One of the features of Power BI Service is usage metrics report on a dashboard or report. The usage metrics report will give you an analysis of how many times the content is viewed or share, through which platforms, and by which users. You can also create your own monitoring report based on the model of usage metrics. In this post, I’ll explain how easy is to use the usage metrics, or even creating your own report from it. If you want to learn more about Power BI, read Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.
Usage Metrics
The usage metrics report in the Power BI service will give you some analysis on the views and shares of the Power BI content. This report can be turned off or on in the Power BI Administrator tenant setting configuration. You can also choose if you want the individual per-user data analysis for that to be visible or not, this configuration can be also determined in the tenant settings.
The report has a number of sections which mainly explains to you how users consumed this report, you can slice and dice by Distribution methods (sharing, workspace), or by Platform (Mobile, Web). The report gives you an overall analysis as well as a per day analysis. Here is a look and feel of a usage metrics report;
You can access the usage metrics report by clicking on the Usage Metrics icon;
Do It Yourself!
You can create your own version of usage metrics report if you want. You just need to use the existing model and build visualization on top of it. To start, you need to create a copy of the usage metrics report. For doing this, open the usage metrics report, and then click on File, and Save As
Save the new report with a different name, and then open it. You can now see and click on the Edit option on the top of the report
When you go to Edit mode, then see the tables and fields in the dataset that has the monitoring information.
You can even remove the existing Report level filter to bring monitoring data for all reports and dashboards.
Everything after this step depends on your creativity to create your report with whatever visuals you want. Here is an example of usage metrics report version I have created in few minutes;
As you can see the report include all dashboards. I can click on a dashboard in the slicer, and see the detailed monitoring analysis of that content.
Summary
This was a very quick post about using the Usage Metrics report in Power BI service or even creating your own version of the monitoring report.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.
Hi – do you know if there is a way to keep more than the standard 90 days worth of usage data?
unfortunately I haven’t seen anything about that. seems to be as is. at least at the moment.
Hi,
Thanks for your grear blog post!
One question, you worte:
”
Unfortunately, you cannot download this report in Power BI Desktop at the moment
”
Isn’t it possible to connect to this data-set using get data – power bi service
than you can work on PBI Desktop.
Yes you can do that. It’ll create a live connection to the Power BI Service but you can’t mix it with other data sources or publish your report to different workspaces.
Hi Reza,
I was able to use the desktop to create my statistics report. I simply selected the Power BI Service using Get Data. The Report Usage Metrics Model is an available selection.
Hi.
Yes, you can work with it from “Get data from Power BI Service” of Power BI Desktop. However, what I meant by “You are not able to work with it from Power BI Desktop”; was ability to change the data model. You can connect to it from Desktop, but that would be a live connection.
Cheers
Reza
Power BI Desktop has a connector to the Power BI service where you can select the Report Usage Metrics Models to pull report/user/view data for a specific workspace. I’ve used this method before to allow development of the visuals in PBI Desktop.
This is great. But if I want to see the Usage Analysis for all the dashboards/reports including all the workspace. Is there any way to do ?
The above explanation works fine if we want to track usage of all the dashboard/reports within a workspace.
However, at org level, we may want to see the entire usage.
At the moment you can only get the usage inside one workspace. Hopefully across workspaces becomes available later.
Cheers
Reza
Does anybody have an idea on how to include usage metrics of a dashboard in a Power BI app? Seems to be a current limitation.
Hi Marcos
At the moment Usage metrics dataset cannot have reports shared through an app. Alternative can be getting audit information from Office 365 and creating your own metric report from it
Cheers
Reza
How can I get the usage metrics for on-premise power bi report server? I see that usage metrics feature in the tenant setting is not available in report server. will I get this info by running the “dbo.ExecutionLog3”?
I need a way to track usage metrics across all dashboards.
Thanks
Hi Simeon
for the Report server, you should query report server log tables in the SQL Server database to create your own audit metrics. I may write about it in the future.
Cheers
Reza
Hi Reza,
i’m waiting for that future post. Very interested.
Cheers Vlad
Hi Reza,
I have a power bi visual published to web. Is there a way to track usage metrics? If yes, how can I easily accomplish this?
BTW great post.
Joe
Hi Joe
I don’t think this is possible for Publish to Web option. You will have the Usage Metrics option, but it won’t count the usage coming through that method of sharing. You can use Embedded, and write custom code in the webpage to count the number of times page been opened. It is a developer job though.
Cheers
Reza
Hi Reza,
When I go into the Admin Portal, Usage Metrics there is no option to perform a save as.
Has Microsoft altered this functionality since you posted this or is there another way to access the usage metrics that I have missed?
Best regards, Neil
Hi Neil
this example I mentioned here is not for the usage metrics report in the admin portal. It is for the usage metrics report on each report and dashboard.
I have written another article recently explaining how you can build your own usage metrics report across the entire tenant. I believe that is what you after 🙂
Cheers
Reza
Hi Reza, when I make my usage report does everyone in workspace can see it? Or only me, or me and admins in workspace? Thanks
when you create content in a workspace, everyone who has access to that workspace (admin, or any other members) will be able to see it. If you want to have a separate access level on it, then put it in another workspace
Hi Reza!!
It’s great!
But when I use APP’s isnt’ possible to Power BI Monitoring Report.
Hi Igor,
You can still create a whole aduit log report yourself, like this one I mentioned. and a new method is also coming for that
Cheers
Reza