How can I quickly identify devices that are falling out of compliance across my organization?

Look for trends in compliance policy violations, device check-in failures, and certificate expiration patterns. The key is correlating compliance status with device health metrics like OS versions, last sync times, and security patch levels to understand whether non-compliance is due to user behavior, technical issues, or policy configuration problems.

What metrics help me understand if my Intune policies are actually improving security posture?

Track policy deployment success rates, security baseline compliance trends, and incident reduction over time. Monitor metrics like malware detection rates, unauthorized app installations, and data leak prevention triggers. This shows whether your policies are being enforced and actually reducing security risks.

How do I identify devices that need immediate attention before they become security risks?

Monitor devices with multiple failed policy applications, outdated OS versions, or irregular check-in patterns. Look for devices showing signs of jailbreaking/rooting, unusual network activity, or repeated authentication failures. Early detection prevents these devices from becoming entry points for security breaches.

How do I ensure our Intune environment can handle growing device enrollment?

Track enrollment velocity, policy processing times, and service response rates during peak periods. Monitor certificate authority load, connector health, and bandwidth utilization. This helps you plan infrastructure scaling before performance issues affect user experience.

Blog

July 21, 2025

Top 3 Intune reporting tools: SquaredUp, Microsoft admin center, and Power BI

What's the best tool for your Intune reporting?

Louise Berry

SquaredUp

As the unsung hero of modern endpoint management, Microsoft Intune quietly ensures security, compliance, and seamless user experiences across a range of devices and platforms. Where many organisations go wrong, however, is not having the right tool to monitor and leverage Intune’s full potential. But for an organization relying on Intune, what tool should you use?

In this blog, we compare the top three tools that are commonly used for Microsoft Intune reporting: SquaredUp, the native Microsoft admin center reports dashboard, and Power BI. We’ll explore their key features, limitations, and ideal use cases to help you make an informed choice on what you should use for your requirements.

But first, a quick summary of the tools in question:

SquaredUp offers a visually rich, customizable dashboard experience that integrates Intune data alongside other monitoring sources for unified insights.

Microsoft Intune admin center provides built-in, straightforward Intune reporting directly within the Microsoft 365 portal, ideal for quick compliance checks.

Power BI delivers powerful, flexible data modeling and visualization capabilities, enabling deep, tailored Intune analytics and cross-data integration.

What is Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management solution that helps organizations manage and secure devices and applications.

It supports compliance policies, app deployment, conditional access, and real-time monitoring, which is why it’s essential for a lot of IT environments.

Effective reporting tools are needed to fully scale Intune’s capabilities, which support transparency and proactive management.

SquaredUp

SquaredUp is the operational intelligence platform that surfaces insights from any data and any tool, all in one place.

Key features

Pre-built dashboards: SquaredUp offers ready-made dashboards for Intune and other Microsoft 365 services, so you can start visualizing data instantly without manual setup.

Customizable visuals: You can easily tailor dashboards to your needs, combining Intune data with other infrastructure metrics for a holistic view of your environment.

Drag-and-drop interface: SquaredUp has an intuitive interface that allows you to build and modify dashboards quickly, making customization accessible even for non-technical users.

Real-time alerts: SquaredUp delivers up-to-the-minute data visualization and allows you to set up alerting, so users and stakeholders can always be notified of important changes or issues as they happen.

Free to use: While SquaredUp offers powerful paid tiers with advanced features and scalability, it also provides a free tier that includes generous capabilities such as support for up to 2 users, 3 data sources, 10 monitors, and unlimited dashboards.

Limitations

Requires additional licensing beyond Microsoft 365.
It may involve a slight learning curve for users unfamiliar with dashboard configuration.
Less flexible than Power BI for complex data modeling or custom report creation.

Best for

SquaredUp excels in scenarios where organizations need to aggregate and act on data from Intune and other Microsoft 365 services, especially in environments with multiple teams or complex device management needs. Its direct integration with Microsoft 365 plugin and support for over 60 data sources also make it a strong choice for businesses seeking a unified view across their IT landscape.

Microsoft admin center reports

Microsoft Admin Center Reports is Intune's native tool that helps administrators track usage patterns, optimize licensing, and identify users who may need more or less access to services.

