Intune provides a lot of data that can be exported via interfaces, which is also the foundation for Intune reporting and analytics. But wouldn’t it be cool if you could have everything from the data export to the Power BI dashboard in one place in a portal and additionally query the data Graph provides you with via SQL to build complex queries. That’s exactly what Microsoft Fabric delivers. In this blog we would like to take a closer look at this new platform.
What is Microsoft Fabric?
Microsoft Fabric is an all-in-one analytics solution that covers data ingestion, data science, real-time analytics, and business intelligence. It is currently in the public preview state and was released on May 24.
It simplifies the analytics process by integrating components from Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Azure Data Factory into one platform. Fabric’s foundation is based on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, providing ease of use and integration. It is built based on a persona model for the personas data engineering, data science, data warehouse and real-time analytics.
Additionally, Fabric combines OneLake and Lakehouse architectures, providing a unified storage solution and facilitating data sharing and collaboration. It also contains a OneDrive-like integration into the Windows Explorer.
How to access Microsoft Fabric?
https://app.fabric.microsoft.com/
What is the OneLake?
OneLake is a unified, logical Data Lake for the entire organization, similar to OneDrive for data. It eliminates the need for multiple data lakes by providing a single location for all analytics data. With OneLake you benefit from having a unified Data Lake accessible to multiple analysis engines, avoiding data duplication. If you want to start smaller before building a Fabric-based solution, you might also like this guide to getting Microsoft Intune status reports with PowerShell. It simplifies collaboration and data sharing across teams and supports seamless integration with various engines such as Spark, T-SQL, and Power BI, allowing users to leverage the best engine for their tasks without copying data.
Where can I find additional information?
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-fabric
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/get-started/microsoft-fabric-overview
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/onelake/onelake-overview
How to enable Fabric?
- Go to the Azure portal (portal.azure.com)
- Search for fabric and select Microsoft Fabric
- Click create fabric capacity
- Select Subscription and Resource group and enter a capacity name and a region.
- Click Review + create
- Click Create
- Create a new workspace under app.fabric.microsoft.com and enable and select the Fabric Capacity
- Open the Admin Portal
- Search for Microsoft Fabric and activate the Service for the whole organization or for a specific security group
How to bring Intune data into Microsoft Fabric?
- The first thing what you have to do is to switch to the Data Engineer tab and select Notebook
- Copy the following code into the Notebook. Insert the tenant_id, client_id,client_secret. To do this you have to create an app registration. How you can do this is described below.
Use this only for testing purposes. Fabric is currently in the public preview and there is not yet an easy way to use managed identity authentication or a connection to a key vault to store the client_secret
import requests
import json
# Get auth token
tenant_id = ''
client_id = ''
client_secret = ''
table_name = 'managedDevices'
def get_auth_token(client_id:str, client_secret:str, tenant_id:str, header:bool = True, resource: str = "https://graph.microsoft.com"):
auth_url = f"https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant_id}/oauth2/token"
auth_payload = {
'grant_type': 'client_credentials',
'client_id': client_id,
'client_secret': client_secret,
'resource': resource,
}
auth_response = requests.post(auth_url, data=auth_payload)
auth_response.raise_for_status()
auth_result = auth_response.json()
if header:
return {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
"Authorization": f"Bearer {auth_result['access_token']}"
}
return auth_result['access_token']
def send_request(url:str, header, method:str="GET", params=None, json=None, data=None):
if method == "GET":
response = requests.get(url, headers=header, params=params, verify=False)
elif method == "POST":
response = requests.post(url, headers=header,params=params, json=json, data=data, verify=False)
else:
raise ValueError(
"Invalid method. Supported methods are 'GET' and 'POST'.")
response.raise_for_status()
if len(response.content) <1:
return None
return response.json()
try:
auth_token = get_auth_token(client_id = client_id, client_secret = client_secret, tenant_id = tenant_id)
except Exception as e:
error_message = f"Failed to get access token: {e}"
print(error_message)
# Get content
try:
response = send_request(url='https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/deviceManagement/managedDevices', header=auth_token, method="GET")
df = spark.read.json(sc.parallelize(response['value']).map(lambda x: json.dumps(x)))
except Exception as e:
error_message = f"Failed to send request: {e}"
print(error_message)
df.write.format('delta').mode('overwrite').saveAsTable(table_name)- Click Add to create a lakehouse -> Select new lakehouse -> enter a name
- Now the lakehouse is created. Click run to execute the notebook
- You will find the table now in the Lakehouse
- If you go back and select the SQL endpoint, then you can view the data or query the data via SQL.
How to create an App registration
- Open the Microsoft Entra admin center
- Select App registration -> + New app registration
- Enter a name
- Navigate to API permissions -> + Add a permission -> Select Microsoft Graph
- Select Application permission and add the following permissions:
- DeviceManagementManagedDevices.Read.All
- DeviceManagementApps.Read.All
- Click Grant admin consent for xxx
- Go to the Certificate & secret section and click + New client secret
- You can find all the other information in the Overview section
How to create a schedule
- Select +New -> Data pipeline and enter a name
- Click Notebook -> Settings and select the created Notebook
- Click Schedule and select a frequency
