Set up your Environment

Your Environment is a dedicated General Validation workspace on your existing Microsoft Fabric capacity. It holds the Results Lakehouse and the validation job that every Run in your Organization uses. Setup creates it once; each Organization has one Environment. The Environment is never a source or target for validation, and it does not appear in the Table Pair pickers. Only an Owner can set up, reinstall, or remove the Environment. Nothing is purchased: setup uses a capacity you already have and does not purchase or resize capacity.

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Before you start

Confirm the following before you begin:

• You are an Owner of your Organization in General Validation.
• An active Fabric capacity that your Microsoft account can see. Only active capacities you can see are offered during setup.
• Permission in Fabric to create workspaces and to assign them to that capacity.
• Tenant settings that allow Spark Job Definitions and Fabric Runtime 2.0. Setup sets the dedicated workspace’s default Spark runtime to Fabric Runtime 2.0 and installs one Spark Job Definition.
• If your tenant requires an administrator to approve new applications, that approval is complete. See Sign-in and team access.
• A Fabric tenant on Microsoft’s commercial cloud. Contact support@generalvalidation.com before setting up with Private Link, regional-only endpoints, or a sovereign cloud.

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Run setup

1. Open Environment. A newly activated Organization opens this page automatically.
2. Choose a Fabric capacity. The list shows only active capacities your account can see, as capacity name and region. When exactly one capacity is eligible, it is selected for you. The hint reads “Uses your existing capacity. No new capacity is purchased.”
3. Click Set up General Validation.
4. Keep the page open. The button changes to Setting up General Validation… and the page reads “Keep this page open while Fabric finishes setup.”
5. Watch the Environment map beside the controls. Its heading changes to Installation progress and it shows a counter such as 2 of 5, a progress bar, and the current step as “Working on:” followed by the step name. The five steps are Dedicated workspace, Spark runtime, Results Lakehouse, Validation job, and Connect to General Validation. Each step moves from Waiting to In progress to Complete.
6. When the last step completes, the map heading changes to Your validation environment and the control card reads Ready for validation.

The five steps run in order. The first four create the workspace, set its Spark runtime, create the Results Lakehouse, and install the validation job in your Fabric tenant. The last step saves a reference to those items in General Validation so every member of your Organization uses the same Environment. Every call to Fabric goes directly from your browser to Microsoft with your own signed-in identity. If a step fails:

• The step stays marked Needs attention and the map reads “Stopped at:” followed by the step name. The reason appears in an alert above the controls.
• The button changes to Retry setup with the hint “Retry to continue from the resources already created.” Click it to continue from the failed step. A retry reuses the workspace, Lakehouse, and job that already exist and does not create duplicates.
• If you reload or close the page during setup, the progress display resets. Click Set up General Validation again; setup resumes with the resources that already exist.

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What setup creates

Setup never adopts or modifies an existing workspace. Spark compute for your Runs consumes the capacity you chose. For the full inventory and the permissions setup uses, see What General Validation creates and needs in Fabric.

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After setup

The control card reads Ready for validation and lists Workspace with the workspace name and Results Lakehouse with GeneralValidationResults. The Environment map shows each of the five steps as Configured. Contributors and Readers see the same card with View Table Pairs in place of Create a Table Pair.

• View in Fabric opens the dedicated workspace in the Fabric portal in a new tab, where you can inspect the workspace, the Lakehouse, the job, and its run history.
• Create a Table Pair is the next action. See Create Table Pairs.

Reinstall replaces the validation job in the dedicated workspace and keeps the Results Lakehouse, so earlier Runs stay readable. The maintenance text reads “Reinstall restores the validation job and keeps your Results.” Use it after a product update that requires a newer validation job, which the release notes announce, or when the job in Fabric was changed or deleted. Reinstall repeats the Spark runtime, Results Lakehouse, Validation job, and Connect to General Validation steps on the existing workspace and deletes nothing. While it runs, the card reads Updating your Environment and the button reads Reinstalling…. On success the page shows “Validation reinstalled. Your Results are preserved.” If it fails, the card reads Reinstall needs attention; click Retry reinstall. Remove deletes the dedicated workspace. Click it to open the Remove Environment? dialog, which states that this deletes the dedicated workspace and everything inside it, including validation jobs, Results, and row evidence, and that any running jobs in the workspace are affected. Click Remove Environment to confirm or Cancel to keep the Environment. After the workspace is deleted, General Validation forgets the Environment and the page returns to the one-time setup state with the notice “Environment removed. Set up General Validation again whenever you’re ready.” Removing the Environment keeps your Table Pairs, Tests, and Run history in General Validation, including each Run’s verdicts and counts. The exact values and mismatch evidence that were stored in the deleted workspace are gone and can no longer be opened from a Run. Source and target Tables in other workspaces are unaffected. Until an Owner sets up the Environment again, Run validation and Run all are unavailable.

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Share the workspace with your team

Membership in your General Validation Organization does not grant any access in Fabric, and access in Fabric does not add anyone to your Organization. Manage the two separately:

• Invite teammates to the Organization from Organization and give each one a role. See Sign-in and team access.
• Have a Fabric workspace administrator share the dedicated workspace with the same people through Fabric. Teammates who run validation need read access to the source and target Tables and write access to the Results Lakehouse. Teammates who open a Result’s details or mismatch evidence need read access to the Results Lakehouse, because their browser reads those values directly from OneLake.

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Troubleshooting

No capacity is listed. The page reads “No available Fabric capacity found. Ask your Fabric administrator for permission to assign workspaces to an active capacity, then refresh.” Ask your Fabric administrator to grant that permission on an active capacity, then click Refresh. A setup step fails. Click Retry setup. If the same step fails again, read the alert:

• “Microsoft denied setup access. Ask your Fabric administrator to allow workspace creation and capacity assignment.” Your account cannot create a workspace on the chosen capacity. Ask your Fabric administrator to review your permission on the capacity and the tenant settings for workspace creation, the Spark runtime, and Spark Job Definitions.
• “Setup already started on another capacity. Select that capacity to resume setup.” Choose the capacity that already holds the General Validation workspace.
• “Fabric setup is still pending. Retry setup to check the workspace.” or “Fabric setup could not yet be confirmed. Retry setup to check whether the job is ready.” Wait a moment, then click Retry setup.
• “Fabric could not complete setup. Open the workspace for details.” Open the workspace in the Fabric portal and inspect the failed operation.
• “Multiple General Validation workspaces were found. Resolve the duplicate workspaces in Fabric.” Similar messages report duplicate Results Lakehouses and duplicate validation jobs. Remove or rename the duplicates in Fabric, then retry.
• “The existing General Validation job has a different or unverifiable definition. Rename or remove it in Fabric before retrying setup.” The job in the workspace was modified or is not the one General Validation installs. Rename or remove it in Fabric, then retry.

You see “Connect your Microsoft account to Fabric to continue.” Click Connect Microsoft Fabric and approve with the same Microsoft account and directory you used to sign in to General Validation. Contributors and Readers cannot run setup. They see Environment not configured with “An organization owner can set up validation for your team.” Ask an Owner to run setup, or ask an Owner to change your role. The workspace was deleted in Fabric outside the app. Click Remove to forget the Environment; a workspace that no longer exists is safe to remove. Then set up General Validation again. Setup, Reinstall, and Remove call Microsoft directly from your browser, so a failure in those calls does not appear in General Validation’s logs; the request is visible in your Fabric monitoring. For errors that General Validation reports, contact support@generalvalidation.com with the error code and the request or Run ID shown with the message. See Troubleshooting and logs.