SharePoint usage reports | SharePoint Online usage reports

Want to know about the SharePoint usage reports or the SharePoint site usage report? This tutorial is all about how to check SharePoint site usage reports?

As a SharePoint site owner or site administrator, it is necessary to monitor SharePoint usage or tracking usage on SharePoint.

Here we will also discuss, how to enable usage log reports in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016, or SharePoint 2019. In the same way, also we can enable sharepoint 2016 usage reports.

Here we will check usage reports for SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2013/2016/2019.

Let us learn about SharePoint site statistics, different ways to check the site usage, and also we will learn about the elements (unique viewers, site visits, average time spent per user, popular content, and usage insight) present in the site usage analytics page.

We will learn about SharePoint usage report in Microsoft 365 to view the trend of SharePoint Sites.

Then, we will learn how to check/find size data in SharePoint site and in Microsoft 365.

What is SharePoint site statistics?

As a SharePoint site admin or site owner, you can keep an eye on the information, how effectively users are interacting with your site and how the metrics of the SharePoint site are growing.

SharePoint site statistics is a very useful tool to get about how many people have visited the site, how many times people have visited the sites, and which files are getting more viewers.

Site member, site owner, site admin and site visitors can see the site usage reports.

Different ways to view SharePoint usage reports

There are different ways to view the SharePoint usage reports.

View SharePoint usage report from Site Content

• Open your SharePoint Online site, then go to Site content
• In the command bar, click on the Site usage

Now, you can see your site usage analytics page.

View SharePoint usage analytics from Home page

Let us see how to view the SharePoint usage analytics from the home page. Follow the below steps to view site usage in SharePoint online.

• Click on Gear icon/ Setting icon -> Site Usage

Then you can see your site usage analytics.

SharePoint usage reporting details

Let us see what are the elements presented in the SharePoint usage reporting.

• Unique viewers: Here you can see the individual viewers/visitors to the SharePoint site and also you can see how many times they have visited.

• Site visits: Here you can see how many viewers visit the site to see the content in the site.

• Avg time spent per user: Here you can see the graph of actual time spent in the SharePoint site pages and news post users. When users are actually active then only the report calculates the time.

• Popular content: Under popular content, you can see the site pages, news posts, and documents. Popular contents(site pages, news posts, and documents) are sorted by unique viewers, total visits, and total time spent by the visitors. By default, Popular content is available for the last 7 days.

• Usage insight: It shows at which time and days traffic comes(by time) to the site and by using which popular device visitors visit the site(by device). Using by time you can see the traffic on the site from the last 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days and by device, you can know which popular device(desktop, mobile app, mobile web, tablet, and other devices) visitors are visiting the site.

SharePoint Usage Reports from Microsoft 365 admin center

In Microsoft 365 report we can view all the activity and usage of SharePoint. This page will give you an overview of how many number of total sites are there and how many active sites users are using, what is the total number of files are stored on the SharePoint site and what are active files are actively in use, what amount of storage is used by SharePoint and how many number of pages are viewed.

Let’s learn briefly about SharePoint Usage in Microsoft 365 admin center.

• Open your Microsoft 365 admin center and go to Report -> Usage.
• Under SharePoint files, click on view more.
• Then select Site usage.

Sites

In SharePoint site usage, the Sites chart shows the number of total sites and the number of active sites. The site chart shows that the number of sites are viewed, modified, downloaded, and shared from the last 7days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days.

Files

In SharePoint site usage, the Files chart shows the number of total files and the number of active files is there in SharePoint in the last 7days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days. The total files contain user files and system files. A file gets considered as an active file, when a file gets modified, viewed, shared, and saved within a period of time.

Storage

In SharePoint site usage, the Storage chart shows the amount of storage used for SharePoint in the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days.

Pages

In SharePoint site usage, the Pages chart shows the total number of page views in the last 7days, 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days.

Table

The table chart provide the total information about the SharePoint sites. There are different types of elements.

• Site URL: shows SharePoint site full URL
• Deleted: shows the status of which sites are deleted. It takes 7days at least to marked sites as deleted.
• Site Owner: shows username of the primary owner of SharePoint.
• Site Owner Principal Name: shows the email address of the owner of the SharePoint site.
• Last activity date (UTC): it refers to the last time of the date when the pages are viewed on the SharePoint site.
• Files: shows the number of files in each site.
• Active files: shows the number of active files in each site.
• Storage used: show the amount of storage (MB) is used by each site.
• Storage allocated: shows the maximum amount of storage allocated to each site.
• Page views: shows the number of page views for each SharePoint site.
• Pages Visited: shows the number of visitors who visit the unique page of the SharePoint site.
• External Sharing: shows that whether the site is enabled or disabled for external sharing.
• Remote Web template: shows which template is used for creating a SharePoint site.

SharePoint Online site analytics

Let us see what is SharePoint site analytics and how we can view the SharePoint usage data as a SharePoint site owner.

