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Sending App/Extension Telemetry to Azure Application Insights

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APPLIES TO: Business Central 2020 release wave 2 and later

This article describes how to set up an extension to send telemetry data to Azure Application Insights for monitoring and analyzing. Business Central emits telemetry data for several operations that occur when extension code is run. For an overview about the telemetry with Azure Application Insights, see Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry.

This feature targets publishers of per-tenant or appsource extensions to give them insight into issues in their extensions before partners and customers report them. Note that you get data for all customers across the install base of the app/extension.

Get an Application Insights resource in Azure

The first thing to do is to create an Application Insights resource in Azure if you don't have one. For more information, see Create an Application Insights resource.

The Azure Application Insights resource is assigned a connection string, which you can see on the Overview page for the resource in Azure. Copy this connection string because you'll need it to enable telemetry in the app/extension.

Add the Application Insights information to the app/extension

The next step is to add the "applicationInsightsConnectionString" setting the extension's app.json as shown:

"applicationInsightsConnectionString": "<connection string>"

Replace <connection string> with the string that you copied in the Azure Application Insights overview. For more information about the format of the Azure Application Insights connection string, see Connection Strings.

When done, build the extension package, then publish and install it as usual. When the extension is run from Business Central, Azure Application Insights gathers the telemetry data for viewing and analyzing.

Prior to runtime version 7.2

Up until runtime version 7.2 you cannot use the "applicationInsightsConnectionString" setting. Instead you have to use the "applicationInsightsKey" setting which is added using only the instrumentation key from the Azure Application Insights connection string as shown:

"applicationInsightsKey": "<instrumentation key>"

Where <instrumentation key> is replaced by the key denoted in the connection string as InstrumentationKey=<instrumentation key>;<some other parameters>.

Note

Transition to using connection strings for data ingestion in Azure Application Insights by 31 March 2025. On 31 March 2025, technical support for instrumentation key–based global ingestion in the Azure Application Insights feature of Azure Monitor will end. After that date, your Azure Application Insights resources will continue to receive data, but Microsoft no longer provide updates or customer support for instrumentation key–based global ingestion.

Data in app/extension telemetry

Currently, Business Central offers telemetry on the following operations (the column Extension support shows the types of events that are emitted to app/extension telemetry):

Area Description Online On-premises Extension support More information
AppSource Submission Validation Provides information about validation when an extension is submitted to AppSource. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
App key vault secrets Provides information about the retrieval of secrets from Azure Key Vaults by extensions. check mark for feature.[1] check mark for feature[1] check mark for feature See...
Authorization Provides information about user sign-in attempts. Information includes success or failure indication, reason for failure, user type, and more. check mark for feature. check mark for feature. See...
Azure Function Integration[6] Provides information about requests to Azure Functions from Business Central check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Client actions[7] Provides information about usage of client features. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Cloud migration[8] Provides information about cloud migration setup, replication runs, and data upgrade check mark for feature. See...
Company lifecycle Provides information about creating, copying, and deleting of companies. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Configuration package lifecycle Provides information about operations done on configuration packages, including exporting, importing, applying, and deleting. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Database deadlocks[5] Provides information about database deadlocks that occur. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Database lock timeouts Provides information about database locks that have timed out. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Database wait statistics Provides information about the wait categories and the wait times a query runs into. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Email Provides information about the success or failure of sending emails. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Environment lifecycle [5] Provides information about changes and operations on an environment, like updates, hotfixes, copy, move, delete, configuration changes, and more. check mark for feature. See...
Error message quality[5] Provides information about error messages that users thought were helpful or unhelpful. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Error method Provides information about error dialogs that are shown to the users. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Extension lifecycle [2] Provides information about the success or failure of extension-related operations, like publishing, synchronizing, installing, and more. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Extension update Provides information about errors that occur and upgrade tags used when upgrading an extension. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Feature Management[7] Provides information about the state changes done on the Feature Management page. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Feature telemetry Provides information about the usage and errors of features. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Field monitoring trace Provides information about the usage of the field monitoring feature. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Job queue Provides information about creating and running job queue entries. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Long running AL method trace[3] Provides information about long running AL methods. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Long running operation (SQL query) Provides information about SQL queries that take longer than expected to execute. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Onboarding[7] Provides information about the onboarding of users. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Page views Provides information about the pages that users open in the modern client. check mark for feature. check mark for feature.[6] check mark for feature[4] See...
Performance Toolkit (BCPT) Provides information about test results from running the Business Central Performance Toolkit (BCPT). check mark for feature. check mark for feature. See...
Permissions Provides information about adding, removing, and assigning permission sets. check mark for feature. See...
Permissions dependency cycle[5] Provides information about dependency cycles in permissions. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Permission error[5] Provides information about errors related to permissions that users get. check mark for feature. check mark for feature. See...
Profile configuration lifecycle[6] Provides information about design operations done on profiles from the client. check mark for feature. check mark for feature. See...
Report generation Provides information about the execution of reports. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Retention policy trace[3] Provides information about the usage of the retention policy feature. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Stopped sessions[5] Provides information about background sessions that were forcibly stopped from the admin center or by calling the StopSession method from AL. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Table index trace[3] Provides information about the addition or removal of a table index. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Task scheduler lifecycle Provides information the execution of scheduled tasks. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
User checklists[5] Provides information about when the status of a user checklist changes check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Verbose logging enabled/disabled[5] Provides information about when additional logging is enabled and disabled from the client. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Web service access key authentication Provides information about the authentication of web server access keys on web service requests. check mark for feature. check mark for feature See...
Web service publish failures[8] Provides information about the web services publish failures. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Web service requests (incoming) Provides information about the execution time of incoming web service requests. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...
Web service requests (outgoing ) Provides information about the execution time of outgoing web service requests. check mark for feature. check mark for feature check mark for feature See...

1This signal is only emitted to the Application Insights resource that's specified in the extension.

2Introduced in Business Central 2020 release wave 1, version 16.3. For extension telemetry, this signal was introduced in 2020 release wave 2, version 17.1.

3Introduced in Business Central 2020 release wave 1, version 17.1. For extension telemetry, this signal was introduced in 2021 release wave 1, version 18.1.

4Introduced in Business Central 2021 release wave 1, version 18.

5Introduced in Business Central 2022 release wave 1, version 20.

6Introduced in Business Central 2022 release wave 2, version 21.

7Introduced in Business Central 2023 release wave 1, version 22.

8Introduced in Business Central 2023 release wave 1, version 22.1.

See Also

Get Started with AL
Publishing and Installing Extensions
JSON Files Viewing telemetry data in Application Insights
LogMessage Method