You have three practical choices: review each workspace natively, build and operate a central history pipeline, or use a maintained product. The right choice depends on how many workspaces matter, how long you need the history, whether page-level evidence is required, and who will own the system when Microsoft changes.
Microsoft’s current Usage Metrics documentation explains how to remove a report filter and see usage for all reports in the same workspace. That is useful, but it is not the same as combining a portfolio of workspaces into one governed history. The distinction matters when Finance, Sales, Operations, and other teams publish into different workspaces.
The current Power BI experience is also changing. Microsoft documents a modern Usage Metrics report in preview whose semantic model retains 30 days and a legacy report with a 90-day view. The modern documentation says that preserving history beyond its window requires periodic export to an external data store. Always verify which experience is enabled in your tenant before designing around a retention number.
Primary sources: modern Usage Metrics (preview) and legacy Usage Metrics on Microsoft Learn.
The extraction method is only one part of the decision. Retention, operations, identifiers, data quality, privacy, semantic modeling, documentation, and support determine whether the result stays useful.
Best when workspace owners need recent answers and can review workspaces separately. It is included, familiar, and maintained by Microsoft. It becomes cumbersome when a central team needs one portfolio, consistent definitions, or history beyond the source window.
Best when your engineering team wants complete design and operating ownership. Treat it as a small internal product—not a one-off API script. Plan for scheduled collection, historical storage, throttling, retries, identity resolution, privacy, modeling, reporting, monitoring, documentation, and Microsoft changes.
Best when the requirement is important but another internal platform is not. Evaluate workspace scope, source depth, hosting model, deployment time, storage ownership, reporting experience, support, and multi-year commercial cost—not the feature list alone.
| Requirement | Native per workspace | Internal build | UsageVault |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recent answer inside one workspace | Strong fit | Usually unnecessary | Usually unnecessary |
| One view across selected workspaces | Manual or workspace-by-workspace | You design it | Included within licensed scope |
| History beyond the source window | Requires external preservation | Your storage and retention design | Customer SQL policy after collection |
| Page-level history | Available within native source limits | Depends on source and design | Preserved when supported by the source |
| Ongoing operations | Microsoft-owned native experience | Your team owns it | Product operations plus shared customer responsibilities |
| Historical data location | Microsoft-managed native model | Your chosen store | Customer-controlled SQL |
| Commercial model | Applicable Microsoft licensing | Labor and infrastructure | One-time standard product license plus customer infrastructure |
UsageVault is intentionally scoped to approved workspaces. It is not positioned as a tenant-wide backup, lineage, policy-enforcement, or full governance suite.
A new pipeline or product cannot recreate activity that Microsoft no longer exposes. Start by checking the history still available in the tenant, document the first complete collection date, and make partial periods visible. Durable evidence begins after the collection process is operating reliably.
UsageVault collects available activity from selected workspaces, writes historical records to customer-controlled SQL, and delivers a maintained Power BI semantic model and report for adoption, performance, governance, inventory, and discovery decisions.
US$3,900 one time. Initial guided setup for three workspaces, then documented self-service expansion within scope.
US$7,900 one time. Initial guided setup for ten workspaces, multiple delivery scopes, an IT administration view, and broader handoff.
Use native metrics for simple recent questions. Choose a broader platform when you need tenant-wide backup, lineage, policy enforcement, or multi-BI governance.
We will show the delivered Power BI experience, review the source and infrastructure boundary, and tell you if native tools, an internal build, or UsageVault is the better fit.
No tenant access or source code is needed for the first conversation.
Request a walkthrough