BI for Intune vs Native Intune Reporting
Native Intune reports give you a starting point. BI for Intune gives you a complete star-schema data model in Power BI, so you can build virtually any report with point-and-click, no coding required.
Why IT teams outgrow native Intune reporting
The built-in reports in Microsoft Intune are useful for quick checks: device compliance status, app installation progress, a list of non-compliant policies. But they are pre-canned reports with limited customization. You cannot change the columns, add calculated fields, merge data from other sources, or build the specific view your leadership team or security auditors are asking for.
When IT teams need Intune custom reports, they typically export to CSV, open Excel, and manually stitch data together. That process is time-consuming, error-prone, and produces a snapshot that is stale by the time it reaches stakeholders.
BI for Intune solves this by delivering a complete star-schema data model directly into your Power BI workspace. The data model is designed so that any user, regardless of technical skill, can create reports using the native drag-and-drop interface in Power BI. No DAX. No M queries. No coding of any kind. Just pick fields, drop them on the canvas, and let the star schema handle the relationships.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Native Intune Reporting | BI for Intune |
|---|---|---|
| Custom report creation (point-and-click) | ||
| Star-schema data model for ad-hoc analysis | ||
| Historical data and trending over time | ||
| Merge Intune + Defender + SCCM data | ||
| Row-level security for delegating reports | ||
| Embed in Teams, SharePoint, or websites | ||
| Scheduled automatic data refresh | ||
| Advanced visualizations (charts, maps, KPIs, drill-through) | ||
| Data stays in customer tenant | ||
| No agents required on endpoints | ||
| Pre-built compliance and device reports | ||
| Included with Intune license at no extra cost |
The cross-platform advantage
Native Intune reporting only shows you Intune data. But most enterprise environments also run Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and many are still managing devices in SCCM during a co-management migration. BI for Intune lets you merge data from all three platforms because all three datasets share a common unique key value.
Intune
Device compliance, app inventory, configuration profiles, Windows Updates, Autopilot enrollment.
Defender for Endpoint
Threat detections, vulnerability assessments, secure score, exposure levels, software inventory.
SCCM / ConfigMgr
Hardware inventory, software metering, task sequence status, collection membership, co-management state.
With a single Power BI report, you can answer questions like: "Which devices are enrolled in Intune, have a critical Defender vulnerability, and are still co-managed from SCCM?" That question is impossible to answer with native Intune reporting alone.
Your data stays in your tenant
BI for Intune connects to your Intune environment using native Microsoft APIs, the same Microsoft Graph API that Intune itself uses. Data is pulled directly into your Power BI workspace and never passes through a third-party server.
There are no agents installed on endpoints, no data replication to external databases, and no vendor-hosted portal to manage. Everything runs inside services you already own and govern.
This architecture means your existing Microsoft 365 security controls apply automatically: conditional access, audit logging, sensitivity labels, and data loss prevention policies all work without additional configuration.
Go beyond native Intune reporting
Start a free trial of BI for Intune and have your first Power BI dashboards running in under an hour. No agents, no vendor portal, no data leaving your environment.