PerformancePointing: Fabric IQ, Plan, and a Unified Virtual Data Estate

Microsoft PerformancePoint Planning is dead. Long live PerformancePoint Planning.

I'm shocked! In 2026, coming out of FabCon2026, as part of Fabric IQ, we've now got Fabric Plan in preview.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/iq/plan/overview

Writeback in preview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/iq/plan/infobridge-how-to-write-back-data

Everything else in preview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/fundamentals/whats-new?source=recommendations

And about 20 features that went GA in March, 2026 as part of FabCon announcements.

Medallion architecture and multi-company consolidations as a union-all statement in Fabric indeed!

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Data-Warehouse-Community-Blog/Simplifying-Multi-Company-Data-Consolidation-with-Medallion/ba-p/4849789

Organizations rely heavily on data to run their operations, but key processes such as planning, reporting, and analytics are often managed with separate tools. This strategy leads to data duplication, increased manual effort, and a risk to data consistency. Planning is frequently done in spreadsheets/specialized SaaS, reporting in separate systems, and dashboards provide only a limited view of overall business performance.

There is still some documentation for PerformancePoint Services in Sharepoint to brush up on.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/performancepoint-services-overview

EOL Sharepoint on-prem, hello Sharepoint Online

Next month, April 2026, Sharepoint 2010 and 2013 workflows will stop working in Sharepoint Online.

In July 2026, Sharepoint 2016 and 2019 on-prem will be no longer supported.

SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and Sharepoint Online are the paths teams should have already adopted at this point.

Next I'll look for when Microsoft adopts PEL (PerformancePoint Expression Language) again.

PEL (PerformancePoint Expression Language)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/sharepoint-2007/bb839163(v=office.12)

PEL was an awkward yet powerful language for financial planning, consolidation and complex rules. Generally it was replaced by DAX, Python, MDX and various other components, though I still feel it along with hierarchy building and writeback from Excel in PerformancePoint Planning were nuggets of value that MS didn't transition properly.

PEL features that are not supported by MDX:
- PEL supports parameters in rules. The values of the parameters can be supplied at run time.
- PEL supports variables that represent model properties. Rules can use variables. The assigned value for a variable persists until it is explicitly changed.
- PEL provides explicit support for computations that are related to consolidation, currency conversion, intercompany reconciliation, shares and ownership values, and exchange-rate accounting.

Perhaps in 2026 we'll see a unified language, a blend of MDX, DAX, BIML, KQL, SQL, Excel formulas, VBA, C#, Typescript, Markdown, Powershell and Python.

Actually we do have this, it's called Agentic AI.