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Usage analytics

Usage analytics is only available on Pro and Enterprise plans (both self-hosted and on Metabase Cloud).

The Usage analytics collection is a special collection that contains view-only questions, dashboards, and models that help you understand how people are using your Metabase.

Usage analytics collection

These resources are useful for:

  • Understanding Usage: Understand how people use your Metabase (e.g., new questions, most active people and groups, and so on).
  • Auditing activity: Know who viewed or did what and when, including tracking dashboard and question views, queries, downloads, and other activity like changing settings or inviting people to your Metabase.
  • Improving operations: Know the slowest dashboards and questions, how your database’s are performing, who’s consuming the most resources, and so on.

Some things to keep in mind with this special Usage analytics collection:

  • Usage analytics is a view-only collection. Even admins can’t curate it. It is eternal.
  • By default, only admins can view the Usage analytics collection (though admins can grant other groups view access to it). If you’re upgrading from a version older than 48, people in groups with monitoring access will also get access to the Usage analytics collection. But after that initial grandfathering in, the monitoring access privilege is unrelated to the Usage analytics collection; you’ll need to specifically grant groups access to the Usage analytics collection.
  • You can duplicate any item in the Usage analytics collection, modify the item to your liking, and save the item to another collection.
  • Metabase creates some default user accounts that you might see in your usage analytics, like internal@metabase.com. See Default accounts for more information.

Permissions

By default, only admins can see the Usage analytics collection. You can manage permissions for the collection in Admin settings > Permissions > Collections.

There are only two access types for the Usage analytics collection: View and No access.

Additionally, this Usage analytics collection has a default sub-collection called “Custom reports” which you can use to save duplicated/modified questions, dashboards, and models. This sub-collection inherits the same permissions, but it’s not view-only; admins have curate access by default, and can grant other groups view access.

Viewing usage insights for a question, dashboard, or model

Only people in groups with view access to the Usage analytics collection will see this Usage insights option.

To view usage analytics for a question, dashboard, or model:

  • Visit the item.
  • Click on the dot menu (…).
  • Select Usage insights.

Metabase will take you to the relevant usage dashboard and plug in the item’s ID.

Creating custom reports

You can duplicate any of the questions, dashboards and models in the Usage analytics collection and tweak them to your liking, but you’ll need to save them to a different collection.

Custom reports collection

While you can save custom questions, models, and dashboards wherever you like (except for the Usage analytics collection), we recommend that you save your custom Usage analytics reports in the conveniently named “Custom reports” sub-collection. That way these items inherit the same permissions as the parent Usage analytics collection.

There is one thing to know about the Custom reports collection: its metadata resets whenever Metabase restarts. While you are able to temporarily rename the Custom reports collection, or give it a description or an Official badge, Metabase will drop this collection’s metadata when it restarts. But rest assured that Metabase will preserve any questions, models, events, or dashboards that you add to the Custom reports collection.

Dashboards

The Usage analytics collection includes a set of read-only dashboards.

Metabase metrics dashboard

General information about people viewing and creating dashboards, questions, subscriptions, and alerts. Cards include:

  • Active users last week
  • Question views last week
  • Questions created last week
  • Dashboards created last week
  • Alerts and subscriptions created last week
  • Weekly active users
  • Question views per week
  • Most active users
  • Most active creators
  • Most viewed dashboards
  • Most viewed cards

Most viewed content dashboard

View the most relevant content in your Metabase. Cards include:

  • Most viewed dashboards
  • Most viewed questions
  • Most viewed tables

Person overview dashboard

See what someone’s been up to in your Metabase. Cards include:

  • Member of
  • Active alerts
  • Questions created per month
  • Question views per month
  • Most viewed dashboards
  • Most viewed questions
  • Last viewed dashboards
  • Last viewed questions
  • Last viewed tables
  • Recent activity
  • Last queries

Dashboard overview dashboard

Information about dashboards, questions, models, and tables. Cards include:

  • Dashboard metadata
  • Dashboard views per month
  • Question performance
  • Most active people on this dashboard
  • Questions in this dashboard
  • Most active people on this dashboard
  • Questions in this dashboard
  • Recent activity on dashboard
  • Subscriptions on this dashboard

Question overview dashboard

Views, performance, activity, and other data for a particular question. Cards include:

  • Question metadata
  • Question views per month
  • Question performance
  • Most active people on this question
  • Dashboards with this question
  • Last activity on this question
  • Alerts on this question

Performance overview dashboard

Question, dashboard and database performance. Cards include:

  • Slowest dashboards
  • Dashboards consuming most resources
  • Slowest questions
  • Questions consuming the most resources
  • Dashboards with more questions in the same tab
  • Users consuming the most resources

Content with cobwebs dashboard

Dashboards and questions that you could consider archiving. Cards include:

  • Dashboards without recent reviews
  • Questions without recent reviews
  • Questions that don’t belong to a dashboard

Models

The Usage analytics collection includes a bunch of useful models based on Metabase’s application database.

