Fabric RTI 101: What are Actions?

We’ve talked about events, streams, ingestion, and processing — but all of that only really matters if we take the final step: taking action. Actions are what turn insight into outcomes.

It’s one thing to detect that something unusual has happened. Maybe you see a spike in failed logins, a sudden drop in sales, or an overheating sensor. But if you stop at simply noticing it, the value is lost. The real payoff comes when the system — or the people using it — can respond.

Actions can take many forms. At the simplest level, it might be an alert or notification. For example, you could send a message into a Microsoft Teams channel the moment a critical event occurs. That way, the right people are aware instantly, without waiting for a report or dashboard refresh.

Sometimes the action is more automated. You can trigger a workflow in Power Automate or Logic Apps — things like automatically opening a support ticket, sending an SMS to a field engineer, or scaling up cloud infrastructure in response to increased load. You can even trigger custom applications to respond programmatically to events.

Another important type of action is visualization. A Power BI dashboard that updates in real time is itself an action. It’s what allows managers, operators, or frontline staff to see exactly what’s happening right now, not just what happened yesterday. That visibility drives faster and more confident decision-making.

This is what we mean when we say actions are about closing the loop. The loop starts with raw data being ingested, continues through processing and analysis to generate insight, and then closes when that insight is converted into a real-world outcome — whether that’s preventing fraud, fixing equipment before it fails, or improving customer experience in the moment.

Real-time intelligence only creates business value when it leads to action. Without that final step, you’ve just built a faster reporting system. With it, you’ve built a system that truly impacts the business in real time.
 

Learn more about Fabric RTI

If you really want to learn about RTI right now, we have an online on-demand course that you can enrol in, right now. You’ll find it at Mastering Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence

2026-01-27