Microsoft 365 usage analytics overview FAQ

The template app isn't free. A Power BI Pro license is required. For details, see prerequisites for installing, customizing, and distributing a template app.

To share the dashboards with others, see Share dashboards and reports.

You must have one of the following roles to connect to the template app:

• Exchange admin.
• Teams admin.
• SharePoint admin.
• Global reader.
• Report reader.
• Usage Summary Reports Reader.

For more information, see About admin roles.

Only the user who makes the initial connection to the template app can customize the reports or create new reports in the Power BI web interface. For instructions, see Customizing the reports in Microsoft 365 usage analytics.

In addition to customizing the reports from the Power BI web interface, users can also use Power BI Desktop to connect directly to the Microsoft 365 reporting service to build their own reports.

You can access the pbit file from the Microsoft Download Center.

If you connect to the template app, you can share it with anyone by using the sharing functionality. Power BI licensing requires that both the user sharing and the user with whom a dashboard is shared have Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium.

When sharing the dashboard, you can either:

• Allow users to reshare the dashboard with others.
• Not allow users to reshare the dashboard with others.

You can set this option at the time of sharing.

Yes. To enable a group of admins to work together on the same template app, use the app workspace functionality of Power BI. For more information, see How should I collaborate and share dashboards and reports?

Most of the reports display data for the previous 12 months. However, some of the charts might show less history since data collection for different products and reports started at different times. Therefore, data for the full 12 months might not be available. All the reports eventually build up to 12 months of history. Reports that show user level details show data for the previous complete month.

The data in the template app currently covers the same set of activity metrics available in the Activity Reports. As Microsoft adds reports to the activity reports, they'll add them to the template app in a future release.

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:

• In the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can view data for the last 7, 30, 90, or 180 days.
• The template app presents data on a monthly basis for up to 12 months.

In addition, the template app only shows user-level details for the last complete month for users who were assigned a product license and performed an activity.

The Activity Reports are a good starting point to understand usage and adoption of Microsoft 365. The template app combines the Microsoft 365 usage data and your organization's Active Directory information. When admins use the visual analytics capabilities of Power BI, they can analyze the data set. This capability enables admins to not just visualize and analyze Microsoft 365 usage data, but also slice it by Active Directory properties such as departments, location, and more. They 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. You can choose to modify the refresh schedule if your 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 and 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.

The definition of active user is the same as the definition of an active user in the activity reports.

The current version of the template app includes file activity from SharePoint team sites and SharePoint group sites.

The current version of the template app includes usage from:

• Outlook groups.
• Viva Engage groups.
• SharePoint groups.

It doesn't include groups related to Microsoft Teams or Planner.

Major changes to the template app are released twice a year, which might include new reports or new data. Minor changes to the reports might be released more frequently.

You can retrieve the data in the template app through the Microsoft 365 APIs (in preview). When they ship to production, they merge within the Microsoft Graph reporting APIs.

The feature is under consideration for future improvements. For updates, see Microsoft AI at Work Roadmap, formerly known as the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.

Company information is included in one of the Active Directory fields in the template app. You can see it as a prebuilt filter in the Product User activity reports. It's available as a column in the UserState table.

You can customize this data by connecting to the Microsoft Graph reporting APIs to pull additional fields from Microsoft Entra ID and join to the dataset.

Currently, the template app supports a single subscription because the template app is associated with the credentials you use to initially connect to it.

The template app shows usage at the product level. It provides data for the different subscriptions assigned to users, but you can't correlate user activity to the specific subscription assigned to a user.

By using Power BI Desktop, you can connect to the Microsoft 365 APIs (in preview) to bring in more data sources to combine with the template app data.

For more information, see the Customize the reports in Microsoft 365 usage analytics.

All user-level reports present aggregated data for the previous month.

Localization isn't currently on the roadmap.

You can use the feedback button in the Microsoft 365 admin center activity overview page, or you can open a support case to get help with the template app.

If a partner delegates admin rights, they can connect to the template app on behalf of their customer.

By default, the reports hide user-specific data. To change the setting, see Show user, group, or site details in usage reports.