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These docs are still being polished — a few sections and screenshots are on the way. Spotted something off? Let us know.

Metadata backups — reports, models, dataflows & notebooks (Automation)

MK Automation backs up the metadata behind your tenant's reports, semantic models, dataflows and notebooks — TMDL, M code, report layout — on a schedule. Metadata only: never the objects themselves or any actual data.

What it does

MK Automation can take scheduled backups of the metadata behind your tenant’s content — reports, semantic models, dataflows, and Fabric notebooks — and write them wherever you want: a Fabric Lakehouse or Warehouse table, your data warehouse, blob storage, or a Git repo.

You can run it tenant-wide with a Fabric Admin account, or with Contributor (or higher) access to specific workspaces — in which case the backup covers just the workspaces your account can reach.

Metadata only — never your data

This is the important part: the backups capture only the definitions, not the objects or any of the data inside them.

  • Semantic models → TMDL — tables, columns, measures, relationships, RLS roles: the model definition, not the rows it contains.
  • Dataflows & models → M / Power Query code — the transformation logic, not the data it produces.
  • Reports → layout and metadata — pages, visuals, and field bindings, not the rendered values.
  • Notebooks → notebook code.

They do not contain the data in your models, the rows in your tables, or any report output. That keeps backups small, free of PII / data- governance concerns, easy to diff, and safe to store anywhere.

Why metadata backups

  • Recover from accidental changes — restore a measure, an M query, or a report layout to a known-good version.
  • Version history & diffing — back up daily to a table or Git repo and diff definitions over time to see what changed (and, paired with activity data, who changed it).
  • Audit & compliance — keep a definition trail without duplicating sensitive data.
  • Disaster recovery — rebuild definitions quickly without depending on the Service.

Automation only

Scheduled, tenant-wide metadata backups across all four item types are an MK Automation feature — they run on your schedule inside your own Fabric tenant and write to the destination you choose. (The Enterprise desktop app offers on-demand DAX backup & restore for an individual model; the scheduled, all-item-type backup is what Automation adds.)