Small Tricks and Tips – Microsoft 365 administration- Usage reports

Background

• In our one of the previous article – Small Tricks and Tips – OneDrive – how to export all OneDrive site details in our Microsoft 365 tenant from Microsoft 365 admin center – we were exporting all one drive sites in CSV file
• I could export all One Drive sites in CSV file from Microsoft 365 usage reports
• So thought to share bit about Microsoft 365 Usage Reports

Take away from this article

• What are Usage Reports in Microsoft 365 admin center
• Usage reports availability
• Scenarios where Microsoft 365 admins requires usage reports
• Permissions required to update the setting – display concealed user, group, and site names in all reports
• How to navigate Microsoft 365 usage reports

What are Usage Reports in Microsoft 365 admin center

• These are the reports which shows how our organization users are using Microsoft 365 services
• Reports are available for most of the Microsoft 365 services
• For example
  • Active Users
  • Activities related to OneDrive files
  • Activities related to SharePoint files
  • Viva Insights
  • Microsoft Project related activities
  • Project reports related to other services like – Exchange, Yammer, Teams, Viva Learning, Office 365 and so on

• There are quite good amount of reports available and not possible to cover each and every report in one article
• I would navigate to usage report and will explore all the reports available

Usage reports availability

• Reports are available for the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days.
• Reports data won’t exist for all reporting periods right away

Scenarios where Microsoft 365 admins requires usage reports

• These reports are very useful for respective administrators to understand how the users are using respective Microsoft 365 services
• For example
  • SharePoint administrator will like to know for how many sites Storage Quota is getting full
  • Exchange administrator will like to know mailbox usage
  • Team administrator will like to know Teams usage, Channel usage
  • Some time we need to export all OneDrive sites, we have a scenario explained in one of previous article – In our one of the previous article – Small Tricks and Tips – OneDrive – how to export all OneDrive site details in our Microsoft 365 tenant from Microsoft 365 admin center – we were exporting all one drive sites in CSV file
  • Microsoft Visio activities – Daily active users on Visio, Daily active users on Visio by platform (Desktop, Web)
• Respective administrator can export all these reports in CSV file
• I would say visit the Usage report, we will get an idea what kind of different reports we could view / export for different microsoft 365 services products

Permissions required to view Microsoft 365 usage reports

• Global Administrators
• Exchange Admins
• SharePoint Admins
• Global Reader
• Skype for Business Admins
• Usage Summary Reports reader (with no user details)
• Reports Reader
• Teams Administrator
• Teams Communications Administrator
• User Experience Success Manager (with no user details)

How to navigate to Microsoft 365 usage reports

• We have detailed article for navigating to Microsoft 365 usage reports – Small Tricks and Tips – Microsoft 365 administration- Usage reports – How to navigate – https://knowledge-junction.in/2023/04/06/small-tricks-and-tips-microsoft-365-administration-usage-reports-how-to-navigate/

Note : We could access usage reports using GRAPH API as well. I’ll try to cover details in next article. https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/reports

References

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/admin/activity-reports/activity-reports?WT.mc_id=365AdminCSH_inproduct&view=o365-worldwide