Use Azure Application Insights for Power Platform Monitoring

In the recent blog post by Frederik Bisback, he provides comprehensive information about the necessity and methods of monitoring Power Platform applications using Azure's Application Insights. Starting with the definition of application performance monitoring by Gartner. It involves keeping track of software applications' functionality, availability, and usage.

According to Bisback, it is essential to follow-up on an application's performance, availability, security, error root cause and compliance. These factors support the overall user experience, track the accessibility of the application, manage security risks, prevent application errors and ensure that the application adheres to regulations.

To monitor the Power Platform application, Bisback suggests the use of Azure Monitor, a complete suite that includes Azure Application Insights, Azure Log Analytics, Dashboard workbooks, among other components.

Azure Application Insights aids in quick detection and resolution of issues to ensure the application is available and efficient. It comes with critical features such as request tracking, dependencies tracking, exception tracking, user telemetry, metrics monitoring, and real-time debugging and diagnostics.

Insights into Power Platform Application Monitoring

Bisback then takes us through the particulars of what to monitor in a Power Platform application or Dataverse database. Utilizing Azure Application Insights, one can keep track of the performance data, usage data, error, and exception data, custom events and metrics, and dependency data.

Additionally, the author provides a step-by-step walkthrough on how to get started with monitoring Power Platform Canvas Applications using Azure Log Analytics and Azure Application Insights.

He underlines the convenience of Application Insights in gaining relevant data about canvas app application like number of end-users, total number of users and events in a selected time frame, event information, user behavior, etc. To understand customer experience, he suggests using Application Insights funnels and user flows tool.

Bisback concludes by discussing the cost factor of Azure resources, pointing out that the price depends on several factors including amount of data collected, features used and the scale of the application. He advocates for the usage of Azure’s monitoring tools, emphasizing their swift setup, simple integration, and cost-effectiveness for small-scale applications.

Read the full article Monitor your Power Platform application with Azure Application Insights.

Learn about Monitor your Power Platform application with Azure Application Insights.

Today, we delve into the dynamic world of monitoring Power Platform applications with Azure Application Insights. In the current digital era, ensuring consistent and high-performance application functioning is crucial. Azure Application Insights comes as a reliable tool for developers, offering a comprehensive set of features.

Gartner defines application monitoring as tracking of software applications' performance, use, and availability. This involves key metrics tracking, detecting performance issues, and implementing proactive steps to mitigate end-user impact. In essence, application performance monitoring (APM) is a lifeline for ensuring flawless and efficient application operations.

So, why exactly is monitoring important? Let's dissect the essential reasons:

• Performance: Facilitates swift detection and resolution of issues, enhancing the user experience.
• Availability: Ensures consistent application accessibility to users and prompt responses to availability issues.
• Security: Enables tracking of security threats and better data protection.
• Error Diagnosis: Identifies and resolves application errors, bolstering reliability and stability.
• Compliance: Infrequently, monitoring may be necessary for data protection regulation compliance.

In essence, to maintain an effective, secure, and reliable Power Platform application, monitoring is fundamental.

The Azure Monitor, complete with a toolkit for application monitoring, is commonly employed for this task. Azure Application Insights, part of this toolkit, allows us to rapidly identify and rectify Power Platform application issues. This ensures that the application remains available, efficient, and reliable.

A few notable capabilities of Azure Application Insights are request tracking, dependencies tracking, exception tracking, user telemetry, metrics, and live stream. These components collectively aid in offering robust insights into the application’s performance.

With Azure Application Insights, a variety of monitoring parameters for Power Platform applications is leveraged, such as:

• Performance data
• Usage data
• Error and exception data
• Custom events and metrics
• Dependency data

To begin monitoring a Power Platform Canvas App, Azure Application Insights needs to be integrated. The steps for this integration process are carefully outlined. They involve creating the necessary Azure resources and connecting the Canvas App with Azure Application Insights.

This integration endows you with in-depth insights into the application usage, sessions, events, and overall user activity patterns. Tools like funnels and user flow charts assist in understanding customer experiences and app usage, making adjustments according to insights gathered.

The cost of Azure resource usage is variable and depends on several factors, including the amount of telemetry data collected. Azure provides a handy calculator to help you estimate the costs. The investment is highly rewarding, especially considering the huge benefits of application monitoring. A low cost yet a highly efficient application is attainable with Azure Application Insights.

In conclusion, Azure Application Insights provides an incredible resource for application monitoring. Its integration is relatively straightforward, delivering valuable insights into your canvas app at a negligible cost. It is indeed a worthy tool to add to your developer's kit.

This marks the first part of a series about monitoring Power Platform applications. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

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Keywords

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