This is the second part in my series on reports provided in SharePoint. Today I am going to focus on the OOTB SharePoint audit logs that will generate reports you can run as a site collection administrator. The data gathering for these reports is not enabled by default so I will show you how to do that. I will also discuss what you can get from the reports and how you can configure them to search for data you need.
You can view part one of this series by clicking here.
I have seen over time that new users have asked about reporting in SharePoint. Usually it is in a forum post which isn’t always the best place to provide an answer as the answer can be quite detailed, so I decided to do a write-up and if someone asks, I can direct them here instead of re-writing in a medium that isn’t quite as nice for the requirements of the answer. Not only that, I have seen blog posts with posts that are only about one report and not about any of the others. I would like to discuss all the OOTB reports in one place so anyone looking can find them all. This isn’t going to be anything new or cutting edge for the experienced SharePoint user. It’s intended for the person that is new to SharePoint or looking for basic info on SharePoint.
To put it bluntly, SharePoint doesn’t have a lot of OOTB reporting. You aren’t going to find a lot of user reports or detailed usage logs within SharePoint. Microsoft provides methods to build reports, but doesn’t provide a lot within SharePoint itself. Companies like AvePoint, Share-Gate and Metalogix have provided user teams with much needed reporting, but we are here to talk about what SharePoint gives you OOTB.
