Sitecore uses log4net, which makes it relatively easy to set up new destinations for logs, etc.. One request we’d had was to log messages in the Sitecore logs into Application Insights.
I approached this by writing a custom appender, which would take our messages and write them to App Insights as Trace messages. This is what I came up with:
Continue reading “Appending Sitecore Logs into Application Insights”Application Insights records requests for all content pages in Sitecore as being for “Sitecore/Index”. That’s because this is the controller route under which those pages are processed – but it’s not that helpful if you want to see things like the performance of individual pages. Well, there is an answer, as detailed by Per Osbeck – Application Insights: GETing a fix for Sitecore/Index | by Per Osbeck | Medium .
The short form of this is he used a TelemetryProcessor to update the item.Context.Operation.Name and request.Name to the absoluteUrl being processed.
Continue reading “Splitting “Sitecore/Index” requests into their actual pages”So, application insights can track a users’ session, and if they are a returning user – and it does this with cookies…
So, if you’re using Application Insights, you may choose to use the client-side JavaScript API. This is a snippet that will allow you to use Application Insights in JavaScript – and conventiently it records lots useful error, dependency and trace data, allow with PageView data. It’s pretty nifty, and also supports filters and telemetry enrichment.
In that snippet, you’ll find lots of mention of a configuration setting “instrumentation key”. This is the ID of the app insights instance that your data will be sent to.
The thing is, it has been deprecated in favour of “connection string”. This is the same connection string as you use server-side (as described previously), and can be read from:
string aiConnection = TelemetryConfiguration.Active?.ConnectionString;You should do this and render the connection string rather than hard-code it into your layout page.
If you’re adding Application Insights to your solution, you will need to specify a connection string. Usually, this is at the bottom of your applicationinsights.config file:
A nifty alternative is you can specify this connection as an Environment Variable – and App Insights will pick that up and use it…
So, wouldn’t it be nice to record particular events in Sitecore – E.g. Publishes – into Application Insights? Well, yes, I thought – and it turned out that this had already been done by Ramkumar Dhinakaran several years ago…
Continue reading “Using App Insights to monitor Publishes in Sitecore”Previously I posted about using a Log4Net Appender to record Sitecore logs to Application Insights. That code will write Trace Messages to App Insights. I’m already filtering the messages to WARN or above using standard Log4Net <filter>s – but what if I need to filter more particular messages. Well, I wrote a telemetry processor to do this, just like Requests and Dependencies.
Sitecore’s installer for Azure app services installs a neat feature; a Log4Net appender that writes Sitecore log entries to Application Insights as TRACE messages. Nifty! However, for reasons I cannot comprehend, this is not included in the normal installer. That’s a terrible shame, as App Insights is still useful for Sitecore running on actual tin or in a VM.
Continue reading “Writing Sitecore Logs to Azure Application Insights in IAAS/On Prem”So, previously I’ve written about filtering out all the successful Dependency messages going to App Insights. What about unsuccessful ones, though?
My Sitecore instance seems have a failing dependency that is clogging up my logs. It’s the same as mentioned in this StackExchange question. It doesn’t seem to cause any issue, though… and it isn’t every environment either. Anyway, I’d like to block it. Telemetry processors to the rescue…
Continue reading “Filtering App Insights Server-side Dependency messages”So, again, I’m trying to tame Application Insights. My logs are filling up with various requests for different health-check URLs. These get requested, over and over, day after day, and all are recorded in App Insights as Requests. However, I don’t care about these requests if they’re successful. In fact, I only care about if they fail. Can I exclude them?
Yes, I can. I’ll build a telemetry processor to filter them out.
Continue reading “Filtering App Insights server-side Health Check requests”
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