This keeps coming up so I’m writing a quick post about it. Many organizations using Microsoft 365 GCC still haven’t set up “Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics” through Power BI Pro.
WHAT IS IT?
Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics is a no-cost Power BI report that shows live information about what products & services are being used in a Microsoft 365 tenant. (Note: You must purchase 1 Power BI Pro license to use it)
This summary lets you quickly understand usage patterns in Microsoft 365 and how and where your employees are collaborating. It includes:
- Adoption
- how may users are enabled
- how many people in your organization are actively using Microsoft 365
- how many are returning users
- how many are using the product for the first time
- Usage
- volume of active users
- key activities for each product for the last 12 months
- Communications preferences
- do users prefer Teams, Yammer, email, or Skype calls
- are there shifts in patterns in the use of communication tools
- Collaboration preferences
- do users prefer OneDrive or SharePoint to store documents and collaborate with each other
- does these trends evolve month over month
- Storage
- track cloud storage for mailboxes, OneDrive, and SharePoint sites
- Mobility
- track which clients and devices people use to connect to email, Teams, Skype, or Yammer
- Activation
- track service plan (for example, Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Project, and Visio) activations in your organization.
- see the devices on which people have installed Microsoft 365 apps
- Licensing
- overview of license types
- count of users who were assigned each license type
- license assignment distribution for each month
Additionally, administrators can create their own reports or customer the existing template.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN…
- You need to be a Microsoft 365 Global admin to enable data collection.
- You need the Power BI Desktop application to use the template file.
- You need a Power BI Pro license or Premium capacity to publish and view the report.
HOWTO:
For step by step guidance on setting this up for GCC tenants, visit:
- Connect to Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) data with Usage Analytics
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/usage-analytics/connect-to-gcc-data-with-usage-analytics?source=recommendations&view=o365-worldwide
This is a nice video walkthrough of how to connect Microsoft 365 Commercial to Usage Analytics. The catch is that you shouldn’t click the “Go to Power BI” button in the Microsoft 365 reports page and instead follow the instructions above re: downloading the Power BI template for GCC & using Power BI Desktop instead of the Power BI online service:
- Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics (for Commercial)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeAPoggvBcQ
For more information about Usage Analytics, visit:
- About Microsoft 365 usage analytics
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/usage-analytics/usage-analytics?view=o365-worldwide
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 