Power BI report inventory and ownership: what usage data cannot tell you

Usage is one dimension of portfolio health. It can show recorded views, viewers, recency, and sometimes page or opening-performance behavior. It cannot tell you whether a report is authoritative, whether Finance needs it once a year, who approves a replacement, or who must respond when a source breaks.

That is why every mature usage model needs an inventory-and-ownership layer. Microsoft’s current tenant-level auditing guidance calls tenant inventory an invaluable and necessary part of an auditing and monitoring solution, and recommends combining it with user activity.

Inventory and activity answer different questions

Activity without inventory misses silent items. Inventory without activity cannot show adoption. Neither one establishes business accountability.

The minimum Power BI report inventory

For a bounded workspace portfolio, begin with fields you can maintain reliably:

• workspace ID and current workspace name;
• report ID and current report name;
• report type and created or modified timestamps where supported;
• related semantic model ID and name;
• workspace state and capacity context where relevant;
• distribution path, including app or direct workspace use;
• technical contact and business owner;
• business purpose, criticality, lifecycle state, and review date.

Keep stable IDs even when names are easier to read. Microsoft explains that historical activity can contain an older report name after a rename. A current inventory lets the model resolve past events to the item’s current name.

What “owner” should mean

Do not reduce ownership to the person listed as a workspace administrator or the user who last published a file. Those are useful technical facts, but business accountability is broader.

A practical model separates at least three roles:

Business owner

Accountable for the report’s purpose, audience, definitions, criticality, and lifecycle outcome. This person approves major changes, consolidation, archive, or retirement.

Technical owner

Responsible for the implementation, refresh, credentials, semantic model, performance, deployment, and incident response.

Workspace or platform custodian

Responsible for access, workspace configuration, standards, and platform-level support. The custodian can facilitate a decision but should not be forced to invent the business value of every report.

What usage data cannot tell you

Even a well-maintained usage history cannot reliably determine:

• whether the report is the official version of a business metric;
• whether a legal, audit, or regulatory process requires retention;
• whether infrequent use is seasonal and essential;
• whether a replacement has complete audience and requirement coverage;
• whether an export, subscription, or downstream process depends on it;
• whether the owner has accepted the risk of retirement;
• whether the content can be restored within the required time.

Usage can prioritize which owners to contact. It cannot replace the conversation.

How to build and maintain the inventory

1. Choose the acquisition method

Microsoft describes two common programmatic approaches: the Get Groups as Admin API or PowerShell for smaller and lower-volume needs, and asynchronous metadata-scanning APIs when the organization needs higher volume or more detailed metadata.

Use only the detail needed for the approved question. Enabling DAX or mashup-expression scanning is a separate governance decision from collecting report names and IDs.

2. Snapshot on a schedule

Inventory is a point-in-time snapshot. Microsoft notes that many organizations find a weekly capture useful. Your cadence should reflect how quickly the scoped portfolio changes and how soon you need to identify additions, moves, renames, or deletions.

3. Preserve history without duplicating everything

Use stable identifiers and effective dates so the model can show current attributes while retaining meaningful changes. Keep a deletion or inactive state rather than simply dropping a missing report from every analytical table.

4. Enrich with accountable fields

API metadata rarely contains your complete business-ownership model. Add a governed table or workflow for owner, criticality, domain, official-status, replacement, lifecycle state, review date, and exception reason.

5. Create an exception queue

Surface reports with no owner, owners who left the organization, missing purpose, conflicting ownership, or an overdue review. An ownership dashboard is useful only if someone is assigned to resolve the gaps.

Use inventory and activity together

Microsoft recommends combining inventory and activity to understand unused or under-utilized content. The analytical pattern is straightforward:

1. Start with the complete in-scope report inventory.
2. Join recorded activity using stable IDs and a published evidence window.
3. Add owner, criticality, seasonality, lifecycle, and exception fields.
4. Route the resulting review queue to accountable people.
5. Record the decision and next review date.

The process is described step by step in How to find unused Power BI reports across multiple workspaces.

Primary sources

• Microsoft Learn: Power BI tenant-level auditing
• Microsoft Learn: Set up metadata scanning
• Microsoft Learn: Content ownership and management