Dynamics 365 Usage Statistics: 2 Ways to Monitor User Adoption

Why you need usage statistics for Dynamics 365

Once your CRM is up and running, you’ll want to know your level of user adoption.

Are the users using the system as they were trained?
Who is not using the system so much and can they be helped?
Are some users beginning to use the system in a more efficient way, who could become internal advocates or trainers for the system?

Out of the box, there’s no simple way to view usage statistics in Dynamics 365. Previously, there was a solution in Microsoft AppSource called Organisation Insights, which has now been discontinued. Now, there are two Microsoft solutions, as well as many commercial apps to view usage statistics. The Microsoft solutions use

Power Platform admin centre
The User Auditing feature in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Usage Statistics in Power Platform

As Microsoft Dynamics 365 is now part the Microsoft’s Dataverse, all its data is available through Power Platform.

So, to look at your organisation’s Dynamics 365 Usage Statistics, visit the Power Platform admin centre.

What Dynamics 365 user activities can you report on?

In the admin centre, there are 8 reports about Dynamics user activities.

Home

Dynamics 365 Usage Statistics using Power platform admin

Active users – the number of users who have interacted with your CRM

API calls / Pass Rate, Executions and Top Plug-ins by Failures – these details refer to any plugins you may have installed on your CRM. For a broader overview of CRM usage, you can ignore these

Total Operations – a useful graph. From this you’ll see two important trends – when your CRM is being used and how much it is being used. The graph is split into the various types of operations (read, create, update, delete)

Most Active Users Performing Operations – a graph showing the number of operations per user. Again, operations are broken down by type (read, create, update, delete)

Active Users

Many of these reports expand on the data from the home page dashboard.

New reports include:

Most Used Entities
Total Page Requests – The number of page loads of forms, dashboards, or reports.
Active Users Performing Specific Operations – The number of users over time who performed an operation that caused one of these SDK calls: Retrieve, Retrieve Multiple, Delete, Create, or Update.
Most Active Users Performing Specific Operations – The number of users who performed an operation that caused one of these SDK calls: Retrieve, Retrieve Multiple, Delete, Create, or Update.

Mode of Access

A series of reports which breaks down users by type, by operation and by device

Operating System
Device Type
Browser
Security role
Business Unit
Entity
Client(s)

Entity Usage

Useful reports showing exactly which part of Dynamics 365 was used

Most Used Custom Entities – Which custom entities had the most Creates, Reads, Updates and Deletes.
Most Used OOB Entities – List of out-of-box entities which had the most Creates, Reads, Updates and Deletes.
Most Used Entities – a combination of the two reports above to allow comparisons.

System Jobs

Helpful for seeing which workflows are most popular in your organisation, and to troubleshoot

Workflow Executions
System Jobs Pass Rate
System Jobs Throughput/Minute
Executions and Backlog – the number of executions and the backlog
Most Active Workflows the top 10 most executed workflows
Top Workflows by Failures the top 10 most failing workflows. Get more information by clicking on a workflow.

Plug-ins

This section shows data about plug-ins

Plug-in Success Rate
Plug-in Executions
Average Plug-in Execution Time
Most Active Plug-ins
Top Plug-ins by Failures

API Call Statistics

This section shoes top level, generic information about API calls

API Success Rate
Top API by Failures
Total API Calls
Most Used API
API Calls

Mailbox Usage

This section shows details about the types of mailboxes you have and how they are being used

Mailbox Details by location
Mailboxes by Server Type
Active Email Server Profiles by location
Mailboxes by Exchange Configuration
Number of Mailbox Configuration Errors- shows the number of mailboxes configuration errors which occurred over the user-selected time frame.
Mailbox Usage
Number of Outlook Mailboxes
Number of Active Email Server Profiles

Downloading reports from Power Platform Admin centre

From the download button at the top of most screens you can download

Active users by device type
Active users by business unit
Active users by security role
Active users by client
Active users by entities
Most active users performing operations
Most used custom entities List of custom entities
Most used OOB entities
Most active workflows
Most active plug-ins
Most used API
Active Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Plan Users by Application
Non-conformant usage by users with Team Member license Shows users with team member licenses who are using Dynamics in ways beyond their licence allows

Using Dynamics 365 user auditing to better understand user adoption

User level auditing gives you focused, granular details about user interactions at an entity level

To enable Dynamics 365 user auditing

In Dynamics 365, enable auditing.
Cog icon > Advanced Settings > Administration > System Settings > Auditing tab.
In Audit settings, check
- Start Auditing
- Audit user access
- Start Read Auditing
Under Enable Auditing in the following areas, check the areas you wish to audit
To enable table and field level auditing, go to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System
Choose Components > Entities and choose an entity to audit.
In the Data Services section choose check Auditing
Then, under Auditing, check:
- Single record auditing. Log a record when opened.
- Multiple record auditing. Log all records displayed on an opened page.
Save > Publish
Repeat for any other entities you want to audit
Turn on Microsoft 365 audit logging
- Visit compliance centre https://protection.office.com/
- Go to search > Audit log search
- Click Turn on auditing

Find out more about these steps on Microsoft’s page – Microsoft Dataverse analytics

What data is included in a Dynamics 365 user audit?

All record actions – Create, read, update, delete (CRUD)
All record views – including lists like grid views, Advanced Find search, etc.
Export to Excel
Activity to / from third part apps
Report views / export

Running reports on Dynamics 365 user audit data

You can run reports by visiting the compliance centre

As so much information is logged, the results output can be huge. That means it can be hard to find the exact data you need. So, once you’ve searched for the data, you’ll want to use filters to focus your result data

You can filter by