Monitor tenant health using Microsoft 365 usage analytics

  • 6 minutes

Along with the Microsoft 365 Adoption Score, organizations can also monitor their tenant health by using Microsoft 365 usage analytics. Microsoft 365 usage analytics enables organizations to:

  • Visualize and analyze Microsoft 365 usage data.
  • Create custom reports.
  • Share insights throughout the company.
  • Gain insights into how specific regions or departments are using Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 usage analytics gives organizations access to a prebuilt dashboard that provides a cross-product view of the last 12 months and contains several prebuilt reports. Each report provides specific usage insights. User-specific information is available for the last full calendar month.

You can access detailed reports for each area by selecting the data tables. You can view all prebuilt reports by selecting the tabs at the bottom of the site. For more detailed instructions, see Navigating and utilizing the reports and Customizing the reports.

Microsoft 365 usage analytics data is available in the Activity reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It's also optionally available in the Microsoft Power BI template app.

Note

The template app isn't free; you must have a Power BI Pro license to access it.

The underlying data you see in the template app matches the data you see in the Activity reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The key differences are that in the admin center, the data is available for the last 7/30/90/180 days, while the template app presents data on a monthly basis for up to 12 months. Additionally, the template app only provides user-level details for the last complete month for users assigned a product license and who performed an activity.

The Activity reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center are a good starting point to understand usage and adoption of Microsoft 365.

The template app in Power BI combines the Microsoft 365 usage data and your organization’s Active Directory information. By doing so, administrators can analyze the data set using the visual analytics capabilities of Power BI. They can also slice the data by Active Directory properties such as departments, location, and so on. If the default report don't suffice, administrators can also create custom reports and share the insights within their organization.

When you connect to the template app for the first time, it automatically populates with your data for the previous 12 months. After that, the template app data refreshes weekly. Customers can choose to modify the refresh schedule if their use of this data demands a different update rhythm.

The back-end Microsoft 365 service refreshes data on a daily basis and provides data that is between 5-8 days latent from the current date.

The Content date column in each dataset represents the freshness date of the data in the template app.

Enable Microsoft 365 usage analytics

To get started with Microsoft 365 usage analytics, you must first turn on the setting that makes company data available for usage analytics. You configure this setting in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Once the data is available, you can then initiate the Power BI template app if you so choose.

To turn on the setting that makes company data available for usage analytics, you must be a Global administrator.

  1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Reports in the left-hand navigation pane, and then select Usage.

  2. On the Usage page, scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile. Select the Get started button.

    Screenshot of the Usage reports page showing the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile and the Get started button.

  3. On the Reports pane that appears, select the check box for the following setting: Make organizational usage data available to Microsoft 365 usage analytics for Power BI.

  4. Select Save.

  5. Select the Refresh icon on the address bar at the top of the page. On the refreshed Usage page, scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile. The system replaces the Get started button with a message that says: We're collecting usage data, which may take up to 48 hours. Please check back later.

    Screenshot of the Usage reports page showing the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile and the collecting data message.

  6. Continue to check this page over the next two days (time varies depending on the size of your tenant). Once the system finishes collecting usage data, it replaces this message with a Go to Power BI button. At this point, the template app can provide historical usage data at the organization level.

    Screenshot of the Usage reports page showing the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile and the Go to Power BI button.

Start the Power BI template app

If your organization purchased a Power BI Pro license and you plan to use the template app to view usage analytics report, you must first install the template app. To start the template app, you must be either a global administrator, report reader, Exchange administrator, Skype for Business administrator, or SharePoint administrator. The instructions for this task basically continue from where you left off after enabling Microsoft 365 usage analytics in the prior section.

  1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Reports in the left-hand navigation pane, and then select Usage.

  2. On the Usage page, scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the Microsoft 365 usage analytics tile. Copy the tenant ID in the message that appears, and then select the Go to Power BI button.

  3. In the Power BI portal, select Apps in the left-hand navigation pane.

  4. On the Apps page, select the Get apps button in the upper right corner of the screen. The Power BI apps window opens.

  5. In the Power BI Apps window, the All apps tab is displayed by default. Type Microsoft 365 in the search box.

  6. In the list of tiles that appears, select the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics tile.

  7. On the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics page that appears in the Apps for Power BI window, select the Get It Now button.

  8. On the Confirm your details to continue dialog box that appears, select the Get it now button.

  9. On the Install this Power BI app? dialog box that appears, select Install.

  10. Once the app finishes installing, the Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics app appears in the list of apps on the Apps page in the Power BI portal. Select Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics.

  11. In the notification bar that appears at the top of the page, select the Connect your data link to connect the app to your organization’s data.

  12. On the Connect to Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics screen, type in the tenant ID (without dashes) that you copied in step 2.

  13. Select Advanced to expand the section. By default, the Automatically refresh my data daily (occurs at midnight) option is On. If it's Off, then set this toggle switch to On now. Select Next.

  14. On the next screen, select OAuth2 (if it isn't set by default). Select Sign in and connect. If you choose any other authentication method, the connection to the template app fails.

