Skip to content

Data Management

Measuring the engagement of your BI audience and tracking who is doing what in your Power BI reports can empower you to deliver great BI solutions. But with power comes responsibility, and you need to have control over the data that BI Pixie collects for you.

For example, when end users, the people who consume your Power BI reports, ask to be forgotten, or when auditors need proof of data governance, the Data Management page is where you respond. Configure retention periods, search for specific end user events, and delete activity records. All self-service, no support ticket required.

Navigate to Data Management in the BI Pixie Portal sidebar to access this page.

Data Retention

The Data Retention tab lets you view and configure how long BI Pixie keeps your event data.

Current Retention

At the top you will see your current retention period, the date range of your event data, and total data size.

Changing the Retention Period

The available retention options depend on your plan:

Plan Available Options Maximum
Free 7, 14, 30 days 30 days
Standard 7, 14, 30 days 30 days
Pro 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180, 365 days 365 days (1 year)
Enterprise 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180, 365, 730, 1095 days 1095 days (3 years)

When BI Pixie stores your telemetry, events are kept for up to the number of days you choose, subject to your monthly session allowance. If usage ever reaches the ceiling far above that allowance, and your account is set to keep collecting, BI Pixie removes your oldest events first, as described in Data Retention at Extreme Usage. When your telemetry is delivered to your own OneLake or your own storage, BI Pixie never removes it early.

To change the retention period, select a new value and click Save Changes. If you reduce the period, a confirmation dialog warns that events older than the new period will be permanently deleted during the next daily cleanup.

Dashboard Refresh Window

On Pro and Enterprise plans, you can limit how much data the BI Pixie semantic model imports on each scheduled refresh. A shorter window means faster refreshes. Your full history is still kept for search and compliance.

The window is applied when the dashboard is installed or reinstalled, not on each refresh. A change therefore takes effect after the next reinstall of the dashboard.

Available options are 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days. The refresh window cannot exceed your current retention period. If you reduce retention below the refresh window, the refresh window adjusts automatically.

To change the refresh window, select a value and click Save Changes.

Need a bigger refresh window? Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Data Search

The Data Search tab lets you find and manage specific event data. Use it to respond to data subject access requests or investigate end user activity.

Search Steps

  1. Select a report from the dropdown. You can also delete all events for a report from here.
  2. Select a user from the dropdown, which shows user identifiers and event counts.
  3. Choose a date range using preset buttons or custom date pickers. Standard plans support the 7-day preset only; Pro and above unlock extended presets and custom dates.
  4. Browse event files matching your criteria. You can preview any file or delete individual files (Pro and above).
  5. Search across files (Pro and above): select up to 10 files and run a text search to find matching rows.

User Activity

The User Activity tab shows all tracked end users, with tools to search, inspect, and delete user data.

The page shows your tracked user count for the current month and a searchable list of users. Each row displays the user identifier, number of reports they have interacted with, and event file count. Click a user to expand and see their associated reports.

Deleting User Data

To delete all data for a specific user:

  1. Click Delete next to the user.
  2. Confirm in the dialog. All activity data for that user across all reports is permanently deleted from the storage that holds your BI Pixie events.

BI Pixie also removes the user's rows from your BI Pixie Dashboard when the dashboard next refreshes. In a dashboard installed as the Power BI template app, each refresh imports everything again. In a dashboard installed in a Fabric workspace, BI Pixie records the deletion beside your events and the BI Pixie ETL notebook removes the user's activity from before the deletion from every table the next time it runs, provided the dashboard is on its latest version. When your tracking setup records users anonymously, the dashboard knows people only by a hashed client IP that several people can share, so BI Pixie keeps the session and click rows keyed on it, which name nobody. You do not need to run the BI Pixie User Erasure notebook for a user you deleted here. Either way, two more things remain after the delete: BI Pixie keeps a safety copy of the deleted events for up to 90 days, after which it expires, and the user's billed sessions stay counted, with nothing left that identifies them.

Prerequisites

Data Management requires an active plan and a provisioned data region. If either is missing, the page will guide you on next steps.

What's Next