Application Insights for Windows Desktop

This is an update to the original Application Insights for Desktop applications SDK, first blogged about here: http://apmtips.com/blog/2015/08/08/application-insights-for-desktop-applications/.

It goes beyond what the docs outline here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/windows-desktop, by ensuring it also works for .NET Core 3 based desktop apps. With these steps, you don't need to add the Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsServer package, just this one AppInsights.WindowsDesktop.

It adds the following capaiblities (taken from the Windows Server package) to desktop apps

• Persistence Channel Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Channel.PersistenceChannel is a channel optimized for devices and mobile apps and works great in offline scenarios. It writes events to disk before attempting to send it. Next time app starts - event will be picked up and send to the cloud. Furthermore, if you are running multiple instances of an application - all of them will write to the disk, but only one will be sending data to http endpoint.
• DeviceTelemetryInitializer: sets machine name and OEM information
• FirstChanceExceptionStatisticsTelemetryModule: reports first chance exceptions
• DeveloperModeWithDebuggerAttachedTelemetryModule: sets DebugMode to true if in the debugger
• UnobservedExceptionTelemetryModule: reports unobserved task exceptions
• UnhandledExceptionTelemetryModule: reports unhandled exceptions
• SessionTelemetryInitializer: Initializes session id and user id
• VersionTelemetryInitializer: Initializes CLR version and Application Version (from AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute of the entrypoint)
• WTSSessionTelemetryInitializer: Reports Remote Desktop and Remote Control states
• GraphicsTelemetryInitializer: Reports various graphics hardware metric like Graphics Card and driver version, supported DirectX Feature Level. Various WPF Rendering settings.
• WTSSessionTelemetryModule: Reports changes to the Windows Terminal Services state, like logging on/off, connect/disconnect remote desktop etc.
• GraphicsTelemetryModule: Reports changes to the graphics capabilities of the system.

Usage

Add an ApplicationInsights.config file to your main executable project with an action of CopyIfNewer. The recommended default is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ApplicationInsights xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ApplicationInsights/2013/Settings">
  <TelemetryInitializers>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector.HttpDependenciesParsingTelemetryInitializer, Microsoft.AI.DependencyCollector" />
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.DeviceTelemetryInitializer, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.SessionTelemetryInitializer, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.VersionTelemetryInitializer, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>
    <!--<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.GraphicsTelemetryInitializer, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>-->
    <!--<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.WTSSessionTelemetryInitializer, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>-->
  </TelemetryInitializers>
  <TelemetryModules>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector.DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule, Microsoft.AI.DependencyCollector" >
      <ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains>
        <!-- 
        Requests to the following hostnames will not be modified by adding correlation headers.         
        Add entries here to exclude additional hostnames.
        -->
        <Add>core.windows.net</Add>
        <Add>core.chinacloudapi.cn</Add>
        <Add>core.cloudapi.de</Add>
        <Add>core.usgovcloudapi.net</Add>
      </ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains>
      <IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities>
        <Add>Microsoft.Azure.EventHubs</Add>
        <Add>Microsoft.Azure.ServiceBus</Add>
      </IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities>
    </Add>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.DeveloperModeWithDebuggerAttachedTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop" />
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.UnhandledExceptionTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.UnobservedExceptionTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop" />
    <!--<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.FirstChanceExceptionStatisticsTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop" />-->
    <!--<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.WTSSessionTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop" />-->
    <!--<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsDesktop.GraphicsTelemetryModule, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop" />-->
  </TelemetryModules>  
  <TelemetryProcessors>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility.AutocollectedMetricsExtractor, Microsoft.ApplicationInsights"/>
  </TelemetryProcessors>
  <TelemetryChannel Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Channel.PersistenceChannel, AppInsights.WindowsDesktop"/>
  <ApplicationIdProvider Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility.Implementation.ApplicationId.ApplicationInsightsApplicationIdProvider, Microsoft.ApplicationInsights"/>
</ApplicationInsights>

You can set your InstrumentationKey either in that file or in code via TelemetryConfiguration.Active.InstrumentationKey.

See the docs for more details about configuration: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/windows-desktop