How to Use the Power BI Usage Metrics Report: Setup, Optimisation, and Troubleshooting

The Power BI usage metrics report is a built-in activity report in the Power BI Service. It records how each dashboard or report is accessed. It captures total views, unique viewers, repeat viewers, and page-level interactions. The activity is stored in a usage events dataset that follows Power BI’s standard 30-day retention window.

If you want to understand how this feature sits inside your reporting setup or why the usage metrics dataset behaves a certain way, you’ve come to the right place. Because in this article, we’ll walk through what the Power BI usage metrics report is, how to enable and access it, and how its retention and refresh behaviour works in everyday use.

We’ll also look at how to extend the metrics beyond 30 days and the common issues that tend to show up when you rely on this feature for reporting decisions.

So, without further ado, let’s get to it.

What is a Power BI Usage Metrics Report?

A Power BI usage metrics report is a built-in analytics report that shows how your dashboards and reports are used inside the Power BI Service. It captures activity such as total views, unique viewers, returning viewers, and page-level interactions. All of these events come from the usage events dataset that Power BI generates in the background.

The report shows how your content is accessed and used across your workspace.

You can see who opened each report, how often they interacted with it, and which pages received the most activity. It also records the access platform, so you can tell whether the report was opened from the browser, a mobile app, or an embedded experience.

In practice, the usage metrics report lets you see the activity happening across your reports.

It shows the patterns behind your dashboards and reports, rather than leaving you to interpret adoption based on feedback or assumptions. Because the data is logged at the usage event level, it offers a more structured way to understand viewing behaviour, content adoption, and overall report activity.

If you maintain multiple dashboards or manage a shared workspace, this report becomes a reference point. It helps you review which reports are still in use, which ones have declining activity, and how different parts of your reporting environment are accessed over time.

How to Enable and Access Power BI Usage Metrics

Before you can use the Power BI usage metrics report, a few conditions need to be in place.

You need a Power BI Pro licence or a Premium Per User (PPU) licence to view and generate usage metrics. This requirement applies only to the person opening the metrics. Power BI still records usage events from all users, regardless of their licence type.

You also need edit access to the report or dashboard. This usually means you are a member, contributor, or admin in the workspace. Viewer access is not enough to open usage metrics.

Usage metrics must also be enabled in the tenant settings. This is normally on by default, but your organisation may restrict it to specific security groups.

Per-user data collection is another optional setting. When enabled, usage metrics display user names and email addresses. When disabled, all identifying information is anonymised.

Also, usage metrics are not available in My Workspace, so the content must be published to a shared workspace.

Enabling usage metrics in the Admin Portal

Power BI administrators manage usage metrics through the Admin Portal. Here is how the feature is enabled at the tenant level.

• Step 1 – Open the Admin Portal: Sign in to the Power BI Service with an administrator account. Select the settings gear icon and choose Admin Portal.
• Step 2 – Open Tenant settings: Select Tenant settings from the left sidebar. Scroll to Audit and usage settings.
• Step 3 – Enable usage metrics for content creators: Open Usage metrics for content creators. The admin can enable it for everyone or restrict it to specific security groups. The default option is enabled.
• Step 4 – Configure per-user data (optional): Open Per-user data in usage metrics for content creators. This controls whether user names and email addresses appear in usage data. Disabling the setting masks all user information. Admins can also delete previously collected per-user data, which is permanent.

Changes usually apply within 15 to 30 minutes.

Accessing usage metrics in the workspace

Once enabled, you can open usage metrics in two ways.

Option 1: From the workspace list

1. Open the workspace in the Power BI Service.
2. Find the report you want to analyse.
3. Select the three dots (…) next to the report name.
4. Choose View usage metrics report.
5. If this is the first time, Power BI creates the usage metrics dataset.
6. After it loads, select View usage metrics.

Option 2: From inside the report

1. Open the report.
2. Select the three dots (…) in the command bar.
3. Choose Open usage metrics.

The report then loads using the usage events dataset stored in the workspace. 

If you’re still getting used to navigating Power BI, the how to use Power BI guide is a helpful place to settle into the basics before diving deeper into usage metrics.

Best Practices for Power BI Usage Metrics Report

Working with the Power BI usage metrics report gets much easier when you build a few simple habits around it. These habits help you see how your reports are being used, how activity shifts over time, and where your attention is needed.

Here are some practical ways to approach it.

Build a review rhythm

• Review usage on a steady cycle, such as monthly or weekly for high-traffic reports.
• Track the same metrics over time so you know what “normal” activity looks like for each report.
• Set calendar reminders if you maintain several dashboards across one workspace.

