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 info button in the upper right.
Click 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

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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