How to See Who Has Viewed a Power BI Report
You’ve spent hours, maybe even days, building the perfect Power BI report. You connected your data sources, created a robust model, and designed stunning visuals. But after sharing it, one big question remains: is anyone actually using it? This article will walk you through the primary methods to see not just if your reports are being viewed, but by whom.
Why Should You Track Who Views Your Power BI Reports?
Monitoring report usage isn’t about being a data detective, it’s about making your work more effective. Understanding your audience helps you build better, more impactful reports. Here’s why it’s so important:
Measure Adoption and Engagement: The most basic question is whether your report is being used at all. Low viewership might signal a need for better training, communication, or a report that isn't meeting a business need.
Optimize Report Content: By identifying which pages or visuals are viewed most often, you can focus your development efforts where they matter most. Conversely, if a critical page is consistently ignored, you know it either needs to be redesigned for clarity or promoted to your users.
Identify Key Stakeholders: Discover who your "power users" are - the people who frequently rely on your report. These are excellent resources for feedback and can become champions for data-driven decisions within the organization.
Ensure Security and Compliance: For reports containing sensitive data, knowing exactly who is accessing information and when is crucial for security audits and maintaining compliance.
Method 1: Using the Built-in Usage Metrics Report
The simplest way to get a pulse on your report’s performance is with Power BI’s built-in usage metrics. This feature provides a pre-built report that summarizes viewer trends right inside the Power BI service. It's the perfect starting point for most users.
How to Access the Usage Metrics Report
Getting to this report is straightforward. Just follow these steps:
Navigate to the workspace containing your report in the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com).
Hover over the report you want to analyze and click the More options (...) menu.
From the dropdown menu, select Open usage metrics.
Power BI will instantly generate a report that gives you an overview of activity over the last 90 days.
What the Usage Metrics Report Shows You
The standard usage report is broken down into a few key metrics and visuals:
Report views: The total number of times any page in the report has been opened.
Unique viewers: The count of distinct users who have viewed the report. If one person opens it 10 times, they are counted as one unique viewer.
Views per day: A line chart showing trends in viewership over time, helping you spot spikes in activity around key business events.
Most viewed pages: A list of report pages ranked by view count, helping you understand which parts of your report are most popular.
Users: A table that lists the display names and email addresses of the users who have accessed the report, along with their total view count. This is where you directly answer the question "who has viewed my report?"
Creating a Customizable Usage Report
The default usage report is helpful, but you can’t edit it directly. However, you can save a copy of it, which turns off the "read-only" setting and gives you a standard Power BI file that you can customize.
In the top-right corner of the usage report, click the kebab menu (...) and select Save a copy. After saving, you’ll have a new usage report in your workspace that you can edit like any other Power BI report. This allows you to:
Add your company's branding or themes.
Incorporate other data sources.
Change visuals (e.g., turn a bar chart into a waterfall chart).
Filter the data in new ways to answer specific questions.
Limitations to Keep in Mind
The usage metrics feature is incredibly useful, but it has some limitations:
90-Day Window: It only shows data for the past 90 days. For longer-term analysis, you’ll need a more advanced solution.
Report-Specific: The classic usage metric report you open from a single report only shows data for that specific report, not the whole workspace.
Update Frequency: The data can take up to 24 hours to refresh.
Method 2: Leveraging the Power BI Audit Log for Detail and Compliance
While the Usage Metrics report is great for trends and simple checks, the Microsoft 365 Audit Log is the tool of choice for comprehensive, granular auditing. It captures a detailed record of every action in your Power BI tenant, including every single report view.
Reasons you might use the audit log:
You need viewership data going back more than 90 days.
You need to track access to highly sensitive reports for compliance.
You want to know the exact time a specific user viewed a report.
Who Can Access the Audit Log?
Retrieving data from the audit log requires administrative permissions. Typically, you'll need one of the following roles:
Global Administrator in Microsoft 365
Audit Reader or Audit Manager role
If you don't have these permissions, you’ll need to work with your organization's IT or Microsoft 365 administrator.
How to Search the Audit Log
Navigate to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal (compliance.microsoft.com).
In the left-hand navigation pane, click on Audit.
On the Search tab, configure your search filters:
Date and time range: Select the period you want to investigate.
Activities: This is the most important field. Type "Viewed Power BI report" and select it. You can add other Power BI activities like "Exported report data" if needed.
Users: You can leave this blank to see all users or specify one or more individuals.
File, folder, or site: To narrow your search to a specific report, you can add the report name or URL here, though it's often easier to search broadly and filter later.
Click Search. The process may take a few minutes if you are searching a large timeframe.
The results will appear in a table below the search filters. You can click on any entry to see a detailed flyout panel with information like the user's IP address, the time of the event, and the full name of the viewed report.
Exporting and Analyzing Audit Log Data
For large result sets, scrolling through the portal isn't practical. You can export the audit log by clicking Export > Download all results. This will give you a CSV file that you can open in Excel or, even better, connect to a new Power BI report.
Bringing this data back into Power BI is a common best practice as it allows you to build a permanent, interactive audit dashboard to track historical usage trends across your entire Power BI ecosystem.
Method 3: The Modern "Workspace Level" Usage Report
Microsoft has introduced a new, improved usage metrics experience - this time at the workspace level. This report analyzes usage metrics for all reports (or dashboards) in a given workspace in one place, which is far more efficient than checking each report individually.
How to Access Workspace Usage Metrics
Go to the workspace you want to analyze.
Just above your list of reports and datasets, click Usage metrics. You can often also find this option in the (...) menu next to the workspace's name.
The report interface will load, showing a summary for the whole workspace for the last 30 days.
What You Can Learn Here
This modern usage metrics experience offers more than just aggregated views:
Metrics at a Glance: The main page provides summary cards for key metrics like Total Views, Unique Viewers, Total Shares, and viewer counts by platform (Web vs. Mobile).
Report Performance List: It gives you a breakdown of all reports in the workspace ranked by viewers, views, or reports opened per user. This helps you quickly identify your most and least popular content.
Deep Dive on a User: You can click into a specific user's name to see which reports they have viewed most often.
Understanding Report Distribution: A handy visual shows whether reports are being accessed directly through the workspace or via a shared link/Power BI app.
This workspace-level view is a fantastic "middle-ground" option. It’s as easy to use as the classic on-report metrics but provides a much broader summary of content performance without needing administrative access to the audit log.
Best Practices for Monitoring Report Usage
Simply knowing how to find the data isn't enough. The real value comes from incorporating usage checks into your routine.
Schedule Regular Reviews: Make it a habit. Set aside 15 minutes every Monday or the first of every month to review the usage metrics for your key reports. Consistency helps you spot trends faster.
Combine Methods for a Full Picture: Use the workspace usage metrics for your regular, high-level pulse checks. When specific security or detailed historical questions arise, use that as a trigger to pull data from the audit log.
Act on the Data: If a highly anticipated report has low viewer counts, reach out to its intended audience for feedback. If a particular page is a smashing success, analyze why and apply those lessons to other reports.
Final Thoughts
Knowing you can see who has viewed your Power BI reports is a powerful capability. Using a mix of the convenient built-in usage metrics for day-to-day trends and the comprehensive audit log for deeper compliance and historical analysis will give you a complete understanding of how your content is consumed. This feedback loop is essential for refining your reports, fostering user engagement, and proving the value of your data analytics work.
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