User insights: Analyze customer identity data

Today, we're excited to announce the general availability of user insights in Microsoft Entra External ID.

User insights, which was launched in public preview in October 2023, is a powerful tool that enables admins and developers to gain deeper insights into their customers’ behavior, preferences, and challenges. It provides key metrics such as monthly active users (MAU), daily active users (DAU), new users added, requests over time, authentications over time, multi-factor authentication (MFA) usage by type, and MFA success versus failure rates. You can also filter and segment the data by time range, operating system, country, and application id. With user insights, you can:

• Analyze the trends and patterns of your customers’ application login and registration activity and discover new opportunities for growth and improvement.
• Optimize user experience and identity management strategies for your customers and make data-driven decisions that align with your business goals and user needs.
• Build customized dashboards in tools like Power BI using user insights from Microsoft Graph APIs, allowing more flexibility and control of your customer identity data. 

To access user insights, you need to have a Microsoft Entra External ID external tenant. Once you have your tenant ready, you can access the dashboards on the Microsoft admin center or access raw data via Microsoft Graph APIs. The features we’re announcing today provide significant value and are based on direct feedback from our preview customers. Sign up for your free trial here.

Export data to Excel for offline analysis

The ‘export to Microsoft Excel’ feature is a convenient way to access raw data from the dashboards to suit different user preferences and use cases. You will now be able to export data in comma-separated values (CSV) format to facilitate the seamless importation and manipulation of data with Excel, or any other preferred CSV editor. This allows customers to use data offline for their own customized analysis and manipulation.

Figure 1: Export authentications data to Microsoft Excel

Tailor and optimize your identity management solution for different user segments 

You can filter data by language and identity provider to get more insights into the preferences and behavior of your users. For example, you can see which languages are most popular among your users and how they vary across applications and regions. You can also see which identity providers are used the most for authentication and how they may affect the user experience and retention. These filters help you tailor and optimize your identity management solution for different user segments.

Figure 2: Analyze authentications data by identity provider or language customization

Improving user experience and security with MFA failure insights

The MFA failure chart shows the number of sign-in attempts that failed due to MFA issues and why they failed. You can see the breakdown by three categories:  

• Bad request: the sign-in request was malformed or invalid.
• MFA denied: the user entered the wrong verification code or declined the MFA request.
• MFA incomplete: the user did not complete the MFA request within the time limit.     

This breakdown can help you understand the common causes of MFA failures so you can target your resources and improve the user experience and security of your applications. 

Figure 3: Monthly MFA failures insights

Identify potential issues with user retention, engagement, and satisfaction

Inactive users are users who have not signed in over a certain period. You can see the number of daily and monthly inactive users in your applications, as well as the trend over time. This metric can help you monitor user engagement and identify areas where you can improve your user experience or offer incentives to re-engage your users. 

Figure 4: Active, inactive, and new user trends over time

Get started today

To access and view data from user insights, you must have a Microsoft Entra External ID external tenant with registered applications that have customer sign-in or sign-up data. Use our quickstart guide to create a trial tenant and access user insights on the Microsoft admin center or access the raw data via Microsoft Graph APIs. Visit our docs to learn more about how to access this new feature and how to view, query, and analyze user activity.

To learn more or test out other features in the Microsoft Entra portfolio, visit our developer center. Sign up for email updates on the Identity blog for more insights and to keep up with the latest on all things Identity, and follow us on YouTube for video overviews, tutorials, and deep dives.

Learn more about Microsoft Entra  

Prevent identity attacks, ensure least privilege access, unify access controls, and improve the experience for users with comprehensive identity and network access solutions across on-premises and clouds. 

• ⁠Microsoft Entra News and Insights | Microsoft Security Blog 
• ⁠⁠Microsoft Entra blog | Tech Community  
• ⁠Microsoft Entra documentation | Microsoft Learn 
• Microsoft Entra discussions | Microsoft Community