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icassiem's avatar
icassiem
Post Prodigy
1 year ago
Solved

Full Comprehensive PowerBI Service Audit

Good day,   I have the task of doing a Full Comprehensive PowerBI service Audit, required: 1. The Number and name of reports 2. The Number of workspaces, the name and who are the custodians/membe...
Need Help
rohit1991's avatar
rohit1991
Super User
1 year ago

Hi icassiem 

 

You can cover most of the audit with Power BI Admin access using PowerShell and Admin APIs.

What you can get:

  1. Report names & count >> Get-PowerBIReport -Scope Organization
  2. Workspace names, count, members >> Get-PowerBIWorkspace -All + Get-PowerBIWorkspaceUser
  3. Active/inactive workspaces >> Use last activity or refresh date
  4. Active users (names) >> From Get-PowerBIActivityEvent
  5. Inactive users >> Subtract from full user list (request from IT)
  6. Report usage (including link views) >> Tracked in activity logs
  7. Report refresh rate & last refreshed >> Get-PowerBIDataset + Get-PowerBIRefreshHistory
  8. Failed refreshes >> Check refresh status
  9. Data size per workspace >> Admin API or Premium Metrics App
  10. Personal workspaces >> Get-PowerBIWorkspace -Scope Individual
  1. Data size per workspace or tenant:
    You can get dataset sizes using Get-PowerBIDataset and some metadata columns (especially if you’re on Premium).
    Or just ask IT to help with the Premium Capacity Metrics App if you have Premium.
  2. Personal workspaces with reports:
    Use Get-PowerBIWorkspace -Scope Individual and check which ones contain reports.

What You Can't Fully Do Without Azure:

  • Get a clean list of all users in the tenant
  • Tie usage back to things like job roles or departments
  • Trace external sharing (guests might be tricky depending on how IT set up access)

 

icassiem's avatar
icassiem
Post Prodigy
1 year ago

MFelix , rohit1991 v-venuppu  Thank You for helping me


MFelix my org does not have fabric and i have no funds for this exercise, so i wont be able to purchase for this once off task

rohit1991 can you please provide the "How" in terms of the actual code examples on calling each API or links for each of the 14?
I dont have Premium for Premium Metrics App and i think i can skip this What You Can't Fully Do Without Azure


The list was defined by me so that could provide pivot tables view for my senior and stakeholders, hence anything important i am missing "Point 15"

 

    • icassiem's avatar
      icassiem
      Post Prodigy
      1 year ago

      rohit1991 , MFelix  Thank You
      rohit1991 1. Refresh Failures Summary, 5. Gateway Analysis: and 7. License Usage:
      Can you please provide the powershell code + api examples to all these i require, and how

      MFelix its more a once-off or every 2 years exercise, so i dont really want to be developing a report. Also this works for a specific dataset/report only, it does not give me the big picture of things i am not aware of, like personal workspaces, the users uasge etc

  • rohit1991's avatar
    rohit1991
    Super User
    1 year ago

    Hi icassiem 

     

    Additional Items You Might Be Missing :

    1. Additional Items You Might Be Missing :

      1. Refresh Failures Summary
        • List of all datasets with refresh failures (last 30/60/90 days)
        • Helps spot reliability issues early
      2. Power BI Apps:
        • Number of published apps, usage stats, and access mapping
      3. Paginated Reports (RDL):
        • Count, owners, access mapping, and refresh logs (if using Paginated Reports)
      4. Embedded Reports or Service Principal Use:
        • Check for reports used in embedding scenarios (e.g., external portals)
        • List Service Principals and what access they have
      5. Gateway Analysis:
        • On-prem gateways, associated datasources, and admins
      6. Tenant Settings Snapshot:
        • Export critical Power BI tenant settings (e.g., Export control, share externally, Publish to web etc.)
        • Useful for auditing governance posture
      7. License Usage:
        • List of Pro users not publishing or viewing reports (to optimize license cost)
      8. Sensitivity Labels & Data Classification:
        • Which reports/datasets are labeled? Any missing?
      9. Audit Log Retention:
        • Ensure important logs (activity, sharing, access) are being archived if M365 log retention is limited
      10. Datasets with Large Size or Long Refresh Duration:
        • High-resource datasets can impact capacity , identify them early