View browser or operating system usage reports for Office 365

 

Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to Manage Office 365 using Windows PowerShell cmdlets, scripts, and batch processes.

You can see which browsers and operating systems your users are using to access Office 365 by viewing the Browsers used and Operating systems used reports in the Office 365 portal, in Microsoft Excel, or using Windows PowerShell. You will want to use the Office 365 portal when you need a simple at-a-glance view, Excel when you want to download and build your own reports, and Windows PowerShell if your organization has over 2,000 users or you often do Windows PowerShell scripting.

Important

Only global administrators can see the reports in the Office 365 portal and Excel. To run the Windows PowerShell reports, you must belong to the Exchange view-only organization management role, which global administrators typically are.

What do you want to do?

  • View or download the reports from the Office 365 portal

  • Use Windows PowerShell to see more than 2,000 users

View the reports in the Office 365 portal

The Browsers used and Operating systems used reports help you to track down the products your users are using to access Office 365. For example, this can be useful if some products are becoming unsupported in the near future, and you want to see which users have those products so you can help them transition to supported products.

To see the reports, in the Office 365 portal, click Admin > Office 365 > Reporting, and then click either Browsers used or Operating systems used.

The two reports provide:

  • A chart showing usages of the different types of browsers or operating systems families and versions being used for the last 30 days

  • A list of users who have signed in to Office 365 and the browsers or operating systems they used to sign in during the past 30 days. This list is available in three ways:

    • Online on the report page This view shows up to 50 users, and is useful to quickly check on a few individual users.

    • In a downloadable CSV file This file shows up to 2,000 users, and can be downloaded from a link above the table. It can be used to call or to send email to individual users to require or suggest that they change their browser or operating system.

    • By running an Exchange Online PowerShell script This report will show over 2,000 users. The advantage of using PowerShell is that you can customize the script to filter the records you want.

Use Windows PowerShell to see more than 2,000 users

In order to see more than 2,000 results for your Browsers used and Operating systems used reports, you need to use Exchange Online PowerShell. You can create a PowerShell script to export the data from the reports to a comma-separated value (CSV) file.

Before you get started, consider the following items:

  • To run the script, you need to connect to Exchange Online PowerShell. For instructions, see Connect to Exchange Online Using Remote PowerShell.

  • You use the $OutputFile variable in the script to specify the name and location of the CSV file.

  • You use the $Start and $End variables to specify the beginning and end dates of the reporting period.

To export the results of the Browsers used report to a CSV file, do the following.

  1. Copy and paste this script into Notepad.

    $OutputFile = "C:\My Documents\O365ClientBrowserDetail.csv"
    $Start = "01/01/14"
    $End = "01/31/14"
    $Projection = `
        @{Name='USER NAME';Expression={$_.UPN}},`
        @{Name='BROWSER';Expression={$_.Name}},`
        @{Name='VERSION';Expression={$_.Version}},`
        @{Name='DAYS USED';Expression={$_.Count}},`
        @{Name='LAST ACCESSED DATE';Expression={$_.LastAccessTime}}
    
    Get-O365ClientBrowserDetailReport -StartDate $Start -EndDate $End `
        -ResultSize Unlimited | `
        Select $Projection | `
        Export-Csv $OutputFile -NoTypeInformation
    
  2. Save the script as GetO365ClientBrowserDetail.ps1 in a location that’s easy for you to find. For this example, we’ll save the file in "C:\O365 Scripts".

  3. Run the script in Exchange Online PowerShell by using the following command.

    & "C:\O365 Scripts\GetO365ClientBrowserDetail.ps1"
    

The output in the CSV file will look like this:

"USER NAME","BROWSER","VERSION","DAYS USED","LAST ACCESSED DATE"
"john@contoso.onmicrosoft.com","IE","10","8","3/20/2014 12:00:00 AM"
"rob@contoso.onmicrosoft.com","IE","8","15","3/19/2014 11:44:00 PM"

For the Operating systems used report, the steps are the same, but the details are different.

  1. Copy and paste this script into Notepad.

    $OutputFile = "C:\My Documents\O365ClientOSDetail.csv"
    $Start = "01/01/14"
    $End = "01/31/14"
    $Projection = `
        @{Name='USER NAME';Expression={$_.UPN}},`
        @{Name='OS';Expression={$_.Name}},`
        @{Name='VERSION';Expression={$_.Version}},`
        @{Name='DAYS USED';Expression={$_.Count}},`
        @{Name='LAST ACCESSED DATE';Expression={$_.LastAccessTime}}
    
    Get-O365ClientOSDetailReport -StartDate $Start -EndDate $End `
        -ResultSize Unlimited | `
        Select $Projection | `
        Export-Csv $OutputFile -NoTypeInformation
    
  2. Save the script as GetO365ClientOSDetail.ps1 in a location that’s easy for you to find. For this example, we’ll save the file in "C:\O365 Scripts".

  3. Run the script in Exchange Online PowerShell by using the following command.

    & "C:\O365 Scripts\GetO365ClientOSDetail.ps1"
    

The output in the CSV file will look like this:

"USER NAME","OS","VERSION","DAYS USED","LAST ACCESSED DATE"
"john@contoso.onmicrosoft.com","WINDOWS","XP","8","3/20/2014 12:00:00 AM"
"jane@contoso.onmicrosoft.com","WINDOWS","7","15","3/19/2014 11:44:00 PM"

See Also

Manage Office 365 with Windows PowerShell
Advantages of using Windows PowerShell to manage Office 365
Getting started with Windows PowerShell in Office 365
Automate Office 365 tasks with Windows PowerShell
Manage user accounts and licenses
Use Windows PowerShell to create reports in Office 365
Windows PowerShell in Office 365 technical reference