SharePoint Online site usage report

Microsoft allows us to view the SharePoint Online site usage report. In this SharePoint Online tutorial, I will explain to you all about the SharePoint Online site usage report, where we can view the number of people who visited the site and the number of times people have visited the site.

Then, I will show you how to check the SharePoint Online site usage reports in three different ways:

• From the Site usage settings
• From Site contents
• From the SharePoint Admin center

Also, I will explain how to check all the individual names, who have viewed the particular SharePoint site pages and particular documents.

SharePoint Online site usage

1. On a SharePoint Online Team site or SharePoint Online Communication site, we can view site usage information like:
   • The number of people who visited the site.
   • The number of times people have visited the site
   • SharePoint lists items, documents, and site pages that have received more views.
   • Distribution of visits to the sites by the platform like Desktop, Mobile web, tablet, etc.
   • Documents that are shared with external users.
2. Site Owners, Site members, site visitors, and even site admins can have access to site usage.
3. Site visitors can not download 90-day usage reports and also they cannot run external user reports.

Note:

Guest users with site owner permissions, can not have access to site usage.

Now we will see how to check the site usage in SharePoint Online.

Check the SharePoint Online site usage reports

We can get information about SharePoint site usage in three different ways:

1. Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the Site usage settings
2. Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from Site contents
3. Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the SharePoint Admin center

Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the Site usage settings

To check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the Site usage settings, follow the below steps:

• Open a SharePoint Online site, where you have to check the site usage reports.
• Click on the Settings icon -> choose Site usage.

• Inside the Site usage, we will get the all information like Overall traffic which has three sections:
  • Unique viewers
  • Site visits
  • Average time spent per user

• In Site usage, we will see information like Popular content in the last 7 days, last 30 days, and last 90 days.
• In popular content, we have three sections:
  1. Site Pages
  2. News posts
  3. Documents
• All three can be sorted by Unique viewers, Total views, or Time spent by expanding the Sort by.

• After that, we will see information like Usage insights on the respective SharePoint site.
• In Usage insights, we can see the distribution of visits to the sites by the platform over the last 7 days, last 30 days, and last 90 days for the viewer’s local time zone.
• And also, we can see the hourly trendy site traffic of site visits. Darker shades on the chart refer to more views over the last 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days for the viewer’s local time zone.

• We can also see the list of files information that we have shared with external users (outside your organization) in Site usage.

This is how we can check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the Site usage settings.

Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from Site contents

Here we will see how to check the site usage reports from Site contents in SharePoint Online.

• Open a SharePoint Online site, where you have to check the site usage reports.
• Click on the Settings icon -> choose Site contents.

• On the Site contents page. click on the Site usage which appears on the top-left corner of the page.

• Inside the Site usage, we will get all the information like Overall traffic (Unique viewers, Site visits, and Average time spent per user) as shown above.

This is how we can check the site usage reports from Site contents in SharePoint Online.

Check the SharePoint online site usage reports from the SharePoint Admin center

This section will discuss how to get SharePoint Online site usage from the admin center. For this, the following steps are:

• Open your SharePoint admin center.

https://<Tenant name>-admin.sharepoint.com

• On the SharePoint Online admin center home page, we can view the SharePoint site usage.

• Also, it allows seeing the Active users in our SharePoint admin center.

This is how to get a SharePoint Online site usage from the SharePoint admin center.

If the user needs to check all the individual names, who have viewed the particular SharePoint site pages and particular documents.

They should enable the SharePoint Viewers under Manage site features.

Enable SharePoint viewers setting

Here, we will see how to activate the SharePoint viewers setting

• Click on the settings icon -> choose Site information

• Click on View all site settings -> Under Site Actions choose Manage site features

• Scroll down and activate the SharePoint viewers

This is how to activate the SharePoint viewers setting. Now we will see how to check the individual names, who have viewed the particular SharePoint site pages and particular documents.

• Open the SharePoint Document Library, where you need to check the individual who has viewed the document.
• Select a particular document in the SharePoint Document Library -> Select the More options (…) as shown below:

• A dailogue box appears which shows the number of views, click on it as shown below:

• Then it provides the viewer’s name, who has viewed this particular document in SharePoint Online.

If you need to check the viewer’s name, of the SharePoint site page, then select the particular SharePoint site page, go to the details pane.

There you will have individual names who have viewed the particular SharePoint site pages.

Conclusion

I hope you have a brief idea about the SharePoint Online site usage report where Site Owners, Site members, site visitors, and even site admins can view all the information about our respective SharePoint site.

Also, I have explained three different ways to check the Site usage reports in SharePoint Online.

Moreover, I have covered this by activating the SharePoint viewers setting, to see the individual name who viewed particular SharePoint site pages and documents.

You can check out:

• Change SharePoint Online Site Name
• How to Share a SharePoint Online Site
• Add a Planner to SharePoint Team Site
• Recycle Bin in SharePoint Online
• How to set up and manage SharePoint access requests?