Application insight - Manage and drive Sessions

Question

Application insight - Manage and drive Sessions

Ferro, Enrica 20

Hi everyone,
I started to work with Application Insight and Sessions. I need to drive my session without referring on cookies.
There is any way to control the beginning and the end of a session in the code by AI method?

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Answer 1

Ryan Hill 30,281 Microsoft Employee Moderator

To run Application Insights without referring to cookies, you can use the disableCookiesUsage configuration option which is available in the [javascript SDK]. When this option is set to true, the SDK won't store or read any data from cookies, and the User and Session cookies will be disabled. You can also use the isStorageUseDisabled configuration option to disable the SDK from storing or reading any data from local and session storage.

EDIT 2023 Apr 6: To track specific users, overwrite the user_Id field when the user starts a new session. By default, Application Insights randomly generates this value, see Managing personal data in Log Analytics and Application Insights.

TelemetryClient telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient();
telemetryClient.Context.User.Id = "unique_user_id";

Once you've set the user_id, you can query for the session in Application Insights, for example counting the number of user sessions in the last 24 hours.

requests
| where timestamp > ago(1d)
| summarize numSessions_24h = dcount(user_Id) by user_Id

Ferro, Enrica 20 Reputation points

2023-03-24T10:57:10.45+00:00

Great, what if I have to drive the start and end of an App Ins session?
I'd like to inspect some data in the "Usage" panel of App Ins, but the meaning of Session understood in Application Insight is not for me...

I have a unique session with several customers and each of which starts and ends a flow.

Originally I thinking about deleting the "ai_session" cookie at a specific time, but I still don't understand how this can work. Any suggestions?
Ferro, Enrica 20 Reputation points

2023-03-24T14:02:48.4266667+00:00

sorry...I sent twice
Ryan Hill 30,281 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-03-24T18:31:38.6733333+00:00

but the meaning of Session understood in Application Insight is not for me.

Can you elaborate because I'm not getting you.

Can you further explain the use case because it sounds like you want more granular control what's being capture in Application Insights.
Ferro, Enrica 20 Reputation points

2023-03-27T08:18:48.88+00:00

Sure!
Now in App Ins I have an application with only one Session that corresponds to the "duration of the device" since it is on until it is off.
Several customers can use the device to start a flows and my need is to make the start of the Session run with the start of the flow selected by the customer.
Is there the possibility to do with the App Ins Sessions?
Ryan Hill 30,281 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-04-06T18:47:58.3766667+00:00

@Ferro, Enrica apologies for the delay in circling back but, I've updated my response above, I hope that helps.

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Application insight - Manage and drive Sessions

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