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Data stored by Analytic services

As you may know, we released the new PortalTalk Analytic service recently. With PortalTalk we analyse your SharePoint and MS Teams environment to give admins and end-users insights in their collaboration habits. Also present actions to even improve collaborations skills.

If you want to do analytics, data is needed. So, for our Analytic services, usage data of your Microsoft 365 tenant is needed. Next question, we guess, is, ‘What of our M365 data do you fetch and store to do these analytics.’

This article is ment to give you all answers to that question. We present you the data we use, the services who does the analyses and how you always can decide to start and stop these services.

What data is used and stored

At the base, we use the already available PortalTalk data. That’s the base information to run the PortalTalk SaaS applications for you. Data part of that is easily visible , only for you, in both the User and Admin interface. What you see at these screens comes directly from your secure and reserved PortalTalk database.

Data you can think of:

  • Workspace names

  • MS Teams channel names

  • User names

  • Statuses of workspaces

  • Owners and Members of workspaces

This data is also the base for analytic services. On top of that we calculate and collect usage data of Users, Workspaces en Users in their Workspaces. We use a dataset part of the Microsoft Usage Data. You can even see this data into your own Microsoft 365 Admin Center. We fetch this data and store a small set of the available data into the PortalTalk secure databases reserved for only your organization.

This is the exact data we fetch and store in the PortalTalk databases fot the analytic services:

  • Licenses: Nr. of MS Teams and SharePoint Online licenses

  • Channels: Channel Create date, Channel Type (Standard/Private), Nr. of Channels per Workspace

  • Storage: Nr. of files, Storage Used, Last Activty Date

  • Shared Documents: User Account, Workspace name, Shared at (SharePoint site/OneDrive), FileID, FileName, FileType, Date Shared,

  • Last Activity Dates of Users, SharePoint sites and MS Teams team workspaces on Documents and Channel Posts activity.

What do we analyze

We already explained to you the exact data we store and use. The analytic services itself use your organization’s specific data to calculate the KPI values as shown to our Admin KPI Boards and User KPI Notifications.

Calculation is all done by our own services

  1. Last Activity per user, per workspace services
    This service will fetch all SharePoint sites, MS Teams teams & channels on Last Activity Date per user. So, for every User we check all his/her workspaces memberships too determine Last Activity. Only that User Name, Workspace Name and Last Activity Date is stored into the (your) PortalTalk database.

  2. Microsoft Usage Data services
    This service will fetch the standard Microsoft 365 Usage Data. We only fetch and store a small set of data, as already described.

  3. Workspace name Similarity check services
    The service to check if similar workspaces already exists and does not store additional data. This service only use your workspace names, which is already stored in the PortalTalk databases. We use this service for both similarity check functions.

    • The Creator of a workspace will be notified if a workspace is similar to an excisting one during the Create or Request proces.

    • The Similar Workspace Check KPI boards shows the suspected similar workspaces. First by KPI number. Also, as action to show or export a list of similar workspaces already created.

All of these services runs once per week during the weekend to update the existing data. That means PortalTalk 's services will connect, request and fetch this specified data of your Microsoft 365 tenant. The analytic data can be max. one week old.

How to start the Analytic Service

By default, the Analytic service is switched off. For both existing and new customers. Customers cannot switch on first time use by themselves. Assistance of a QS solutions representative is needed. Please contact our PortalTalk Service Desk at sc.portaltalk@qssolutions.nl to request assistance to activate. We are more the happy to help you.

Next step is to check the privacy setting of the ‘Microsoft 365 Usage Data information’. This settings default is ‘Unreadable’. That means, User Names and Workspace Names will not be shown in the reports. We provide you the correct screen and setting to switch this setting to ‘Readable’. This is mandatory to enable the PortalTalk Analyses Service. If you decide to keep this setting ‘Unreadable’, the Analytic service cannot be activated. So, cannot be used.

If the Privacy setting is set to ‘Readable’, you can switch on both the Admin KPI Boards and the User KPI Notifications. All granular to your needs. Please see our Admin manual for all configuration details.

Please keep in mind that it can take to one week before data is retrieved and the service is available. Keep in mind that during the weekend data of your tenant will be fetched. On the Analytic main configuration screen the latest refresh date is shown.

How to stop the Analytic Service

You can always decide to turn the service OFF again. We can assure that all data we stored during the operations will be completely removed from our databases. Please be aware this action will be executed at the weekly update cycle during the weekend.

The service will stop and deletes your data the next update cycle, if you set the Microsoft 365 Usage data Privacy setting to ‘Unreadable’ again.

If you want to use the service again, please follow the ‘How to start the Analytic Service’ steps again.

Any more questions?

If you have any question about the Analytic services please contact our PortalTalk Service Desk sc.portaltalk@qssolutions.nl or your QS solutions representative.