Activity log model

Each row of this model describes one event of a particular topic. Fields include:

  • ID
  • Topic
  • Timestamp
  • End Timestamp
  • User ID
  • Model
  • Model ID
  • Details

The topics include:

  • alert-create
  • alert-delete
  • card-create
  • card-delete
  • card-update
  • dashboard-add-cards
  • dashboard-create
  • dashboard-delete
  • dashboard-remove-cards
  • install
  • metric-create
  • metric-delete
  • metric-update
  • segment-create
  • segment-delete
  • segment-update
  • setting-update
  • subscription-create
  • subscription-delete
  • user-joined

View log model

Tracks views cards (which includes models), dashboards, and tables. Fields include:

  • ID
  • Timestamp
  • User ID
  • Entity Type (card, dashboard, or table)
  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID

Query log model

Information about all queries Metabase ran across all dashboards. Fields include:

  • Entity ID
  • Started At
  • Running Time Seconds
  • Result Rows
  • Is Native
  • Query Source
  • Error
  • User ID
  • Card ID
  • Card Qualified ID
  • Dashboard ID
  • Dashboard Qualified ID
  • Pulse ID
  • Database ID
  • Database Qualified ID
  • Cache Hit
  • Action ID

Query sources include:

  • action
  • ad-hoc
  • collection
  • csv-download
  • dashboard
  • embedded-dashboard
  • embedded-csv-download
  • embedded-json-download
  • embedded-question
  • embedded-xlsx-download
  • json-download
  • map-tiles
  • metabot (experimental)
  • public-dashboard
  • public-question
  • pulse (which includes dashboard subscriptions and alerts)
  • question
  • xlsx-download

Alerts model

All alerts, both active and archived.

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Creator ID
  • Card ID
  • Card Qualified ID
  • Alert Condition
  • Schedule Type
  • Schedule Day
  • Schedule Hour
  • Archived
  • Recipient Type
  • Recipients
  • Recipient External

Content model

Questions, dashboards, models, events, and collections.

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Entity Type
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Creator ID
  • Name
  • Description
  • Collection ID
  • Made Public By User
  • Is Embedding Enabled
  • Archived
  • Action Type
  • Action Model ID
  • Collection Is Official
  • Collection Is Personal
  • Question Viz Type
  • Question Database ID
  • Question Is Native
  • Event Timestamp

Entity types include:

  • action
  • collection
  • dashboard
  • event
  • model
  • question

People model

Everyone in your Metabase, including deactivated accounts. Fields include:

  • User ID
  • Email
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Full Name
  • Date Joined
  • Last Login
  • Updated At
  • Is Admin
  • Is Active
  • SSO Source
  • Locale

Dashboard subscriptions model

Which subscriptions are active, who created them, who’s subscribed to them, when they’re sent, and more.

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Creator ID
  • Archived
  • Dashboard Qualified ID
  • Schedule Type
  • Schedule Day
  • Schedule Hour
  • Recipient Type
  • Recipients
  • Recipient External
  • Parameters

Dashboard cards model

Each row is a dashboard card: either a question card or a text card. Fields include:

  • ID
  • Dashboard ID
  • Dashboardtab ID
  • Question ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Size X
  • Size Y
  • Visualization Settings
  • Parameter Mappings

Databases model

Information about your connected data sources. Fields include:

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Name
  • Description
  • Database Type
  • Metadata Sync Schedule
  • Cache Field Values Schedule
  • Timezone
  • Is On Demand
  • Auto Run Queries
  • Cache Ttl
  • Creator ID
  • Db Version

Tables model

List of all tables across all connected data sources. Fields include:

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Name
  • Display Name
  • Description
  • Active
  • Database ID
  • Schema
  • Is Upload

Fields model

All fields from all connected data sources. Fields include:

  • Entity ID
  • Entity Qualified ID
  • Created At
  • Updated At
  • Name
  • Display Name
  • Description
  • Base Type
  • Visibility Type
  • Fk Target Field ID
  • Has Field Values
  • Active
  • Table ID

System tasks model

Describes the last 14 days of Metabase internal processes tasks.

  • ID
  • Task
  • Database Qualified ID
  • Started At
  • Ended At
  • Duration Seconds
  • Details

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