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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 (75)
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Power BI User on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:10

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

'+1 for user consumption data

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Emmet on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:09

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

As others have posted, a critical missing need in PBI Service is having access to the user consumption data. Priority order for me would be 1) Reports, 2) Dashboards, 3) Datasets, 4) Content Packs. Our organization is issuing E5 license to users who need PBI Pro content access. Today we know who has the licenses, but no ability to know if they are actually using them and to know if we should revoke them.

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Eric Vogelpohl on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:08

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

Update?

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Emmet on 16 Aug 2020 03:54:08

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

Amanda Cofsky, your last post says Started on June 9th, but i read the article below released on Aug 15th which describes an update in capability of Azure Audit Logs to start capturing Power BI data.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-auditing/

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Michael Robson 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/

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Dorte 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.

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Power BI User 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?

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Adam 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!

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Power BI User 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.

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David Cresp 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.