SharePoint reporting: Top 7 types of data to monitor

Keeping a SharePoint Online environment organized starts with knowing exactly what to look at. Between site usage pages, the Microsoft 365 admin center, and audit logs, there's no shortage of data.

The hard part is knowing which signals actually matter and where to find each one.

This checklist focuses on the practical layer: the specific data types worth monitoring, and the exact steps to pull each report natively. If you're looking for a broader overview of the reporting surfaces and where native tools fall short, start with our guide to SharePoint Online reporting tools, then come back here for the hands-on detail.

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1. Orphaned users

An orphaned user is an account still referenced in SharePoint even though the person can no longer sign in. For example, after they're removed from Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). Their permissions and metadata references (like Created by and Modified by) can linger on sites and groups.

Why it's worth monitoring

Stale references clutter your tenant, make permissions harder to reason about, and risk a returning contractor regaining access to old content when their account is reactivated. There's no single native "orphaned users" report, so admins typically identify these through PowerShell or a third-party tool.

ShareGate's Orphaned User Report crawls your selected target and lists them so you can act on the results once the scan completes. You can take action on these users once the report is finished running. For more information about our Orphaned User Report, look no further than our technical documentation. 

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2. Site usage  

Site usage tells you which sites are thriving, which spike around specific projects, and which have gone quiet — the foundation for decisions about archiving or retiring sites.

How to view the SharePoint Site usage report (Microsoft 365 admin center):

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. In the navigation menu, select Reports (if you don't see it, select Show all, then Reports).
3. Select Usage.
4. On the Usage page, under Reports, select SharePoint.
5. Select the Site usage tab.

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Per Microsoft, this report includes the total number of files stored across SharePoint sites, how many files are actively used, and storage consumed—and you can drill in for trends and per-site detail. It's useful, but comparing activity across many sites often means exporting and stitching the data together yourself. ShareGate's Microsoft 365 reporting consolidates this view when you need to go deeper.

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3. External users and externally shared links  

External collaboration adds value but also risk, so it's worth tracking what's shared outside your organization — especially as Copilot can surface content users already have access to.

How to run the native sharing report for a site (per Microsoft, you need to be a site admin):

1. Open the site where you want to run the report.
2. On the Settings menu, select Site usage.
3. In the Shared with external users section, select Run report.
4. Choose a location to save the report, then select Save.

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The report generates a CSV of unique files, users, permissions, and links, and Microsoft notes you'll receive an email with a link when it finishes. Because members could see a report saved to the site, Microsoft suggests saving it to a folder restricted to site owners.

ShareGate's External User Report gives you a consolidated list of external users across your environment instead of running this site by site.

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4. Unused or obsolete content

Idle sites and stale content create sprawl and quietly expand your risk surface. The SharePoint admin center lets you see all sites in your tenant along with their Last activity date, which is a good starting signal for cleanup.

To identify unused sites at scale, ShareGate's Unused Site Report crawls your selected target and flags sites idle for the past six months, so you can review, archive, or clean them up and reduce sprawl.

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5. User permissions 

Permissions are where environments get messy. Microsoft recommends managing site permissions through the associated SharePoint groups rather than breaking inheritance item by item, and assigning a backup owner so sites don't become orphaned when someone leaves.

Natively, auditing access means inspecting sites individually or running PowerShell, because SharePoint Online doesn't offer a single consolidated cross-site permissions report. Things worth auditing regularly: who owns each site, whether inheritance is intact or broken, and how many people hold elevated access.

ShareGate's Permissions Matrix Report pulls user and group permissions, permission levels, broken-inheritance objects, and external users (including pending invitations and anonymous links) into one view.

With the results from our Permissions Matrix Report, you can see: 

• All user and group permissions and each one’s permission level 
• Objects that have inherited permissions 
• Microsoft 365 external users (including pending invitations and anonymous guest links) 

This report is crucial in terms of optimal risk management. It’s the jumping-off point for making sure everyone has access to the right things. 

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6. Oversharing and risky sharing links

Individual externally-shared files are only part of the picture. The bigger modern risk is oversharing—content reachable by far more people than intended, which accumulates quietly as links stay open and groups grow.

What to watch for: "Anyone with the link" sharing, links that never expired, broad groups like "Everyone" or "All Company," and the "Everyone except external users" configuration that can make a supposedly private workspace effectively open internally.

Natively, spotting this means hunting through sites one at a time with no single view.

ShareGate surfaces these exposure patterns across Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Entra ID in one place. It shows who created each link, when, and what access it grants so you can remediate in bulk (for example, deleting risky links at scale) rather than site by site. It re-scans the tenant on a recurring basis and tracks trends over time, and you can set automated policies to clear links matching your rules going forward.

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7. Copilot and AI access readiness

Microsoft Copilot—and any connected AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude—can surface anything a user already has permission to reach. That means existing oversharing and stale permissions turn directly into AI exposure, since the AI doesn't know what's sensitive unless your governance does.

What to monitor before and during a Copilot rollout

• Content Copilot could surface to the wrong people
• Open links and lingering guest access
• Overly broad permissions
• Inactive sites still holding sensitive data that could resurface in AI answers

ShareGate maps what Copilot can access and flags these risks in a readiness view, so you can clean up exposure before content gets indexed.

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Turning the checklist into action

Monitoring these five data types gives you the visibility to keep SharePoint organized and secure—but pulling each native report individually doesn't scale. 

If you’re one of countless IT admins searching for a straightforward solution to gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening within your SharePoint environment, you’ve found it with ShareGate. 👍

ShareGate brings this together into a single view across SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and Groups so that managing your environment becomes part of your everyday workflow rather than an occasional cleanup.