Establish baselines for new reports

• Capture the first week or two of usage to understand how a new report performs at launch.
• Note views, unique viewers, and page-level interactions.
• Compare baseline behaviour later when you assess whether activity looks unusual.

Look at usage across multiple dimensions

• Slice by report page to see which parts of the report draw engagement.
• Slice by platform to understand how users open the report (browser, mobile, or embedded).
• Slice by user when per-user data is enabled, which helps identify power users and occasional viewers.

Track patterns over time

• Record monthly or weekly metrics in a spreadsheet or a custom dashboard.
• Look for steady growth, sharp drops, or long periods of inactivity.
• Use these patterns to decide whether a report needs a refresh, redesign, or promotion.

Act on what the usage shows

• Archive unused reports: Reports with long periods of zero activity may be ready to retire, unless they are new or seasonal.
• Investigate declining activity: Drops in usage can signal outdated content, confusing layout, or users shifting to another report.
• Improve active reports: Pages with strong engagement may be worth expanding, while low-engagement pages may need redesign or removal.
• Highlight high-impact reports: Well-used reports can guide design decisions and serve as examples in team training.

Create custom usage dashboards

• Save a copy of the prebuilt usage metrics report to make it editable.
• Connect to the Usage Metrics Report semantic model to build fully custom dashboards.
• Compare usage across multiple reports in a single view.
• Combine usage data with business metrics such as revenue, cost per view, or operational outcomes.
• Build your own history by storing snapshots of the usage metrics model.

These practices make the Power BI usage metrics report more effective, especially when you manage many dashboards or maintain a shared workspace.

Extending Power BI Usage Metrics Beyond 30 Days

The Power BI usage metrics report has a fixed retention window. The modern version keeps activity for the last 30 days, while the older version retains up to 90 days. Once data moves past these ranges, it drops from the usage events dataset.

This is a built-in limit, so you cannot extend the window directly inside Power BI. Power BI is designed this way because the service focuses on recent activity rather than long-term tracking.

For many teams, this is enough.

If your reports are updated often or used in daily operations, the most relevant activity usually happens within a short window. But if you need to view adoption patterns over several months, compare activity year over year, or track long-term ROI, the default retention becomes restrictive.

There are a few ways to work beyond these limits.

Using audit logs for extended retention

Audit logs in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center capture Power BI activity and can hold data for longer than usage metrics.

• Standard Microsoft 365 licences retain audit logs for up to 90 days
• E5 compliance licences extend this to one year

Audit logs record a wider set of events, including view activity, publish actions, refreshes, and deletions.

They don’t include page-level information, and they need additional filtering to separate view events from everything else. Even with those limits, audit logs offer a workable way to keep usage data longer than the built-in usage metrics report.

Building a historical storage pipeline

If you need ongoing access to usage data beyond 30 or 90 days, a custom capture pipeline is the most reliable approach. This usually involves three parts:

• Daily extraction using Power BI REST APIs, such as “GetActivityEvents” or workspace-level metrics endpoints
• A storage layer, typically Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Databricks, or a cloud data warehouse
• Historical reporting in Power BI, built on top of the accumulated dataset

You can set up the daily extraction using Azure Data Factory, Fabric notebooks, Python scripts, or PowerShell, depending on what your environment supports.

Each run collects that day’s usage events, processes them (deduplication, validation, enrichment), and stores them as new records. Over time, you build a historical dataset that can support month-over-month or year-over-year analysis.

This approach requires some cloud infrastructure knowledge, and you’ll need to maintain the pipeline, but it gives you complete control over how long you keep your usage data.

Common Issues and How to Fix Them

Even though the Power BI usage metrics report is a built-in feature, it has a few predictable issues that show up across different workspaces. Most of them come down to how the usage metrics semantic model is created, refreshed, or stored.

Here are the common problems you might see and how you can deal with them.

Usage metrics report shows no data

Sometimes you open usage metrics and everything is blank. This usually comes from one of a few causes:

• Hidden semantic model
  • Open your workspace settings
  • Go to Semantic models
  • If you don’t see a “Usage Metrics Report” model, adjust the URL to show hidden models
  • Delete the hidden dataset
  • Open usage metrics again so Power BI can generate a new one
• First-time processing delay
  • Wait a few minutes
  • Refresh your browser
  • Check the semantic model list to confirm it has appeared
• Report never opened
  • Open the report directly
  • Wait up to 24 hours for the first usage event to appear
  • Regenerate the metrics afterward
• Paginated report
  • Convert it to a standard Power BI report if you need usage metrics
  • Or rely on audit logs as a workaround

Old and new metrics show different numbers

If the numbers change when you toggle between the old and new usage metrics, that is expected.

