Microsoft Office 365 Updates – New Activity Logging and Reporting Capabilities

As employees utilize multiple devices to work outside their physical office, an increasing number of companies are moving their data and important information to the cloud. While the move is ultimately beneficial, issues with compliance, privacy and security become a challenge.

In response to this feedback, Microsoft is rolling out a series of updates that will give customers visibility and control over who can access their data and how.

What’s New With Office 365?

Microsoft is currently rolling out some new reporting capabilities and activity logging features for Office 365. These include a full activity report, as well as PowerShell command, comprehensive logging capability and a preview of their new Office 365 Management Activity API. Each of these features has the potential to be very beneficial, so we’ll look at what each of them can offer.

The Activity Report

The Office 365 Activity report will allow you to check any user’s activity. You can search for a user and file on a number of tools including SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Azure Active Directory and One Drive for Business.

Search results can be filtered by date range, username, file or folder and the type of activity. Any activity log can be downloaded to a CSV file.

Comprehensive Logging Capability

This new capability logs admin and user activity across SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Azure Active Directory and One Drive for Business so you can see the types of files a user is sharing with others. While the current version allows you to search more than 150 events, that number will soon increase. Future updates will also allow this tool to work with other services including Yammer and Skype for Business.

Search PowerShell cmdlet

PowerShell is another way Microsoft allows you to search activity logs. You’ll be able to run scoped queries against the audit storage log using SearchUnifiedAuditLog cmdlet. Run queries by date, operation, file extension and type of record.

Office 365 Management Activity API

This API will allow software providers and organizations to integrate their Office 365 activity data into the compliance and security monitoring and reporting solutions they already have in place. While this feature is currently limited to certain users, there is a plan to slowly open this up to others who are interested in the feature.

Availability

The features should all be available by the end of July, according to Microsoft. Once available, you’ll see an Office 365 Activity Report Link in the Reports area of your Admin Compliance Center.

As with other updates, the new activity logging and reporter capabilities will make Office 365 a more powerful and comprehensive tool for businesses around the world.