  15. The Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics page returns displaying a message that it's collecting sample data from your organization. Once the system refreshes the screen with your organization's sample data, you can take a tour of the various reports.

    Note

    After the template app is instantiated, the Microsoft 365 usage analytics dashboard will be available in Power BI on the web. The initial loading of the dashboard will take between 2 to 30 minutes.

Tenant level aggregates will be available in all reports after opting in. User-level details will only become available around the fifth of the next calendar month after opting in. This design affects all reports under User Activity.

Additional reading. For more information on how to view and use these reports, see Navigate and utilize the reports in Microsoft 365 usage analytics.

The following sections provide a summary of the various reports available in Power BI.

Executive Summary dashboard in Power BI

A key tool for an organization's decision-makers is the Executive Summary dashboard in Power BI. It includes a high-level, at-a-glance view of Microsoft 365 for business adoption, usage, mobility, communication, collaboration, and storage reports. It provides a view into how users employ some individual services, based on all the enabled users and active users. All values of the month shown on the report refer to the latest complete month.

This summary enables organizations to quickly understand usage patterns in Office and how and where their employees are collaborating.

Screenshot of the Executive Summary dashboard in Microsoft Power BI.

Microsoft 365 Overview report

The Microsoft 365 overview report contains the following reports. You can view them by choosing the tab on top of the report page. All values of the month shown on the top section of the report refer to the latest complete month.

  • Adoption. Offers an all-up summary of adoption trends. Use the reports in this section to learn how your users adopted Microsoft 365, and how overall usage of the individual services changed month over month. This report displays how many users in the organization:
    • are enabled
    • actively use Microsoft 365
    • are returning users
    • use the product for the first time
  • Usage. Offers a drill-down view into the volume of active users and the key activities for each product for the last 12 months. Use the reports in this section to learn how people in your organization are using Microsoft 365.
  • Communication. Offers insight into whether the people in your organization prefer to stay in touch by using Teams, Yammer, email, or Skype calls. You can observe if there are shifts in patterns in the use of communication tools among your employees.
  • Collaboration. See how people in your organization use OneDrive and SharePoint to store documents and collaborate with each other, and how these trends evolve month over month. You can also see how many users shared documents internally or externally and how many users used SharePoint sites or OneDrive accounts, broken out by owners and other collaborators.
  • Storage. Use this report to track cloud storage for mailboxes, OneDrive, and SharePoint sites.
  • Mobility. Track which clients and devices people use to connect to email, Teams, Skype, or Yammer.

Activation and Licensing report

The Activation and License page provides reports on the number of users who downloaded and activated Office apps and the number of licenses assigned by the organization. The month value towards the top refers to the current month, and the metrics reflect values aggregated from the beginning of the month to the current date.

  • Activation. Track service plan activations (for example, Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Project, and Visio) in your organization. Each person with an Office license can install products on up to five devices. You can also use reports in this section to see the devices on which users installed Office apps. To consider a plan “activated,” a user must install the app and sign in with their account.
  • Licensing. This report contains an overview of license types, the number of users assigned to each license type, and the license assignment distribution for each month. The month value towards the top refers to the current month, and the metrics reflect values aggregated from the beginning of the month to the current date.

Product usage report

This report contains a separate report for each Microsoft 365 service, including Exchange, Microsoft 365 groups, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype, Teams, and Yammer. Each report contains total enabled vs. total active user reports, counts of entities such as mailboxes, sites, groups, and accounts, and activity type reports where appropriate. All values of the month shown on the top section of the report refer to the latest complete month.

User activity reports

User activity reports are available for certain individual services. These reports provide user-level detail usage data joined with Active Directory attributes. The Department Adoption report also lets you slice by Active Directory attributes so that you can see active users across all individual services. All metrics are aggregated for the latest complete month. To view the content date, navigate to the table page and select UserActivity table, where the value under TimeFrame provides the reporting period.

Note

Users assigned the Global Reader or Usage Summary Reports Reader roles don't have permission to view the user activity reports.

Show identifiable user information in reports

Reports provide information about an organization’s usage data. This information can include identifiable names for users, groups, and sites. Because some organizations prefer to keep their collected data anonymous, Microsoft 365 provides an organizational setting that controls whether to hide user information on all its reports.

Important

As of September 1, 2021, Microsoft began hiding user information by default for all reports as part of its ongoing commitment to help companies support their local privacy laws.

Global administrators can revert this change for their tenant and show identifiable user information if their organization's privacy practices allow it. It can be achieved in the Microsoft 365 admin center by following these steps:

  1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to the Settings > Org Settings.
  2. On the Org settings page, the Services tab is displayed by default. In the list of services in this tab, select Reports.
  3. On the Reports pane that appears, uncheck (clear) the check box for the following setting: Display concealed user, group, and site names in all reports.
  4. Select Save.

Note

This setting applies to Microsoft 365 usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Microsoft Graph, and Power BI, and the usage reports in the Microsoft Team admin center.

It takes several minutes for these changes to take effect. Showing identifiable user information is a logged event in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal audit log.