OneLake Shortcuts in Microsoft Fabric — Complete Guide

What Is a OneLake Shortcut?

A OneLake shortcut is an object in OneLake that points to another storage location. Think of it as a symbolic link — it appears as a folder inside your Lakehouse or Warehouse, but contains no data of its own. When a Spark notebook, SQL analytics endpoint, or Power BI Direct Lake model reads from a shortcut, Fabric fetches directly from the target storage at query time.

This “one copy” principle solves the data sprawl problem that plagues every multi-team data platform. Without shortcuts, Team A copies 10 TB to their lakehouse, Team B copies the same 10 TB for ML, and Team C copies 5 TB of overlapping data for reporting — 25 TB of redundant storage on top of the 50 TB original. With shortcuts, all three teams point to the same source. Storage stays at 50 TB. Every team reads current data with zero staleness.

All Six Shortcut Source Types

S3-compatible shortcuts cover non-AWS storage services that implement the S3 API — MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, and similar. Use the Amazon S3 connector only for native AWS S3 buckets. Use Amazon S3-compatible for anything else that speaks the S3 API.

Creating a OneLake Shortcut — Step by Step

1. Open the target LakehouseNavigate to the Fabric workspace and open the Lakehouse where you want the shortcut to appear. Shortcuts can be created in either the Tables or Files section of the Lakehouse explorer.
2. Right-click the target locationRight-click the Tables or Files directory (or a subfolder within Files) and select New shortcut. The shortcut creation dialog opens.
3. Choose the source typeSelect from Internal sources (OneLake) or External sources (ADLS Gen2, Amazon S3, Amazon S3 compatible, Google Cloud Storage, Dataverse). Each source type shows different connection fields.
4. Create or select a connectionFor external sources, either create a new connection with the required credentials or select an existing connection. Setting a connection is a bind operation — only users with permission on the connection can perform it. Creating the connection saves credentials securely in Fabric’s connection store, not in the shortcut definition itself.
5. Set the shortcut name and pathEnter a name for the shortcut as it will appear in the Lakehouse explorer. Optionally enter a sub-path to point to a specific folder within the source rather than the root. Shortcut names cannot contain % or + characters.
6. Confirm and verifyThe shortcut appears in the Lakehouse explorer. Click it to browse the source data. Run a simple Spark read or SQL query to confirm the connection is working before building downstream assets.

Shortcuts can also be created programmatically via the OneLake Shortcuts REST API and the Fabric SDK — useful for bulk shortcut creation across many lakehouses or automated provisioning as part of workspace setup scripts.

Internal OneLake Shortcuts — Cross-Workspace Data Sharing

Internal shortcuts point to another location within OneLake — a different folder in the same Lakehouse, a different Lakehouse in the same workspace, or a Lakehouse in a completely different workspace within the same Fabric tenant. This is the primary mechanism for cross-workspace data sharing in Fabric.

Internal shortcuts support both read and write. A Spark job in the consuming workspace can write back through a shortcut to the source Lakehouse — provided the identity running the job has write permissions in the source workspace. This enables a “producer writes, consumers read” governance pattern where central data engineering teams own source tables and downstream teams have read access via shortcuts.

ADLS Gen2 Shortcuts — Bring Your Existing Azure Data Lake into Fabric

ADLS Gen2 shortcuts are the most common enterprise deployment pattern — organizations with existing data lakes in Azure can give Fabric access without migrating petabytes of data. Fabric reads from the ADLS account at query time, treating the external storage as if it were native OneLake.

Authentication Options for ADLS Shortcuts

Trusted Workspace Access — Private ADLS Behind a Firewall

A common question from regulated industries: can Fabric access an ADLS account that is locked down behind a private endpoint or VNet service endpoint? Yes — using Trusted Workspace Access. This feature allows selected Fabric workspaces to access firewall-protected ADLS accounts without requiring public internet access or exposing the storage account to the internet.

1. Enable Trusted service access on the ADLS accountIn the ADLS Gen2 storage account → Networking → Firewalls and virtual networks, enable “Allow trusted Microsoft services to access this storage account.”
2. Add the Fabric workspace to the trusted listIn the same storage account networking settings, add the specific Fabric workspace resource ID to the trusted workspaces list. Only listed workspaces bypass the firewall — not all of Fabric.
3. Create the ADLS shortcut using service principal or org accountCreate the shortcut in the trusted workspace as normal. The connection uses the workspace’s managed identity to authenticate, bypassing the network restriction.

