Lombiq Hosting - Azure Application Insights for Orchard Core

About

This Orchard Core module enables easy integration of Azure Application Insights telemetry into Orchard. Just install the module, configure the instrumentation key from a configuration source (like the appsettings.json file) as normally for AI, and collected data will start appearing in the Azure Portal. As seen on the Orchard community meeting. Note that this module has an Orchard 1 version in the dev-orchard-1 branch.

What kind of data is collected from the telemetry and available for inspection in the Azure Portal?

• All usual AI data, including e.g. server-side requests, client-side page views, exceptions and other log entries, dependency calls (like web requests, database queries).
• Information on background task executions (as dependency operations).
• All telemetry is enriched with Orchard-specific and general details like user ID, user name, shell (tenant) name, user agent, IP address.

And all of this can be configured in depth. Extended configuration for built-in AI features is also available, like being able to turn SQL query command text collection on or off.

Note that the module depends on Helpful Libraries.

Do you want to quickly try out this project and see it in action? Check it out in our Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions full Orchard Core solution and also see our other useful Orchard Core-related open-source projects!

Documentation

Setup and basic configuration

Configure the built-in AI options as detailed in the AI docs in an ASP.NET Core configuration source like the appsettings.json file like below. Do note that contrary to the standard AI configuration all log entries will be sent to AI by default. If you want to restrict that to just warnings, for example, you also have to add a corresponding LogLevel as demonstrated.

{
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Warning",
      //...
    },
    "ApplicationInsights": {
      "LogLevel": {
        "Default": "Warning"
      }
    }
  },
  "OrchardCore": {
    //...
  },
  "ApplicationInsights": {
    "InstrumentationKey": "your instrumentation key comes here"
  }
}

In a multi-tenant setup you can configure different instrumentation keys to collect request tracking and client-side tracking data on different tenants, just follow the Orchard Core configuration docs.

When using the full CMS approach of Orchard Core (i.e. not decoupled or headless) then the client-side tracking script will be automatically injected as a head script. Otherwise, you can create it with ITrackingScriptFactory.

Advanced configuration

The module has its own configuration for further options. These need to come from an ASP.NET Core configuration source as well but on the contrary to the basic settings for built-in AI options these need to be put under the OrchardCore section, into Lombiq_Hosting_Azure_ApplicationInsights:

{
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Debug",
      //...
    }
  },
  "OrchardCore": {
    "Lombiq_Hosting_Azure_ApplicationInsights": {
      "QuickPulseTelemetryModuleAuthenticationApiKey": "your API key here"
    }
  },
  "ApplicationInsights": {
    "InstrumentationKey": "your instrumentation key comes here"
  }
}

See the ApplicationInsightsOptions class for all options and details. We recommend configuring at least QuickPulseTelemetryModuleAuthenticationApiKey.

Note that while telemetry from background tasks is collected in form of dependency operations it'll be collected even if EnableDependencyTrackingTelemetryModule is false.

Using collected data

All the collected data will be available in the Azure Portal as usual. Some custom properties will be added to all suitable telemetry with the "OrchardCore." prefix.

Contributing and support

Bug reports, feature requests, comments, questions, code contributions, and love letters are warmly welcome, please do so via GitHub issues and pull requests. Please adhere to our open-source guidelines while doing so.

This project is developed by Lombiq Technologies. Commercial-grade support is available through Lombiq.