News

Microsoft Releases Preview of Intune Data Warehouse

• By Kurt Mackie
• August 09, 2017

Microsoft on Tuesday launched the public preview of a new service for reporting on mobile device and mobile application use.

The Intune Data Warehouse can pull together information in graphical or chart form. It integrates with Power BI, Excel and other analytics tools that have charting capabilities.

The beta comes with premade reports, or it's possible to create custom reports since Intune Data Warehouse has its own OData-based API.

The Intune Data Warehouse tool can be used to report on the status of devices and applications. It can show device configurations, as well as an inventory of applications. The reporting is described as "happening in real-time in your environment," per Microsoft's announcement. It can manage "up to 90 days of historical data" and can show trends, as well as daily snapshots, of mobile use.

The beta can be accessed through the Intune Admin Console from within the Azure Portal via a "Data Warehouse" tile. For the beta release, Microsoft provides a Power BI file with preconfigured reports that will connect with an organization's Intune tenancy data. The Power BI file also includes "user friendly filters." The steps to connect Intune Data Warehouse with Power BI are illustrated in this Microsoft blog post.

Intune already has a "Reports" workspace within the Intune Admin Console for getting information about software and hardware use, as well as licensing. The reports show the status of updates, software versions, hardware and licensing details, as well as noncompliant apps, certificate compliance information, device health status and other matters, according to a Microsoft document description. With this built-in reporting capability, it's possible to save "up to 100 reports," according to the document.

Possibly, Intune Data Warehouse delivers a more robust reporting method than what's available in the Intune Admin Console. It's at least better than what's available via the Azure Portal.

"The Data Warehouse provides you access to more information about your mobile environment than the Azure portal," a Microsoft document explained. The distinction apparently is that the Intune Data Warehouse uses data that can be refreshed daily and it can show historical data. It also has an OData-based API to tap.

Intune Data Warehouse is just at the beta test stage, right now. Likely it'll be an upsell product of some sort when it becomes commercially available, but those details aren't clear yet.