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CSA Loom — the Microsoft Fabric experience for Azure tenants where Fabric isn't yet available: lakehouses, warehouses, notebooks, semantic models, Activator rules, Data Agents, across Commercial, GCC, GCC-High, and DoD IL5

Tutorial: Notepad editor

CSA Loom notepad editor — a live-data document. An ordered list of blocks (heading, text, or KQL query) where the query blocks run inline against Azure Data Explorer and render a live results grid, so narrative and data sit together in one artifact. Azure-native — no Microsoft Fabric.

What it is

A regular document goes stale the moment you paste a number into it. A notepad does not: the numbers are query blocks, and re-running them re-reads the live data. Use it to write the reasoning around an investigation with the evidence attached and reproducible.

Three block types:

Block What it is
Heading A section title, rendered as a heading beneath its input
Text Free narrative prose
KQL query A Kusto query with a Run button and its own results grid

When to use it

  • An incident write-up, investigation log, or analysis narrative where the supporting numbers must stay live.
  • A shift-handover or runbook page whose checks anyone can re-run in place.
  • For a point-and-click pipeline over one table, use an Analysis board; for a BI document with charts and governed metrics, use a Code report.

Step-by-step in Loom

  1. Create the item. + New item → Notepad. The header shows a Live-data document badge and an empty state: "No blocks yet — add a heading, text, or KQL query block."
  2. Add a block. Choose Heading, Text, or KQL query in the Add block dropdown and click Add. The new block appends to the end.
  3. Write. Headings use a single-line input and render as a section title below it. Text blocks use a resizable textarea. Query blocks use a monospaced textarea, for example: 
    Events | summarize count() by bin(Timestamp, 1h)
  4. Run a query block. Each query block has its own Run button. Loom executes it against Azure Data Explorer and renders a results grid directly beneath the block with a caption reading <n> row(s) · <n> ms. The grid shows the first 100 rows. Only one block runs at a time — the others' Run buttons disable while one is executing.
  5. Reorder and prune. Every block header carries move-up, move-down, and remove buttons, so the document's order is entirely yours.
  6. Save. Save persists the whole block list to the item's state; a MessageBar confirms Saved. or reports the failure honestly.

The Azure backend it rides on

  • Query execution: Azure Data Explorer, via POST /api/items/notepad/<id>/run-block.
  • Persistence: PATCH /api/items/notepad/<id> writes state.blocks; the editor reads it back from the item store on open.

Honest gates

Condition What you see Exact remediation
ADX not configured A warning MessageBar carrying the run route's own gate remediation text appended to the error Apply the remediation the gate names — set the ADX cluster variable on the console env
Query fails The error message from ADX, shown verbatim Fix the KQL
Save fails "Save failed." rather than a silent discard Retry; check session / connectivity

No Fabric required

Azure Data Explorer only. No Fabric capacity, workspace, OneLake path, or Power BI workspace is used on any path.

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