Activity log
There is a new Power BI API called the activity log, which enables Power BI service admins to track user and admin activities within a Power BI tenant. It is comparable to the unified Office 365 audit log in the sense that both logs contain a complete copy of the Power BI auditing data, but there are also several key differences that are important for Power BI service admins, as the following table reveals.
Table with Unified Audit Log versus Power BI Activity Log. The unified audit log includes events from SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Dynamics 365, and other services in addition to the Power BI auditing events. Only users with View-Only Audit Logs or Audit Logs permissions have access, such as global admins and auditors. Global admins and auditors can search the unified audit log by using Office 365 Security & Compliance Center, the Microsoft 365 Security Center, and the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center. Global admins and auditors can download audit log entries by using Office 365 Management APIs and cmdlets. By contrast, the Power BI activity log only includes the Power BI auditing events. Global admins and Power BI service admins have access. There's no user interface to search the activity log yet. Global admins and Power BI service admins can download activity log entries by using a Power BI REST API and management cmdlet.
To distinguish the Power BI-specific log from the unified audit log, Microsoft uses the name activity log for Power BI, but the Power BI auditing data within both logs is identical. In this way, global admins and auditors can continue to use the Security and Compliance Centers for all their auditing needs, while Power BI service admins now have a straightforward way to access and download the data they need to monitor the actions of their users and administrators in their Power BI tenant.
For more information regarding the new Power BI activity log cmdlet, see Introducing the Power BI Activity Log | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI blog post.