• The old version tracks up to 90 days and counts page switches as separate views.
• The new version tracks 30 days and separates report opens from page views.

Because they use different definitions, the values won’t match.

What to do:

• Pick one version and stick with it for trend analysis
• Use the old one if you need the 90-day window
• Use the new one if you need page-level detail
• If the new version shows zero data, regenerate the semantic model and wait up to 24 hours

The report is missing from the usage metrics list

If a report doesn’t appear in the usage metrics report, the most common reason is simple: it hasn’t been viewed within the retention window.

What to do:

• Open the report at least once
• Wait 24 hours
• Regenerate the usage metrics report

If the report was recently moved or created, it may take 24–48 hours before it appears. This is normal.

Usage metrics dataset fails to refresh

You might see messages about outdated data or refresh failures in the semantic model. Typical causes include expired credentials, permission changes, or organisational login changes.

What to do:

• Update credentials
  • Go to Workspace Settings > Semantic models
  • Open the usage metrics semantic model
  • Take ownership if needed
  • Update credentials under Data source credentials
• Delete and recreate
  • Delete the semantic model
  • Open usage metrics again so Power BI regenerates it
• Use Power Automate
  • Create a scheduled flow to trigger refreshes if failures are intermittent

Data appears in the old version but not the new version

When the new usage metrics report is blank but the old one shows data, it usually means the new semantic model hasn’t finished collecting events.

What to do:

• Make sure the modern usage metrics feature is enabled by your admin
• Delete the existing semantic model while the toggle is off
• Regenerate usage metrics
• Turn the toggle on again after it loads
• Give it up to 24 hours to populate

If the model still shows nothing, it may be a tenant-level issue.

Performance metrics are missing

If the Performance page in the usage metrics report is empty, it’s often because the client-side telemetry didn’t reach Power BI. Telemetry can be blocked by:

• Ad blockers
• Firewalls
• VPN routing
• Private Link configurations

What to do:

• Check whether your organisation allows Power BI telemetry traffic
• Note the limitation in your reporting standards if users often access reports over restricted networks
• Use complementary tools such as Azure Monitor if you need reliable performance tracking

When Usage Metrics Need More Than the Basics

The Power BI usage metrics report is useful for tracking activity, but some situations call for more than what the built-in features can handle.

As soon as you work with larger workspaces, multiple business units, or long-term reporting needs, the limits start to show. The 30-day (or 90-day) retention window, the fixed semantic model, and the read-only structure can make it hard to build a proper picture of how your reports perform over time.

You might reach this point if you’re trying to:

• track adoption trends across several months
• compare usage across dozens of reports in one place
• maintain reporting for multiple teams with different requirements
• build a custom usage history for audit or ROI purposes
• troubleshoot ongoing issues across a large workspace
• design a structured reporting framework beyond the default metrics

These kinds of needs often sit outside what Power BI provides out of the box.

That’s where getting help can save you a lot of time.

Nexalab works with teams that want usage metrics to feed into a broader analytics setup, not just a single report.

As a Power BI consultant in Australia, we help organisations design the parts that Power BI doesn’t automate — things like historical storage pipelines, workspace governance, custom usage dashboards, and usage-driven reporting frameworks.

If your usage metrics need to connect to business context, Nexalab’s marketing analytics consulting can support that as well. This is where usage data sits alongside campaign results, customer metrics, or revenue performance, so you can see whether your reporting effort is actually supporting your wider goals.

A Few Takeaways Before You Go

The Power BI usage metrics report gives you an easy way to see how your dashboards and reports are being used. It shows who is opening your content, how often they return, and which pages draw the most activity, so you can understand what’s happening inside your workspace without guesswork.

It works best when you look at it regularly. A quick monthly check helps you spot patterns, see which reports are still active, and identify pages that might need a refresh. Slicing the data by page, platform, or user also helps you see how people move through your reports and which parts matter most to them.

The built-in limits are worth keeping in mind. The modern version holds 30 days of data, and the older version holds 90 days. Anything beyond that needs another method, whether that’s audit logs, scheduled exports, or a custom pipeline that stores usage history over time.

And if extending usage metrics, building a history, or managing a busy workspace starts to feel a bit much, you don’t have to sort it out on your own. Nexalab can help you set up a reporting environment that’s stable, scalable, and easier to manage as your needs grow.

Book a free consultation to build a Power BI setup that supports your team day to day.