Currently in the Microsoft documentation it talks to not being able to connect from a Public Workspace to a Private Link workspace using DirectLake to a Semantic Model.

What this means in my mind is it is where it is a direct connection from a Public Workspace to a Private Link workspace

NOTE: A Private Link workspace is where inbound connectivity is blocked from the public internet.

In this blog post I am going to show you how to work around this, where at the end I will show you how you can still use DirectLake for a Semantic Model between a Public and Private Link Workspace.

Please refer to my blog here for setting up Private Link Workspace: https://www.fourmoo.com/2026/05/28/creating-a-private-link-in-microsoft-fabric-no-public-access/

Setup

Currently I have got the following setup below.

Private Link Workspace

My Private Link Workspace has been created in Azure

As shown below my Workspace has been configured for Private Link

Below is my existing Lakehouse where I am going to be using the source table as a shortcut.

And finally, to show you that it will not work when accessing from the public internet.

Public Workspace

I had to create a Managed Endpoint in the Public workspace, so I could successfully connect to the Private Link Workspace as shown below once activated and approved.

As shown below here is my Lakehouse in my Public Workspace.

Virtual Machine in VNET

For me to now work on the Private Link Workspace I created a Virtual Machine (VM) in the same VNET internal network.

This allows me to connect to both the Private Link Workspace and the Public workspace from a single PC.

Below is the VNET created which is used for the Private Link Workspace

And here is when I created the VM I used the same Virtual Network

Solution Setup

Below are the steps on how I got this working!

The first step was to create a shortcut in the public workspace.

NOTE: I found that an easy way to create the shortcut was to create the shortcut from a Virtual Machine (VM) that is in the same VNET as the Private Link Workspace.

  • The reason for this is this the VM can access both the Private Link Workspace and Public workspace at the same time.
  • This means it can resolve or get access to the Private Link Workspace.
  • Below is what happens if I try and create the shortcut via the Public Workspace.

Creating the Shortcut in the Public Workspace

  • What I did in my Lakehouse was I went to create a new Table Shortcut
  • I then selected my Lakehouse in the Private Link Workspace
  • I then selected the table as shown below.
  • For the connection method I selected Passthrough identity because I want to ensure that my data is secured with OneLake Security Roles.
  • I then updated the Shortcut Name so that I know it is a Shortcut table
  • I could then see the Shortcut table, as shown below this is in the Public Workspace

Creating the Semantic Model using Direct Lake

Now that I have got the shortcut created in my Lakehouse, I can create a semantic model using DirectLake.

  • I created a new Semantic Model and selected the Shortcut table.
  • I could then see my semantic model was using Direct Lake
  • Finally, I created my report, yeah I know it is not a great report 😊

Summary

Thanks for reading, any comments or suggestions are most welcome 😊