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. With that power comes responsibility, and you need to have control over the data that BI Pixie collects for you.
When end users — the people who consume your Power BI reports — ask to be forgotten, or when auditors need proof of data governance, Data Management is where you respond. Configure retention periods, search for specific end user events, and delete activity records. All self-service, no support ticket required.
In the BI Pixie item, select Data Management from the sidebar to access these controls.
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.
If you have turned on Data residency so events are delivered to your own OneLake, the latest activity and data size read In your OneLake instead, because the volume and dates are tracked in your lakehouse rather than the BI Pixie cloud.
Changing the Retention Period
The available retention options depend on your subscription:
| Subscription | Available Options | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 7, 14 days | 14 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) |
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 subscriptions, 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.
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
- Select a report from the dropdown. You can also delete all events for a report from here.
- Select a user from the dropdown, which shows user identifiers and event counts.
- Choose a date range using preset buttons or custom date pickers. Standard subscriptions support the 7-day preset only; Pro and above unlock extended presets and custom dates.
- Browse event files matching your criteria. You can preview any file or delete individual files (Pro and above).
- 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:
- Click Delete next to the user.
- Confirm in the dialog. All activity data for that user across all reports will be permanently deleted.
- The data will disappear from your BI Pixie Dashboard after the next refresh.
How your data flows, and what Data Management reaches
To understand exactly what the controls above delete, it helps to know where your telemetry lives. By default, your raw event data is stored in a dedicated, secured storage container in the BI Pixie cloud, and the BI Pixie Workload creates a shortcut to that container in your Fabric workspace. Your data flows through three layers:
- Raw event data in the dedicated, secured container in the BI Pixie cloud, surfaced into your workspace through a shortcut.
- Lakehouse tables, produced when the BI Pixie ETL notebook processes the raw events into curated Delta tables.
- BI Pixie Dashboard, which reads those Lakehouse tables through Direct Lake.
This is why Data Management operates only on the raw event data in the dedicated container: that is the source layer BI Pixie owns and can act on directly. The processed copies in the Lakehouse tables and the dashboard model are rebuilt from that raw data, and they live on your own capacity. To delete or clean up those processed layers, the Maintenance Notebooks are available.
For a complete right-to-be-forgotten erasure across every layer of your telemetry (raw files, the Lakehouse Delta tables, and the semantic model), and to enforce your retention window across all layers, run the Maintenance Notebooks. They run on your own capacity, under your own identity, and reach the processed layers this page's tools do not.
Prerequisites
Data Management requires an active BI Pixie subscription and a BI Pixie item created in your Fabric workspace. Telemetry is stored in your Fabric capacity's region via OneLake; see Data Residency for details.
What's Next
- BI Pixie Notebooks — The ETL that builds your dashboard data, plus complete cross-layer retention and GDPR erasure, all run from your own capacity.
- Team Access — How Microsoft Fabric workspace roles control access to BI Pixie.
- Licenses — Manage subscription tiers and license assignment.
- Account — View usage stats and subscription details.
- Contact Support — Get help with data management or compliance requests.