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Understanding Page View Tracking in SharePoint Online: How the Magic Platform Solves It

Tracking page views and user interactions in SharePoint Online is critical for understanding how your content is being consumed. Unfortunately, SharePoint Online’s built-in analytics can sometimes fall short, with reports of missing or unreliable data. This post explores the problem in detail and introduces how the Magic Platform provides a reliable solution.

The Problem with SharePoint Online Page Views​

SharePoint Online offers basic page view tracking through its Usage Analytics system. While this tool is sufficient for general site usage metrics, there are a few key limitations that can impact its reliability:

  1. Latency and Data Gaps: SharePoint's Usage Analytics often experiences delays in data availability. Page views might not show up for several hours, or even days, in some cases.
  2. Anonymous and External Users: Views by anonymous or external users may not always be captured, leading to incomplete reports.
  3. Limited Retention: SharePoint’s usage data is typically retained for only 90 days. This short retention period can hinder long-term analysis or historical comparisons.
  4. Service Outages: Temporary issues with Microsoft’s usage tracking infrastructure can result in missing page views.

Because of these limitations, organizations looking for reliable, consistent, and long-term tracking often find SharePoint’s out-of-the-box capabilities insufficient.

Cases Where Page Views Were Not Stored​

Many SharePoint users have encountered situations where they realize after the fact that important data wasn’t logged or reported. These lapses in page view tracking can lead to incomplete insights and may even hinder decision-making regarding content effectiveness or user engagement.

But what options do you have when this happens?

How the Magic Platform Addresses the Issue​

The Magic Platform has been designed to provide reliable, long-term tracking of user interactions and page views, specifically for organizations using SharePoint Online and similar Microsoft 365 environments. It combines both Microsoft-native solutions and custom telemetry to offer a more dependable approach. Here’s how it works:

1. Leveraging Audit Logs as a Reliable Source​

While SharePoint’s Usage Analytics might be limited, audit logs are a more reliable, long-term data source. These logs capture granular details, including page views, user access, and more. Here’s why the Magic Platform relies on audit logs:

  • Detailed Information: Unlike usage reports, audit logs provide detailed records for every interaction, including specific users, timestamps, and the actions they took (like page views).
  • Longer Retention: The Magic Platform configures audit logs for extended retention, allowing data to be kept for years, depending on licensing (up to 10 years in some cases). This ensures that critical user activity is never lost.
  • Trustworthy Compliance Data: Audit logs are built for compliance, making them far more dependable than analytics that might experience temporary outages or delays.

How We Access Audit Logs​

The Magic Platform connects directly to SharePoint’s audit logs using both PowerShell and Microsoft Graph API, ensuring that data can be retrieved reliably and processed for reporting. Our platform includes automated processes to:

  • Pull audit log data regularly,
  • Process and filter relevant events (like page views),
  • Feed the data into custom dashboards for ongoing monitoring.

2. Custom Logging and Telemetry​

For real-time and detailed engagement tracking, the Magic Platform goes a step further by integrating custom telemetry solutions such as:

  • Azure Application Insights: This tool captures in-depth data about user activity on SharePoint Online, including custom events and interactions that are not covered by standard page view tracking.
  • Google Analytics Integration: For customers who prefer third-party solutions, Google Analytics is seamlessly integrated into SharePoint pages, providing detailed insights into user behavior, session duration, and engagement patterns.

3. Real-Time and Historical Reporting with Power BI​

By combining audit logs and custom telemetry data, the Magic Platform provides powerful Power BI dashboards that deliver:

  • Real-time insights into page views, clicks, and other key metrics,
  • Historical reporting that extends beyond SharePoint’s 90-day limit, with data stored for as long as needed,
  • Custom filters to break down data by users, pages, time periods, and more.

With Power BI’s rich visualization capabilities, organizations using the Magic Platform can get a complete view of user interactions, blending real-time and historical data to drive content strategy.

4. Seamless Integration with Existing SharePoint Workflows​

The Magic Platform is designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 workflows. Our platform:

  • Automates the extraction of relevant data from audit logs and usage reports,
  • Consolidates the data into actionable reports,
  • Provides Alerts and Notifications for any gaps or missing data, ensuring that issues are flagged early on.

This way, you get reliable tracking without needing to worry about missing out on critical data.

5. Self-Healing Job Execution via Kubernetes​

To ensure continuous operation of the telemetry and logging system, the Magic Platform uses Kubernetes for orchestrating background services. Should any telemetry or reporting jobs fail, Kubernetes automatically redeploys them. This reduces downtime and makes the platform more resilient compared to out-of-the-box analytics solutions.

6. Custom Role-Based Access with koksmat_acl_init​

Magic Platform also includes a role-based access control mechanism built using the koksmat_acl_init procedure. This system ensures that even large-scale datasets related to page views and telemetry are secured by granular permissions, allowing only authorized users to view sensitive data.

Conclusion: Trusting Your SharePoint Data with Magic Platform​

When it comes to reliable, long-term tracking of SharePoint Online page views and user activities, the Magic Platform offers a solution that goes beyond the limitations of SharePoint’s built-in capabilities. By leveraging audit logs, custom telemetry, and powerful reporting tools, you can trust that your data is captured, stored, and available whenever you need it.