Tag: Application Insights

In my previous posts I gave a quick Introduction to Application Insights and then I showed you how to Disable Application Insights from your app. In this post I’ll walk you through creating an ASP.NET Core application and then configuring it with Application Insights. Let’s get started.

Configuring your app for Application Insights

Start by creating a new ASP.NET Core application (this also applied to non-core ASP.NET applications). Once the application is created right click on the project file in the context menu look for Configure Application Insights… and then click on it.

You will see that the SDK has already been added to your application. Next click on the Start Free button to start using Application Insights.

You will need to have an existing Azure Subscription. If you don’t already have one you can create one for free and start with a $250 credit for 30 days + you will have access to popular services for 12 months + there are over 25 services that are always free. Now that you have your Azure Subscription, login with your Microsoft Account, select your Subscription and then a Resource. These can always be easily changed later on if need be.

You will now have access to the free plan which comes with 1 GB / Month of data included and data retention is 90 days. Click on he Register button to finish the configuration:

Now that Application Insights is configured for your application you have access to a wealth of information with the click of a button.

Accessing the Application Insights Telemetry from Visual Studio

You can search your Application Insights results from either the Azure Portal or from within Visual Studio. To use Visual Studio go to the View menu, select Other Windows and then Application Insight Search. You will then get view of the telemetry for the last 24 hours as shown below from a sample API I have. From here you can filter the telemetry and dive down into specific events.

Another nice feature is that Application Insights telemetry data including any exceptions that have been captured will show up in the CodeLens information as shown here:

There is a lot of value from using Application Insights in any of your applications. I hope you take a look and try it out for yourself.

Enjoy!

References

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/application-insights/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-insights/app-insights-asp-net-core

In my previous post I showed you how easy it was to get started with an Introduction to Application Insights for your ASP.NET Core application. However what if you you don’t want Application Insights? You might notice in your Output pane when running your app that it’s still partially enabled for you out of the box. I’ll walk you through what I mean by it being partially enabled and then how you can go about hiding it until such time you decide to fully turn it on. Let’s get started.

Start off by creating a new ASP.NET Core application (see below) and then immediately run it.

You will then notice that you will see the following statements in your Output pane:

Application Insights Telemetry (unconfigured): {“name”:”Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Dev.Message”,”time”:”2018-03-24T03:39:26.5327026Z”,”tags”:{“ai.application.ver”:”1.0.0.0″,”ai.operation.parentId”:”|80d77757-4707b4b80d71a9b3.”,”ai.internal.sdkVersion”:”aspnet5c:2.1.1″,”ai.operation.id”:”80d77757-4707b4b80d71a9b3″,”ai.internal.nodeName”:”LT2206″,”ai.location.ip”:”127.0.0.1″,”ai.cloud.roleInstance”:”LT2206″,”ai.operation.name”:”GET Values/Get”,”ai.user.id”:”6RWa2″},”data”:{“baseType”:”MessageData”,”baseData”:{“ver”:2,”message”:”Executed action WebApplication5.Controllers.ValuesController.Get (WebApplication5) in 205.1085ms”,”severityLevel”:”Information”,”properties”:{“DeveloperMode”:”true”,”{OriginalFormat}”:”Executed action {ActionName} in {ElapsedMilliseconds}ms”,”ActionName”:”WebApplication5.Controllers.ValuesController.Get (WebApplication5)”,”AspNetCoreEnvironment”:”Development”,”ElapsedMilliseconds”:”205.1085″,”CategoryName”:”Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Internal.ControllerActionInvoker”}}}}

You might be wondering why is it doing this and how can I disable it?

The easiest way to disable Application Insights without going through the process of ripping it out is to just disable it. You can do this by accessing TelemetryConfiguration.Active.DisableTelemetry and setting this to true. What I would recommend doing is to add a static method to your Startup.cs file and call this method from your Configure method like so:

Now when you run your application and look in the Output pane you will no longer see any statement pertaining to Application Insights.

I see a great deal of value of keeping Application Insights and using it in all your applications, so if you need to disable it then maybe do this when running in debug mode by using a conditional attribute on the method.

Enjoy!

References

https://github.com/aspnet/Home/issues/2051