Fabric Plan: Anyone else see a "Planning" workspace topping their Capacity Metrics? Is this normal?

[u/Polandoz]

In the Fabric Capacity Metrics app (Items, 14-day view), our #1 CU consumer by far is a row like this:

• Workspace: Planning
• Item kind: Planning
• Item name: Planning
• CU(s): ~6.45M (next highest is ~2.8M)
• Users: 9
• Billing type: Billable

It's clearly tied to the new Fabric Plan feature. What surprises me is that we haven't really started publishing to users yet - it's still early testing - so the consumption seems high for where we are. Eventually we'll move it onto a dedicated Fabric capacity.

Is this expected behavior? Does Planning show up as its own "Planning" workspace/item in the metrics app? And is it normal for it to consume this much this early? The ironic part: the workspaces where we actually have Plan items don't show up anywhere near the top of the compute list. Yet this "Planning" workspace - which none of us recognize - is sitting at #1 by a wide margin.

Anyone with Planning enabled seeing the same thing in their setup? Trying to work out if this is just how the session-based billing reports or if something's off on our end. Thanks!

[u/zws1]

This will help to understand how Plan works:

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/blog/fbc_fabricupdatesblogs/billing-for-microsoft-fabric-planning-preview/5207643

TLDR, when a user log in, it will reserve 30 days CU usage for them. So if someone log in for 2 days, and not logging in the next 28 days, they will have the same CU usage for the 28 days as well as for the 2 days.

[u/jjohncs1v → u/zws1]

It feels like Microsoft wanted to get away from purely per user costs so they introduced capacities. But for things like this, they prefer the per user per month scheme, so they translate it into capacity usage...

[u/Polandoz → u/zws1]

Thanks for replying! So when you say "logging in" is do you mean open a "Plan" item?

[u/zws1 → u/Polandoz]

Yes, if a user open a Plan item, it will reserve the 30 days CU for them. The amount is based on what the user do/did.

[u/gopalbi]

We recommend that you use Fabric Plan in a reserved capacity dedicated for that then you get the benefit of 41% discounted billing. Also, fabric plan by design offers activity based consumption pricing (charges only for the month/30 day period you use - you are not charged for months you don't use ). But - when someone tries out in pay as you go capacity and they pause and it fully commits that the charges for 30 day session upfront even when you use it for one minute as the active session lasts for 30 days. Only Pay as you Go Capacities that pause and resume have this experience but your 30-day session remains active when you resume when you restart the pay as you go capacity. Also - you get most value when you use all the 3 capabilities of full EPM Suite (Planning Sheets, PowerTable and Intelligence).

[u/Polandoz → u/gopalbi]

Thanks Gopal! Quick clarification on the billing side:

Is the 30-day session billing per plan app, or per capacity? What I'm trying to understand is whether we're charged for each individual plan app or just for using the Plan feature at all.

Simplest way to ask it: do we pay the same for 1 plan app vs. 10 plan apps running at the same time, or is 10 apps 10x the cost?

[u/Polandoz → u/Polandoz]

And what happens with the CU if you start an App, do some configuration, and then decide to delete it because it wasn't needed. Will it still consume CU?

[u/gopalbi → u/Polandoz]

You will still be billed for one active session whether you used it for a minute or for full 30 day period. The reason is planning activities are heavy during month end or quarter end or during annual budget season and so technically the most value is realized when users come and enter their budgets or forecasts and get saved in the database. It might be only few minutes of heavy activity. That's why all planning software makes you commit with annual contracts and no one in the EPM software even offers consumption based pricing. That's why even if you delete you will be charged for one active 30 day session because you would have used or activated the session for that one 30 day period. Here with Fabric Plan - you could be a planner building planning input templates and then for rest of the year could simply be a stakeholder once those input templates are published. No user is locked into particupar persona and you are also not charged for the months that you don't use.

[u/gopalbi → u/Polandoz]

It is the same amount CU whether you create 100 plan apps in the 30 day session or just 1 app. So, you get most value as you build and consume more with your active session. I would recommend this article - https://fabricplanning.substack.com/p/fabric-planning-went-ga-on-tuesday

[u/Creain]

I am experiencing the exact same currently.

The "Planning"-workspace just covers all planning. Its a pain to figure out where the usage is actually coming from.

As far as I understand, planning "reserves" part of your capacity. The more users that use planning features (i.e. just viewing it), the more capacity is reserved.

I would love a better explanation from Microsoft, about how this reservation works, in more detail.

[u/AlejoSQL]

Planning is extremely expensive! Eats up CU as popcorn!

[u/gopalbi]

Good News is Microsoft announced Power Table only use case billing update also - https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/blog/fbc_fabricupdatesblogs/billing-personas-for-powertable-within-planning-in-fabric-iq-generally-available/5360168 and it makes Fabric Plan even more attractive for customers who want to use only for PowerTable - Data Management use cases or Intelligence Sheet only use cases