Monitoring & Auditing in Microsoft Power Platform

Introduction to Monitoring and Auditing in Power Platform

Monitoring and auditing are key elements of Power Platform governance. In an ecosystem with hundreds of apps, flows, and connectors, maintaining control over activities, ensuring data security, and enforcing compliance with company policies are essential.

Microsoft offers a range of integrated tools and advanced solutions that allow IT teams and administrators to monitor and analyze the entire Power Platform tenant. These include:

• Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) with advanced analytics for Dataverse, Power Apps, and Power Automate;
• Native auditing through Office 365 Activity Logging and Dataverse auditing;
• Application monitoring with Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Log Analytics;
• Automation of control tasks using PowerShell and administration APIs;
• Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit for automated and centralized governance.

PPAC Analytics: The Core of Monitoring

The Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) is the operational hub for administrators and architects. It offers a comprehensive overview of:

• Capacity and storage usage (Database, File, and Log);
• Dataverse usage, tables, users, and plug-ins;
• Performance of Power Automate flows and Power Apps applications;
• Connector usage analytics and DLP policy insights;
• History of environments and apps created or decommissioned.

Through capacity analytics and Dataverse analytics modules, administrators can identify overloaded environments, inefficient flows, or unused apps, thus enhancing overall platform efficiency.

Auditing: Security and Compliance

The auditing system in Power Platform relies on two main technologies:

Office 365 Activity Logging

Integrated into the Security & Compliance Center, it allows tracking events related to users, groups, apps, and flows. It’s particularly useful for:

• Monitoring user and license changes;
• Recording creation, modification, and deletion of apps and flows;
• Analyzing activity across Power BI, Power Apps, and Dataverse;
• Receiving notifications on critical events and policy violations.

Dataverse Auditing

This mechanism logs CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on Dataverse tables. Logs can be filtered and analyzed to understand who changed what, when, and in which environment. It’s configurable from PPAC and can be combined with Azure SQL for advanced storage and analysis.

PowerShell and APIs: Automated Monitoring

Automation is a cornerstone of modern monitoring. Microsoft provides PowerShell modules and Graph APIs to manage and monitor every aspect of Power Platform.

Some of the most useful PowerShell module functions include:

• Listing and managing environments (Get-AdminPowerAppEnvironment);
• Connector usage analysis;
• Monitoring on-premises data gateways;
• User, license, and role management.

Administration APIs allow integration of Power Platform monitoring into existing enterprise systems such as SIEM tools or custom dashboards in Azure Monitor.

Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit

The CoE Starter Kit (https://aka.ms/COEStarterKit) is the most comprehensive solution for centralizing Power Platform governance and monitoring. It includes:

• Dataverse solutions and apps (canvas and model-driven) for inventory and control;
• Power Automate flows for automated policy and notification management;
• Power BI reports for visual analysis of environments, apps, flows, and connectors;
• Templates and connectors to extend functionalities.

Main benefits include:

• Centralized management of DLP policies;
• Connector usage analysis and detection of anomalous patterns;
• Monitoring new apps and active makers;
• Automated onboarding for new citizen developers.

Microsoft has also introduced the Automation CoE Starter Kit, specifically focused on Power Automate and RPA governance.

Integration with Azure Monitor and Application Insights

For a unified view of application performance and behavior, Power Platform can integrate with Azure Monitor. Two key tools are:

• Application Insights: collects performance metrics and telemetry from canvas and model-driven apps;
• Log Analytics: allows analyzing logs of errors, events, and flows through KQL (Kusto Query Language) queries.

This integration enables IT teams to build centralized dashboards and set up automated alerts in case of anomalies or high response times.