Get ready to create, visualize, tailor, host, and manage Windows Update for Business reports in a new way. Power BI integration helps you align with your unique organizational needs from big-picture overviews to comprehensive monitoring of your devices.
Simplified device monitoring and management
As you monitor and manage devices within your organization, easy access to quality reporting is crucial. You can finally customize Windows Update for Business reports, which are built to address some of your most common workflows and scenarios. With Power BI, you can go beyond the common cases and optimize reporting for your unique organizational needs and success. All of the Windows Update for Business reports data schema (or tables) are available for further filtering, drilling down, and data slicing:
- UCClient: an individual device’s record
- UCClientReadinessStatus: an individual device’s record about its readiness to update to Windows 11
- UCClientUpdateStatus: a combined record for one device (client) and one update
- UCDeviceAlert: a record of service and device alerts for device-specific issues
- UCDOAggregatedStatus: an aggregate record of Delivery Optimization status across all devices
- UCDOStatus: a record of Delivery Optimization status for a single device
- UCServiceUpdateStatus: a service-side record for one device, one update, and one deployment
- UCUpdateAlert: a record of service and device alerts
Power BI streamlines your reporting by turning complex data into actionable insights. It integrates with multiple data sources, rich visualization options, data transformation capabilities, robust security features, and user-friendly interface. You can accomplish all of that with on-screen interactive controls and customize your date range anywhere from a single day to months. Moreover, it can also automatically refresh your data, ensuring that your reports stay current.
Let’s look into how you can quickly identify trends, issues, and areas for improvement in your Windows Update day-to-day management scenarios and strategy with Power BI.
Understand the device landscape
Whatever your device management strategy, begin by gaining a bird-eye view of the devices in your organization. This overarching perspective of your devices can guide your decisions on which devices to prioritize for updates and where additional investigation is needed before determining your next actions.
Here's an example of where you can start building your story and strategy. Find where devices are located to prioritize updates for specific regions or offices. Additionally, examine the distribution of different Windows builds and OS versions to identify potential compatibility issues. If a significant number of devices are still running older versions, you might need to assess compatibility before pushing updates. We’ll look at that example in the next section!
If needed, view these data as a table by clicking the three dots at the top right corner and selecting Show as table. And just like that, the underlying data from Windows Update for Business reports (Log Analytics) is at your fingertips with only a few drag-and-drop actions.
The choice of metrics to track depends entirely on your specific business requirements. As long as the relevant data is available in your Windows Update for Business reports tables, you can show, and not just tell, your story.
Windows 11 migration: From insights to action
As part of your Windows 11 migration efforts, you’ll want to gain insight into the current state of Windows 10 devices and draw comparisons to reveal the Windows 11 landscape.
First, delve into device distribution across Windows 10 OS versions in your organization. You’ll quickly notice the number of devices without the latest quality updates, those nearing end-of-service, and devices lacking crucial security updates. From this view, you can also identify devices eligible for Windows 11 and analyze the devices that fall short.
Now, check out the power of filtering to uncover the true story behind the current state of all Windows 10 devices. For example, select "NotCapable" in the Windows 11 Readiness Status visual and observe all visuals on the page change to highlight the devices in that readiness category.
Use this insight into performance and trends across releases to devise effective strategies on your journey to drive your Windows 11 migration. How so? In a matter of seconds, you can:
- Start with the overview of device distribution on different Windows 10 versions.
- Compare the target OS version for devices with the version they are actually on.
- For the subset of devices that are not on their target OS version, filter down to those that are marked as not capable of migration to Windows 11.
- For the list of devices not capable of migrating to Windows 11, proceed to ensure they meet the appropriate hardware requirements.
By accessing these attributes, you can optimize your update strategies and plan resource allocation toward your migration efforts. Your data, your way, your strategy.
Monitor Windows Update for Business deployment service
Besides monitoring devices, you can enrich your story with the focus on analyzing service deployments. Monitoring deployments across your organization is pivotal to maintaining security, compliance, and efficiency. With the versatility of Power BI, you can do more than just monitor a single deployment. With the click of a button, you can customize your deployment analysis dashboard to fit any of the following needs and more:
- Consolidate multiple deployments into a single, powerful dashboard.
- Include all deployments within a date or exclude specific ones.
- Find out how many updates were deployed and the devices included in them.
- See a breakdown of the devices into different stages of deployment.
- Efficiently monitor the same devices across multiple deployments and pinpoint issues that demand immediate remediation.
- Track devices that are part of an active alert so you can remediate them immediately.
You can even enhance your visual reporting by incorporating specific fields from the linked tables to suit your storytelling requirements. Use these update monitoring capabilities in Power BI to ensure that every device in your organization is not just up to date but also operating at peak performance.
Resolve update issues with service and client alerts
So how do you turn these insights from device and update monitoring into action? By drilling down to alert information.
We know you use client and device alerts for overall operational efficiency. They inform better data-driven decisions, enhanced performance, and proactive resolution of device issues. In Windows Update for Business reports, you can view the total active alerts on enrolled devices. With Power BI integration, you can do more. Clean, model, and transform your alert data for better insights into the health, performance, and security of your devices.
Just as with all reports, easily filter your data to focus on alerts that matter most to your reporting needs. You can even combine tables, such as UCUpdateAlert and UCDeviceAlert (client), into a single table to report on all alert data together.
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Note: To concatenate rows from multiple tables into a single table, use the Append Queries option in the Query Editor window. |
Now you’re ready to use alert data as concrete advice to reach your compliance and Windows 11 migration goals!
Get started with Power BI and Windows Update for Business reports
To take advantage of these powerful customizations, check that you meet the Prerequisites for Windows Update for Business reports. And if you don’t already have it, Download Power BI Desktop from Official Microsoft Download Center.
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Note: To ensure that you download the right version of Power BI Desktop, check your system type by navigating to Start > System Information. |
Are you ready to focus on the key performance indicators that matter most to your organization and align Windows Update for Business reports to collaborate with Power BI? To get started today:
- Download a Power BI template I’ve put together for you.
- Follow my step-by-step guide at Build custom Windows Update for Business reports using Power BI.
Power BI is an excellent choice for visualizing Windows Update for Business reports data. Take advantage of its robust security, data transformation capabilities, and simplified management and optimization of your Windows Update strategies.
Additional resources
- Azure Workbooks overview
- Overview of Log Analytics in Azure Monitor
- Visualization types in Power BI
- Create and manage relationships in Power BI Desktop
Questions? Comments? Leave them below or reach out to me here on the Tech Community. Thank you for helping to provide your users with a better update experience.
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