Key features

Native integration with Microsoft 365 and Intune: Being native, it connects with Microsoft's ecosystem for unified management and reporting, so convenient for any scenario where additional configuration or third-party tools would be preferably avoided.

Quick access to compliance, device, and app usage reports: Provides immediate visibility into critical metrics through pre-built reports that help identify issues and track deployment progress.

Simple, straightforward interface designed for basic reporting needs: Features an intuitive, user-friendly design that prioritizes accessibility for IT administrators without requiring advanced technical skills.

Limitations

• The admin center has limited customization and visualization options.
• Reports can be basic and may not support advanced analytics.
• Being native, it lacks integration with non-Microsoft data sources.

Best for

This tool is aimed at organizations with basic reporting needs. It provides straightforward reporting capabilities that work well for companies requiring fundamental device management insights without complex customization.

It also scores points for immediate visibility as the admin center offers quick access to essential compliance, device, and application usage reports directly within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Those businesses preferring simplified interfaces for operational IT staff without requiring specialized data analysis skills will also find the admin center appropriate.

Power BI

Another product within the Microsoft universe, Power BI is a business intelligence platform that takes raw data from multiple sources and turns it into interactive dashboards and reports.

Key features:

Custom dashboards and visualizations: Power BI enables administrators to build interactive dashboards and custom visualizations for Intune data, allowing insights into device compliance, configuration, and usage.

Integration with Intune Data Warehouse: Power BI connects directly to the Intune Data Warehouse using OData feeds, providing access to historical and refreshed data for comprehensive, up-to-date reporting.

Interactive and shareable reports: Reports created in Power BI for Intune are fully interactive, allowing users to drill down into specific data points, and can be easily shared across teams and devices for collaborative decision-making

Limitations

• Power BI requires more technical expertise to build and maintain reports.
• Its initial setup and data preparation can be time-consuming.
• Licensing costs can add up depending on usage and scale.

Best for

Power BI can be particularly useful in medium-to-large enterprises where IT teams need to deliver detailed insights on device compliance, configuration, software updates, and security trends to senior leadership or security teams. Power BI’s strength lies in its customizability and ability to blend Intune data with other organizational datasets for strategic analysis.

However, it’s important to note that Power BI’s setup and maintenance can demand significant technical expertise and time investment, and licensing costs may accumulate depending on scale and usage. Additionally, while it excels in data modeling and visual storytelling, Power BI is more of a traditional BI tool that may require scheduled data refreshing, which can introduce some latency in accessing live operational metrics.

Comparing SquaredUp v Microsoft Admin Center v Power BI

Feature	SquaredUp	Microsoft Admin Center	Power BI
Ease of Use	Intuitive, user-friendly dashboards out-of-the-box, minimal setup required	Basic, familiar interface for admins	Requires setup and knowledge of data modeling
Visualization Quality	Modern, interactive, and highly customizable with real-time insights	Standard, limited visualization options	Advanced, highly customizable visualizations
Data sources	Aggregates data from Intune, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jenkins, and more	Primarily Microsoft 365 and Intune data	Connects to Intune Data Warehouse and other sources
Drilldown & Contextual Insights	Deep, contextual drilldowns for rapid troubleshooting and root cause analysis	Limited drilldown capabilities	Drilldown possible but requires configuration
Collaboration & Sharing	Easy sharing and embedding, supports team collaboration	Basic sharing within admin roles	Rich sharing and publishing options
Setup & Maintenance	Quick to deploy, minimal ongoing maintenance	No setup, but limited customization	Requires initial configuration and ongoing maintenance
Best For	Organizations seeking unified, actionable, and visually rich reporting across multiple DevOps and cloud platforms	Admins needing basic, out-of-the-box reports	Power users and analysts needing custom, in-depth analytics
Standout Feature	Unified, aerial view of all pipelines and environments, not just Intune	Integrated with Microsoft ecosystem	Advanced analytics and custom reporting

While Microsoft Admin Center and Power BI offer solid reporting options for Intune, SquaredUp stands out for its unified dashboards, ease of use, and ability to provide actionable insights across multiple platforms, making it the ideal choice for organizations seeking comprehensive and visually engaging reporting.

SquaredUp’s smarter dashboards help engineering, product, and IT teams make better decisions through a deeper understanding of their data. Visualize and monitor any data from any tool, all in one place. Try for free now!