Skip to main content

Power BI

Under Review

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

Vote (987) Share
cbailiss's profile image

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)
cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

1475369a 4d4b-4035-857a-62b6fe78613f on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:07

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

New documentation has just been created on this topic:
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-auditing/

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

e3cebda6 93b6-4bfb-8d8a-43b3cd592e0b on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:07

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

PLEASE make this available to report/dashboard owners, NOT just an administrator.
BI professionals need logging of user activity desperately.

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

e6237bbd 3820-4c44-930e-12c9fef0123e on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:04

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

how can I give admin rights to power bi without giving the user the global admin role?

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

59fdf427 d7ef-46b9-9309-7addf450f3b8 on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:56

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

Amanda, Your explanation of what the devs are working on isn't good enough! Admins aren't the only ones that need this data. BI professionals are the ones who need it the most!

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

efec1259 3e89-4f33-bc2e-9d1d60b58eea on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:54

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

There are massive opportunities here for PowerBI customers and systems integration consultants.
Top level scenarios:
1) Solution optimization, adoption (This is basic, and has been adequately discussed)
2) Fulfilling regulatory and policy auditability requirements
a. Correlating across Windows, IIS logs, PowerBI access to data sources (whether static Excel, SSAS, Other) as is possible with SSRS. This enables finding the specific users (and possibly filter settings, etc.) that can detail exactly what a user might have seen
b. Reporting publishing, granting, and using PowerBI reports, dashboards, data sources by user and by permissions path (say if a person has permissions via multiple Security groups and so forth) with configurable history retention.
c. Possibly a default admin dashboard that is pre-built to get folks started more quickly
3) Confirming the scope of a data breach or inappropriate sharing of information
a. Scenario: A consulting company develops a report showing sales quota by sales person. Requirement is to only to display a single row of data for a single person, but a conflicting requirement causes the report to be distributed to a group having administrative level permissions such that row level security will not be applied. After publish, a few hours pass before the error is identified. The client then needs to know which users having administrative access have viewed the report for which sales people.

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

4e2ed990 e62a-4956-94cf-e2ae7078a9e9 on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:51

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

What is also needed is greater control over users access. Features such as export and show See Records should be able to be restricted at a user or user group level.

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

17d4660c 4be4-46be-8e26-cf962a2b2bea on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:51

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

Amanda, your June 2016 reply indicates adding this for security and compliance purposes.
These are key areas for sure, but please know that usage metrics for consumption of all types of content is extremely valuable data.
I echo the sentiment of others who mentioned making the data accessible to roles outside of O365 Admins is a key feature as well. I would argue that it should be available for viewing to anyone. In our SSRS reports, we found that exposing our Report Log usage data via linked reports was a tramendously effective way to monitor deployed report adoption and also a tramendously effective tool in assessing priority of change requests.

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

17d4660c 4be4-46be-8e26-cf962a2b2bea on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:51

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

I

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

b9499e29 98ce-4883-aabc-8795c32a2174 on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:36

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

Hi Amanda, could you give us a status update of the progress on this idea?

cbailiss's profile image Profile Picture

a52f2036 028a-4fe1-91af-6cf06994dc78 on 16 Aug 2020 03:53:36

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

'@Amanda. Status? Extremely important that we get full audit and compliance features in PowerBI.