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Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

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cbailiss on 02 Apr 2016 02:44:09

ALL user activities in Power BI should be logged for auditing purposes, including datasets accessed, reports/dashboards accessed, and especially data exports performed. The audit data should be accessible as a dataset to build reports against as well as easily exportable / downloadable.

Administrator on 16 Aug 2020 02:15:34

We released a US only preview for auditing Power BI. Read more about it here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-auditing/

Comments (73)
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Karen Lillystone on 16 Feb 2023 10:55:05

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

Any Update on this? Auditing is difficult - having to to connect via APIs etc into the report is not ideal for us.

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Peter van 't Klooster on 01 Jul 2022 11:22:39

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

When will this be available in the Netherlands?

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 16 Aug 2020 03:58:27

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

You should be able to use the audit log data as a source to create your own reports. Currently, all you can do is dump the log from excel. I should be able to use PowerBI to easily monitor the environment. It's great you can look at an individual dashboard, but doesn't really give an admin the level of info needed.

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Filious Louis on 16 Aug 2020 03:57:33

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

This should be available as a Content Pack. The current preview for auditing is very limited and cumbersome.

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Aaron on 16 Aug 2020 03:57:21

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

Is there any plan to get this into PowerBI Embedded? Happy to create an idea if not.

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Aaron Steers on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:39

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

'@ajay - Can you provide an update on this?

To echo @VLJ 's comments: "Power BI needs to be able to connect to the audit data as a data source, so usage reports can be written."

You have built-in connectors for almost every dataset under the sun. I can write a Power BI report how people are using ZenDesk or Salesforce, but I can't write a report on Power BI usage itself?

Can you confirm whether the final solution will allow (1) access to plug into Power BI usage as a live dataset in "Get Data" and (2) ability to do advanced transforms on this audit data in Power Query?

I imagine this will help Power BI adoption significantly, since many BI managers are eager to show adoption trends, and use usage/adoption metrics themselves as success indicators of our Power BI investments.

Thanks so much!

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Mark Harrap on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:38

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

We need to be able to audit and report on usage without needing O365 admin rights - our BI will not be given these.

Can this information be made available as a content pack / data set that we can use to create reports in PowerBI itself?

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bkcampbe on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:37

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

we need to be able to audit users without doing a manual dump from the security portal thats soo outdated relative to the integrations throughout power bi... :(

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Mehmet Bakkaloglu on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:32

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

I can see there is functionality for PowerBI Audit log search. But is it possible to create a PowerBI dashboard that shows the stats from the audit log?

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ZLJ on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:23

RE: Better Auditing of User Activity (Datasets, Reports, Dashboards, Exports)

The preview functionality in the O365 Security & Compliance centre is great. However, having to navigate away from Power BI and then manually search through it is not ideal. Power BI needs to be able to connect to the audit data as a data source, so usage reports can be written.