Create Power BI Reports Using Azure Audit Logs

Power BI is a cloud based service that provides data visualization options based on the source data. Using Power BI, we can create dashboards based on the data. In order to create reports using Power BI, make sure that you have a Power BI account. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for it here .You can either work with Power BI online or download the Power BI Desktop version from here.




Clicking on the icon and selecting "Get Data" option, we can connect to various data sources to derive business intelligence reports.


However, in this walkthrough, we will see how to use the Online Power BI service to monitor Azure Audit Logs and generate reports using Azure Log data. In order to connect to Power BI, head over to Power BI Site. Enter the Power BI credentials which were used to register with the Power BI Site.


Once signed in, we will be navigated to the "Get Data" page. Select "Get from the Services" tab.


Search for "Azure Audit Logs" and click on "Get".


This will take us to the page where we will have to specify the Azure Subscription ID. The Azure subscription id can be found from the "Settings" section in the Azure portal.


Enter the Subscription Id in the below text box and click on "Next".


Specify the Authentication method as oAuth2 and click on "Sign In".


It will import the required data from the Azure Audit logs to the Power BI report.


Once the data import has been completed, a full-fledged dashboard will be automatically created which we can customize as per our need.


A new item by the name "Azure Audit Logs" will be created in the left pane, as shown below.


Clicking on it will take us to the Azure Audit report dashboard which will contain detailed dashboard based on the events that have happened in our Azure Subscription. The dashboard will give us the details about VM Provisioning/Deletion, Domain creation, Resource Utilization, and so on.




If we click on one of the charts, it will take us to the drilled down report that gives detailed event information happened within our Azure account.


This is a short exploration of what is possible with Power BI. We can customize the dashboard and derive business intelligence out of these Azure Audit Logs to serve our business needs.

Summary

Thus, we saw how to connect to Azure Audit Logs and generate Power BI reports.