There are a few options for reporting and analytics for a SharePoint employee portal – and a few limitations. In this post we cover what’s readily available in the platform, and when you might consider an add-on tool.

How analytics works for SharePoint data

The built-in SharePoint Online analytics collects data on user behavior and reports on basic metrics including pageviews, time on page, top files viewed and search queries.

It doesn’t show individualized metrics — which is ok for most communications teams. However, if you do need to see individualized data, you can use the audit logs to review what unique users are doing.

Most users see some data

What is sometimes surprising to intranet owners is that many users can view some sort of usage data. Data is not only for authors or administrators!

Site visitors (or readers) can see views on pages or news, trending pages, number of comments and the site usage report that is accessible through site settings.

Site visitors cannot see reports on the page, the report on external users or download the 90-day usage report.

Option 1: Page analytics

Let’s dig into what members and administrators can view.

With page analytics, page owners can view information about how users interact with the page or news post.

For example, you can view the number of people who have viewed the page over periods of time, average time spent on the page spent per user, and page traffic by time. This is a page analytics example from my environment:

The top charts are telling us that there were 24 unique people viewing the page over the last week, and 128 views.

Under that we can see they are spending 4m45s on average on the page, which is down 44%. This might be a good thing if it’s a jumping off point to other content, or this might need to be addressed with more engaging content.

The page traffic by time shows us the most active parts of the day and week when people are visiting. For this page, most people visit mid-week in the middle of the day, and a few scattered views on Sunday – maybe people getting ready for the week ahead!

You can also see the lifetime stats for your pages and news posts on the right in light grey. These show the total number of people who viewed content on your site and total views and since February 2018.

Option 2: Site and hub analytics

To view usage data for the overall site, click the settings gear and then click Site usage. You can also click Site contents in the left-hand menu and then click Site usage in the top navigation bar.

As a site owner, you can view information about how users interact with your site. 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 and news posts that receive the most views.

You can also see the trend of unique viewers, site visits, and average time spent per user for the last 7 days, last 30 days, and last 90 days.

There is a high-level overview of device access and when people access the site as well. It displays a summary of when most people access the site if there’s enough data:

This might help you decide as a content owner when you want to post new pages or news – in this example, posting content by Wed at noon will maximize the number of people seeing the post during the week.

Option 3: Search analytics

Search reports are another area that we recommend intranet owners review regularly.

They are useful for fine-tuning your content and the search user experience.

To access the search reports, intranet owners can start by going to all site settings > Search insights and configuration under the Microsoft Search area.

You can see data from the past 31 days (about one month), per day, or monthly for the previous year.

*Example search report. Image source: Microsoft*

The most useful data is seeing if people are using Bookmarks (if you’ve configured them), and looking at the query reports.
The No results and Abandoned query reports can tell you if people are searching for things where there might be content missing, content that is mislabeled, or there is content that makes sense as a Bookmark.

A query is added to the Top Queries listing when it's searched at least three times with a click on a result. These can tell you what types of information people are looking for, and where to invest more time with similar content if needed.

Limitations

The in-built analytics in SharePoint can help you understand the basic usage of your site and pages, but it may not be enough for your employee portal needs.

A few capabilities that we see our clients wanting include:

A more detailed history: authors or site owners might want to see a longer history of access (beyond 90 days) to understand the seasonal or longer-term trends.
View across multiple hubs or sites: Track and analyze user behavior across multiple SharePoint sites and hubs
More details by user type: Segment your users by attributes like location, department, role, and device.
Goals and funnels to track and measure specific intranet conversions (e.g. tracking success of campaigns)
Heatmaps and session recordings to understand how users interact with your intranet pages.
Custom dashboard, chart or report to visualize data

Most of these will require buying another tool or building a solution that uses the audit logs and summarizes data.

Add-ons and 3rd party options

If you want to get more insights into your intranet performance, you can search for third-party tools that integrate with SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Some of these tools can help you measure and optimize your intranet engagement, collaboration, and productivity.

MOAT

We have a tool, Gravity MOAT (Microsoft 365 Audit Trail) that keeps audit data for longer periods (years if you want!) in your Azure environment. It helps you get around the 90 day analytics requirement and can help you compare detailed monthly or year over year data.

Power BI

There are some basic M365 usage analytics that you can get as a Power BI dashboard. These show a monthly look-back on how users are adopting various M365 services in your organization. It also shows some simple usage metrics such as total files in SharePoint, number of active users and how much storage is being used in OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange.

For specific SharePoint analytics, you can connect Power BI through the SharePoint REST API to display detailed reports.

Viva Amplify

Viva Amplify is a relatively new tool rolling out for communicators to manage campaigns across multiple channels such as email, SharePoint, Engage (Yammer), and Teams.

It has analytics that compares views and engagement for a campaign across channels which is a broader look at intranet analytics.

It also summarizes comments and puts a simple sentiment analysis layer on the engagement:

*Example of Viva Amplify campaign report. Image source: Microsoft*

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a familiar option for corporate communicators because it’s commonly used for public websites. However, it doesn’t connect to SharePoint Online without some development and it doesn’t get as much rich data and reports as the out of the box reports give you.

More information in AppSource: Business Apps – Microsoft AppSource

Summary

As you can see, there are several options for viewing analytics for your SharePoint employee portal – and depending on your goals, the out of box options may be enough or you might need a 3rd party add-on for more detailed analysis and reports.

Reach out and we can discuss your needs for your employee portal!