SharePoint site analytics means, you can view information about how users interact with your SharePoint site. And also the SharePoint Site admins, owners, members, and visitors can view site usage data.

For example, you can view the number of people who have visited the site, how many times people have visited the site, and a list of files that have received the most views.

There are three ways that we can check the SharePoint site analytics

1. Using Site content page
2. Using Site activity web part on the Modern page
3. Using Office365 admin center

Using Site content page

• To access it, Go to the SharePoint site click on the Settings Gear Icon.
• Select Site Contents, then choose the Site usage link.

• Once you click on the Site Usage, you will see a SharePoint site analytics, like the number of recent site visits as shown below:

Using Site activity web part on SharePoint Modern page

It is similar to the SharePoint site Contents page mentioned above, this functionality is only available on the SharePoint modern page.

• Go to the SharePoint site page where you want to add a vertical section.
• If you’re not in edit mode already, choose Edit Page at the top right of the SharePoint site page.
• Hover your mouse below the title area of the page and you’ll see a line with a circled + to Add a new section
• Click + circled icon to add a new section.Under Section layout, select One Column section.
• Click + circled icon then select Site activity from the Web Part .

• The web part embeds recently modified content right onto the page, saving users the clicks of the previous option and showing off the most popular content right on the SharePoint site page.
• Once added, this is what it looks like on a page. It pretty much shows recently updated content, whether it is a document, task, calendar event, OneNote, etc. It shows the recently modified content.

• And this web part only exists only on the Modern SharePoint site pages and not on the classic SharePoint site pages.

Using Office365 admin center

• Login to Microsoft Office365 using your SharePoint credentials -> Select Office365 App Launcher and then click on the Admin.
• Click on the Show all, Now select Usage option under Reports.
• By default, the graph shows you the number of active Users by Office 365 application within a certain date range (SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Skype, Yammer)

These are the three ways that we can check the SharePoint site analytics.

How to find the size of data in SharePoint site

We will learn how to find the size of data of a SharePoint site. Different ways to view the size of SharePoint site.

In SharePoint Site

• Open your SharePoint Site, click on Site content
• Click on Site settings
• Then under Site Collection Administration-> Storage Metrics

Storage Metrics page shows the size of data stored in the SharePoint site, and it shows the size allocated to store data. It shows the information about different types of data size, last modified date, and % of Parent ( this column indicates, the amount of storage that an item takes relative to the rest of the item in that scope).

Microsoft 365 Report

In Microsoft 365 admin center you can see the report of SharePoint site storage data.

• Open Microsoft 365 admin, then click on Reports
• Under Report click on Usage
• Under SharePoint files, click on view more
• Then click on site usage, and locate to table chart
• In the table chart in the last column, there is an option for Choose Column.

• Check the box next to the Storage Used(MB). If it is selected then it showing by default on your table chart otherwise select the option and save it.

Storage used(MB) gives information about storage used by each SharePoint site.

This is how we can check SharePoint usage reports, or the SharePoint online usage reports.

Enable usage reports SharePoint 2013/2016/2019

This is very important while providing audit reports and the security team. SharePoint admin should be able to provide all the user’s information who are accessing the SharePoint sites and when did they access all the information at any point in time. Without enabling the usage report log option we couldn’t be able to generate any data.

Please follow the below steps to enable/configure the usage report log in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016.

Log on to any SharePoint web front end server as FARM administrator.

Open SharePoint central admin with run as administrator.

Click on Monitoring.

Click on Configure usage and health data collection.

Monitoring -> Reporting -> Configure usage and health data collection.

Select the checkbox “Enable usage data collection” under Usage Data Collection.

Select all the required checkboxes as part of Events to log as per the business need.

In this page, we also mention the path for log file default path is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\LOGS\

Enable “Health Data Collection” if you weren’t to see any health reports.

This health and usage log reports will be logged by default to a DB in the same DB server.

With the below query we can get some usage report

select top 1000 ServerUrl, UserLogin, LogTime, RowCreatedTime
from [WSS_Logging].[dbo].[RequestUsage]
where 1=1
and LogTime >= '2016-09-09'
order by LogTime desc

You may like the following SharePoint site tutorials:

• SharePoint site types
• How to change SharePoint site collection URL or Address
• How to delete SharePoint site?
• Display warning message in SharePoint site using PowerShell
• Get sharepoint site template PowerShell
• How to get sharepoint site URL programmatically
• How to Change SharePoint Site Logo + PowerShell
• Add Modern SharePoint Site Page in Microsoft Teams
• How to Change Look and Feel of SharePoint Site
• How to allow anonymous read access to a SharePoint site?
• How to add parent site navigation to subsite in SharePoint?

In this SharePoint tutorial, we learned how to enable usage log reports in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016, or SharePoint server 2019. Also, we get to know SharePoint usage reports and SharePoint online usage reports.

Here we also saw what is SharePoint site statistics, different ways to view site usage, and elements in the site usage analytics page. Then we learn about how to check SharePoint site usage in Microsoft 365.

And also we learn about how to find the size of data in SharePoint site.