If you want the notebook to run on a schedule, you must first create an Environment that includes the required packages. The %pip install command is only supported in Fabric when the notebook is executed manually.
Create an Environment in Fabric
Follow these steps to create an Environment:
- In the Fabric workspace, click + New item and select Environment (in Dutch: Omgeving).
- Enter a name for the environment, for example EnvironmentExactOnline, and click Create.
- In the environment, you can configure various default settings for notebooks. In this guide, we will focus on adding the Fabric Connector. Go to External repositories and click Add library.
- Select the option Pip, type the name fabricconnector, select the highest available version, and click Add.
- The Fabric Connector will now be added to the list.
- Click Save in the top-right corner.
- Then click Publish and follow the steps on the screen.
Publishing an environment can take about 5 minutes. Wait until publishing is fully completed before proceeding to the next step.
Use the Environment in a Notebook
Once the environment has been successfully published, you can link it to your notebook so that all settings and libraries are automatically applied during execution.
Follow these steps to set the Environment:
- Open the notebook from the Fabric workspace.
- At the top of the notebook, click the Environment dropdown and choose Change Environment.
- Select the environment you just created from the list and click Confirm.
- You will now see the selected environment displayed at the top of the notebook. Fabric will use this environment whenever the notebook is executed.
Schedule the Notebook
The final step is to set a schedule so that notebooks run automatically at fixed times. Keep in mind that each run consumes Fabric capacity units, which means more frequent refreshes will increase Fabric costs.
An efficient way to keep your data up to date at the lowest Fabric cost:
- Create a first notebook for full-refresh tables and refresh it once per day.
- Create a second notebook for incremental tables, which you can refresh multiple times per day.
- Create a third notebook for rarely changing data, which you refresh once per week or month.
If you choose to pause Fabric capacity, make sure it is active at the times when refreshes are scheduled.
Set the schedule per notebook. Click the […] button on the notebook row and choose Schedule.
Click + Add schedule. We recommend selecting Weekly, so you can set specific times for each day of the week. For example:
You can set multiple schedules per notebook, allowing you to apply different refresh patterns for each day of the week, depending on your needs. For example, you might schedule different times on Tuesday through Thursday, and use another pattern for Monday and Friday, or for weekends.
Important: When setting schedules, keep in mind that the Exact Online API is under maintenance between 3:30 AM and 4:30 AM, so data cannot be refreshed during this time. In practice, we also notice that the period between 1:00 AM and 1:30 AM is a busy time for the Exact Online API, so we recommend avoiding that window as well.