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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 (71)
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1fed91f2 9af9-4d90-8b76-5b73990dbe36 on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:10

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

The provided auditing for Power BI is great for metrics, but what about compliance? Our organization needs visibility into data stores hosted in the PowerBI.com service. A list of datasets/datasources would suffice as compliance teams could then orchestrate documenting/auditing them. Any way to get that?

Linking to another idea for others looking for the same:
https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/17401063-improve-audit-logging

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d131d491 c343-4089-b107-ef13193de577 on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:10

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

The new auditing features are somewhat helpful, but they do not sufficiently include datasets, dataset refreshes, refresh times, dataset size, etc. We have creators writing careless SQL. It is affecting our database performance, and we need to find the problems.

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807d7c86 9520-43a0-ab69-09a4d29316f5 on 16 Aug 2020 03:56:06

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

Thank you, can you point me to the release notes for WW launch

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67da8526 c49c-4205-937a-bbb3651838df on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:51

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

Please add this feature for Vietnam. We need this feature.

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2c5b2a00 4d82-4604-85c8-9b050ad9e0b4 on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:51

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

Hello Ajay, Question: Is it possible to track changes in the PBIX file on PowerBI.com. ie if I open a pbix file on powerbi.com and modify a text box, can I see who changed, what was changed in the log? Can I see previous versions ie before text box change?

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5adbd2f4 81a3-4416-bd8e-c11a4fa01d53 on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:46

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

Update: Seems like the feature is now available (just as Chris.Bailiss mentioned). In PowerBI, just activate "Create audit logs for internal activity..." under Admin Portal -> Tenant Settings. It took roughly 24 hours before the logs got visible in the O365-security portal.

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5adbd2f4 81a3-4416-bd8e-c11a4fa01d53 on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:37

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

Any updates? A dealbreaker for clients not being able to follow up if the tool if even used..

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1fc6e223 84d5-ea11-a813-000d3a8b3802 on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:30

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

I've noticed this has appeared in the admin settings in Europe... Hopefully this has been released and works now, which would be really helpful. (Need to wait 24 hours to see if we get any data flowing through).

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7006b431 3c11-43e2-9ae4-73ebe44d6fde on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:19

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

This is good, but not great. If you're not exposing who created the gateway but allow anyone to create/install a gateway, you're still not addressing a governance question.

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24ff54c0 740a-4243-840c-f3f76152c5ec on 16 Aug 2020 03:55:18

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

Is there a timeline on when this feature will be available in other regions (e.g. Europe)? Our internal Governance folks are very keen on this feature!