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Fabric Planning: Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Fabric Planning — what you need before you start, how capacity and billing work, how security and permissions behave, and where to go when something isn't working. If your question isn't here, ask in the forums.

Getting started

Your Fabric admin needs to enable a few tenant settings and you need a workspace backed by Fabric capacity. The full checklist is on the Prerequisites page on Microsoft Learn. If Fabric Planning does not appear in your workspace, that page is the first place to check.
Any F-SKU or Power BI Premium P1 or higher works. Power BI Pro and PPU are not sufficient. F2 is enough to experiment; production deployments realistically start at F4. For detailed pricing, role definitions, and cost calculator, see capacity and cost calculator.
Yes. You can connect a Plan item to an existing Power BI semantic model, provided you have the required permissions, and the semantic model meets the supported capacity and connection requirements.
Go to your Fabric workspace, select New item, choose Plan. Connect it to your semantic model or upload an Excel file as a starting point. A Fabric SQL database is created automatically in your workspace to store your plan data. From there, create your first planning sheet and start building. The getting started guide on Microsoft Learn walks through each step.
No. A Plan item connects to one semantic model. If you need to work with data from different semantic models, you need to create separate Plan items or combine the required data into a single semantic model before connecting.
The Training section of this community has guided exercises, data files, FAQs, and walkthrough videos. Official Microsoft Learn documentation is at https://learn.microsoft.com/fabric/iq/plan. For feature walkthrough videos, see the Videos section.
No. The semantic model does not necessarily have to be in the same workspace. You can connect to a semantic model hosted in another workspace, provided you have the required access permissions.

About Fabric Planning

It is a first-party Microsoft workload co-engineered with Lumel. There is no separate vendor contract, no additional licensing, and nothing to install. You can access it from Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft Fabric supports it.

Fabric Planning ships as a single Plan item with three integrated capabilities sharing the same data, security model, and Fabric backend. 

Planning is the core budgeting and forecasting engine. Build plans on your semantic models, model scenarios, collaborate across teams, and write back to Fabric SQL automatically. 

Intelligence is the reporting and analysis layer. Plan versus actuals in a single reconciled view, with IBCS-certified financial reporting and dashboards built for business users. 

PowerTable handles forward-looking reference data and structured workflows, with row and column-level access control, approval routing, and sync to Fabric SQL. 

You can use all three together or start with just one. 

Architecturally different. Previous solutions were custom visuals built on the Power BI SDK, connected to a separate modeling engine, and none were certified by Microsoft. Fabric Planning is a native Fabric workload. The planning application and data live in the same platform, secured and certified by Microsoft.
Yes, but supported limits apply depending on the type of operation, client resources, Fabric capacity, and Power BI query limits. For larger datasets, it is recommended to design the planning model carefully and split workloads where appropriate.
Yes. Depending on the scenario, data can be exported for further analysis or sharing. Available export formats and options can vary based on the type of content being exported.

Pricing and Billing

There is no separate license or per-user fee. Fabric Planning consumes capacity units from your existing Fabric capacity. Three user roles drive consumption: Planner, Stakeholder, and Viewer. Billing started on August 1, 2026. For detailed pricing, role definitions, and cost calculator, see capacity and cost calculator.

No. Billing only starts when there is activity. If nobody opens a plan item, no role is triggered and there is no charge. The first time someone acts, that sets their role and starts a 30-day billing window for it. No activity, no cost.

A Viewer session: 0.05 CU held for 30 days, under $7 at US list rates. The upgrade is what to govern: entering one number turns that Viewer into a roughly $30 Stakeholder session, and touching the model opens a roughly $150 Planner session.

You're billed for the window, not the volume. Once you engage, that 30-day window is committed at your role's rate, and ten entries cost the same as ten thousand.
No. Once a session has started, it remains active for the full 30-day period and cannot currently be manually ended.

Yes. Microsoft provides guidance and a capacity estimation approach to help organizations understand expected planning consumption before a larger deployment. Actual requirements will depend on the number of users, their roles, and overall usage patterns.

Technical and Security

No. Fabric Planning runs on Fabric capacity. If you connect to a Power BI semantic model, the semantic model author needs a Pro license to build and maintain it, but that is a Power BI requirement, not a Fabric Planning one.
Only users with Member or Admin permissions in the workspace can create Plan items and semantic model connections. Contributors can edit existing Plan items but cannot create new ones. Viewers cannot create or edit.
Fabric Planning security works in three layers. At the foundation, row-level security defined on your Power BI semantic model is automatically inherited — no separate setup needed. On top of that, Fabric Workspace security controls access: your workspace role determines whether you get an editing view (Admins, Members, Contributors) or a reading view (Viewers). The third layer, Fabric Planning app-level security, adds fine-grained controls scoped to each planning app — covering scenarios, input measures, row view/edit permissions, commenting, and writeback.
Yes. Reading mode allows users to interact with the Plan item while restricting changes to the core design. Certain planning and collaboration actions can still be available depending on the configuration and permissions.
Yes, built in at the cell, row, and column level. Every change is logged automatically, including who changed what and when. No configuration required.
Yes. Concurrency is supported. The last edit to a cell wins, as in Excel. Row-level security reduces conflicts by giving people access only to the parts of the plan they own. The audit trail lets you see and revert any unintended change.

Most Fabric regions. See the region availability page on Microsoft Learn for the current list.

Not currently. Both are listed as known limitations. Check the prerequisites page for updates as the product matures.
No. Semantic models published in My workspace are not supported for Fabric Planning connections. Use a shared Fabric workspace instead.

Community

Post in the Forums in the topic that matches your use case — FP&A, Workforce Planning, PowerTable, Intelligence Sheets, and so on. Include which feature you are working with, what you are trying to do, and what is happening instead. A screenshot helps.

Post on the Ideas board. Describe the capability, include the business scenario it would solve, and vote on ideas from other members. The product team reviews ideas posted there.

Post in the Training feedback thread in the forums or reply to any blog post or video directly.

For bugs or product issues, contact Microsoft support following this step-by-step guide. For questions about how something works or how to configure it, post in the relevant forum here, and the community or product team will help.
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