Setting Up Azure Application Insights for Business Central

Business Central telemetry gets mentioned constantly in forums, news groups, and community discussions, but what does it actually mean to “send telemetry to App Insights,” and how do you set it up? If you’ve been curious but haven’t taken the plunge, Brad Prendergast breaks it down step by step.

Key Takeaways

• Set up a dedicated resource group first: In the Azure portal, create a resource group (e.g., “BC Telemetry”) to organize all your Business Central telemetry resources — keeping everything tidy and easy to manage.
• Log Analytics Workspace stores the underlying data: After creating the resource group, a Log Analytics Workspace is created within it. This is where the raw telemetry log data lives and is queried from.
• Application Insights is the connection point: App Insights is created inside the same resource group and linked to the Log Analytics Workspace. The connection string from App Insights is what you paste into the Business Central Admin Center to start sending telemetry from your environment.
• Telemetry is near real-time, not instant: Once configured, events like logins and authorizations appear in App Insights logs within a short delay. You can query the traces table using KQL to see what’s being captured.
• Use transformation rules to control costs: Environments with heavy web service calls, many users, or sensitive field access can generate a large volume of data. Setting up a data collection rule with a KQL filter (e.g., severity level ≥ 2) limits what gets stored and helps manage Azure subscription costs.
• More on transformations coming: Brad notes that a deeper dive into BC App Insights transformation rules will be covered in a future video, worth watching for teams managing high-volume environments.