Amazon S3 Shortcuts — Multi-Cloud Data Access Without ETL

S3 shortcuts let Fabric workloads query data stored in AWS S3 buckets directly — no ETL pipeline, no data movement, no additional infrastructure. This is the primary pattern for organizations running a hybrid Azure/AWS data estate or migrating from AWS to Azure incrementally.

IAM Prerequisites for S3 Shortcuts

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:GetBucketLocation"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name",
        "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Create an IAM user (not a role — Fabric uses access key authentication, not IAM roles for cross-account trust). Attach the policy above to the IAM user. Generate an access key and secret. Use these credentials when creating the S3 shortcut connection in Fabric.

S3-compatible shortcuts follow the same pattern but use a custom endpoint URL pointing to the non-AWS storage service rather than the standard AWS endpoint. MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, and similar services that implement the S3 API can all be connected as S3-compatible shortcuts.

Google Cloud Storage Shortcuts

GCS shortcuts connect Fabric to Google Cloud Storage buckets using a GCS service account and HMAC key authentication. Like S3 shortcuts, GCS shortcuts are read-only and incur GCS egress costs on every query. Enable caching for frequently accessed GCS data to reduce egress fees.

GCS Authentication Setup

1. Create a GCS service accountIn Google Cloud Console → IAM → Service Accounts, create a service account and grant it Storage Object Viewer role on the target GCS bucket.
2. Generate HMAC keysIn Cloud Storage → Settings → Interoperability, create HMAC keys for the service account. Note the Access Key and Secret — these are shown only once.
3. Create the GCS shortcut in FabricIn the Lakehouse explorer, right-click → New shortcut → Google Cloud Storage. Enter the bucket name, the optional sub-path, and authenticate with the HMAC access key and secret.

GCS shortcuts support file caching — enable it in workspace settings under the OneLake tab to reduce repeat egress costs for frequently accessed datasets.

Shortcut Security — The Two-Layer Model

Shortcut security operates at two independent layers, and both must grant access before a user can read data through a shortcut. Passing one layer but not the other results in an access denied error — a common source of confusion during initial setup.

How Permission Delegation Works by Source Type

Shortcut Caching — Reducing Cross-Cloud Egress Costs

Shortcut caching stores a local copy of data read from an external source in OneLake after the first read. Subsequent reads of the same data serve from the local cache rather than fetching from the source again — eliminating repeat egress charges from AWS or GCP.

Which Sources Support Caching

Caching is available for: Amazon S3, Amazon S3-compatible, Google Cloud Storage, and on-premises data gateway shortcuts (including on-premises Amazon S3 shortcuts using Entra service principal authentication). ADLS Gen2 and internal OneLake shortcuts do not require caching because they are within Azure or within Fabric respectively.

Enabling Caching

1. Open Workspace settingsNavigate to the Fabric workspace → Settings → OneLake tab.
2. Toggle caching onEnable the cache setting and select a Retention Period — how long the cached copy is kept before Fabric re-fetches from source on the next read.
3. Monitor cached storageCached data counts toward OneLake storage for the workspace. Monitor workspace storage in the Fabric Admin portal to account for the additional footprint.
4. Clear the cache if neededSelect “Reset cache” on the same workspace settings page to immediately evict all cached shortcut data. The next read re-fetches from source. Use this if source data has changed and you need fresh data before the retention period expires.

Direct Lake Semantic Models on Shortcut Data

Direct Lake mode in Power BI reads Delta Parquet files directly from OneLake at query time — no import, no scheduled refresh, always fresh. Because shortcuts surface external data as if it were native OneLake storage, Direct Lake semantic models can be built on top of shortcuts, including shortcuts pointing to ADLS Gen2 and Amazon S3.

This unlocks the highest-performance Power BI architecture for organizations with existing ADLS data lakes — without migrating a single file into Fabric-native lakehouses:

Existing ADLS Gen2 → OneLake Shortcut in Lakehouse → Direct Lake Semantic Model → Power BI
(no data copied)      (no import needed)              (always fresh)               (fastest query mode)

See Direct Lake Falling Back to DirectQuery — Diagnosis and Fix for troubleshooting when Direct Lake falls back to DirectQuery mode on shortcut-backed tables.

OneLake Shortcuts vs Mirroring — When to Use Each

Common Shortcut Mistakes — Including One That Deletes Production Data

FAQ — OneLake Shortcuts in Microsoft Fabric

Official Resources — OneLake Shortcuts Documentation