Direct answer: A Power BI report owner review should confirm the accountable business owner, technical steward, business purpose, intended audience, expected usage, criticality, replacement, dependencies, access, support path, lifecycle status, and next review date. Use the template below for onboarding, quarterly review, ownership transfer, or retirement approval.
“Created by” is not the same as “accountable owner.” Creators change roles, contractors leave, and centrally managed semantic models can support reports owned by different business teams. A durable ownership record assigns both business accountability and technical stewardship.
Copyable Power BI report owner review template
Identity
- Workspace name and ID:
- Report name and ID:
- Semantic model name and ID:
- App or distribution method:
- Lifecycle status: draft / active / under review / deprecated / archived / retired
Accountability
- Business owner and role:
- Technical steward and role:
- Support contact or group:
- Backup owner:
- Last owner confirmation date:
Purpose and audience
- Recurring business decision or process supported:
- Intended audience:
- Expected usage frequency:
- Business criticality: low / moderate / high / regulated
- Official or certified alternative:
Evidence
- Usage source and retained period:
- Views, viewers, repeat use, and last activity:
- Recent trend:
- Opening-performance signal and sample size:
- Known collection gaps or exceptions:
Risk and lifecycle
- Upstream and downstream dependencies:
- Sensitivity label and access model:
- Seasonal, annual, executive, or regulatory exception:
- Archive location and tested recovery method:
- Next review date:
- Decision: keep / promote / improve / consolidate / archive / retire
- Approver, date, and notes:
How to run the review
- Pre-fill objective fields. Pull IDs, workspace, labels, activity, and lineage from authorized sources so owners are not asked to research platform metadata.
- Ask about the decision. Require a recurring process or decision, not a vague description such as “sales visibility.”
- Separate business and technical roles. The business owner decides whether the outcome is needed; the steward maintains or routes the technical work.
- Resolve exceptions. Missing evidence, unknown dependencies, or an untested archive should block retirement approval.
- Set the next date. Ownership decays unless the record has an explicit renewal cadence.
Microsoft’s ownership guidance recommends defining ownership terminology and responsibilities clearly. Its retirement guidance recommends communicating with owners, checking dependencies, confirming archive and recovery, and recording approvals before deletion.
One owner field is not enough
Record who is accountable for business relevance and who is responsible for technical maintenance. They may be the same person in a small team, but the responsibilities remain distinct.
Pair this record with the report inventory and ownership guide and the free browser-based retirement checklist.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns a Power BI report?
The accountable owner should be the person or role responsible for the report’s business relevance and decisions. A separate technical steward can own maintenance, deployment, and support.
How often should Power BI report ownership be reviewed?
Use a recurring cadence that matches risk and change, and trigger an additional review when an owner changes role, a report is replaced, or retirement is proposed.
What if a Power BI report has no owner?
Route it to the workspace or domain steward, identify the sponsoring business process, assign accountable ownership, and restrict major lifecycle decisions until responsibility is clear.
Primary sources
- Microsoft Learn: Content ownership and management
- Microsoft Learn: Retire and archive Power BI content
- Microsoft Learn: Data source impact analysis
Put ownership beside usage evidence
UsageVault helps platform teams build a consistent review surface across selected workspaces while keeping collected data in their own SQL environment.