the Fabric interface, making them easy to spot in lists, search results, and catalogs. 

• Governance Integration: Endorsements work alongside other governance features like role-based access control and Microsoft Purview integration, supporting data compliance and stewardship. 

• Process: Certification and master data badges require review by authorized personnel, ensuring only vetted assets are endorsed. 

Best Practice:  

• Regularly review and update endorsements to reflect changes in data quality or business needs. 

• Clearly document the criteria and process for each endorsement badge within your governance policies. 

• Use endorsements in conjunction with sensitivity labels and access controls for comprehensive data governance. 

Monitoring: Visibility and Control 

Monitoring is the process of collecting system data and metrics that determine if a system is healthy and operating as expected. Monitoring exposes errors that occurred and when they happened. To investigate issues and remediate errors, historical data is analyzed to get a picture of the health of a system or process. 

End-to-end processes need to be managed to ensure they're reliable, performant, and resilient. One aspect of this monitoring is identifying and handling long-running operations and errors effectively. By doing this, you can minimize downtime and quickly address any underlying issues. 

Core Monitoring Capabilities in Microsoft Fabric include: 

1. Monitoring Hub 

The Monitoring Hub is your centralized view in Fabric for operational insights: 

• Pipeline runs: Success/failure logs, duration, error details 

• Notebook and Dataflow activity 

• Capacity usage: CPU, memory, concurrency 

• Dataset refreshes: Status and history 

• Triggers and Activators: Execution results 

2.  Real-Time Monitoring with Activators 

Microsoft Fabric includes Activator (formerly Data Activator), which monitors live or near-real-time data for specific conditions and automatically triggers actions, like: 

• Sending alerts 

• Launching Power Automate workflows 

• Notifying Teams channels or users 

Perfect for proactive monitoring of KPIs, thresholds, and anomalies. 

3. Data Pipelines & Refresh Monitoring 

Fabric’s Data Factory-style pipelines and Power BI dataset refreshes can be monitored through: 

• Run history dashboards 

• Failure logs and retry options 

• Scheduled refresh status 

• Email alerts for failures 

4. Capacity and Resource Monitoring 

Admins can monitor Fabric capacity metrics such as: 

• CPU/memory consumption 

• Concurrent operation limits 

• Dataset refresh queues 

• Overall workspace resource usage 

Use the Capacity Metrics App (Power BI) for detailed telemetry. 

5.  Audit Logs and Activity Tracking 

Fabric is integrated with Microsoft 365 audit logs, giving visibility into: 

• User actions (create, delete, share) 

• Report access logs 

• Dataset interactions 

• Workspace changes 

This supports security monitoring, compliance auditing, and user behavior analysis. 

Best Practice:  

• Identifying what to monitor and tracking metrics. 

• Collecting and analyzing data on a regular basis to identify normal behavior so you can spot anomalies when they occur. 

• Reviewing logs and metrics regularly to identify and establish parameters for normal system behavior. 

• Taking action to resolve problems when metrics and logs show deviations from normal behavior. 

• Optimizing performance by monitoring data to identify bottlenecks or performance issues. 

How These Capabilities Work Together 

• Unified Oversight: Monitoring tools provide the transparency needed for effective governance, surfacing activity, usage, and compliance data across endorsed and non-endorsed assets. 

• Governance-Driven Trust: Endorsements, managed through governance policies and surfaced in monitoring dashboards, help users quickly identify reliable data while supporting compliance and auditability. 

• Continuous Improvement: Insights from monitoring and audit logs inform governance policy updates and endorsement reviews, creating a cycle of continuous data quality and compliance improvement. 

Actionable Recommendations:

• Establish clear governance policies and communicate them organization-wide. 

• Leverage monitoring hubs and Purview to track activity, compliance, and endorsement status. 

• Use endorsements to highlight trusted assets and encourage their use. 

• Regularly review monitoring data, audit logs, and endorsement assignments to adapt to new risks and opportunities. 

When monitoring, governance, and endorsements are integrated effectively, they create a closed loop of visibility, trust, and control. Microsoft Fabric empowers organizations to move beyond isolated tools and toward a cohesive, enterprise-grade data platform. 
By combining real-time monitoring, intelligent governance through Purview, and clear signals of trust with endorsements, Fabric helps you manage data responsibly, reduce risk, and enable confident, data-driven decision-making at every level of your organization. 
Start with a clear governance strategy, surface reliable data through endorsements, and harness monitoring insights to continuously optimize and secure your analytics environment. Together, these capabilities form the foundation for a resilient, compliant, and trusted data culture in Microsoft Fabric.