Application Insights for Business Central Usage - Cheat Sheet
1. Create a new Application Insights App in Azure
2. Copy the full Connection String to the Clipboard
3. Go to Partner Center->Customers->Customer List and pick a customer.
4. That brings you to the Service Management page, where you click on “Dynamics 365 Business Central to Administer Services for that customer.
5. In that customer’s Production Environment for Business Central, paste in the Application Insights Connection String that you had copied to your Clipboard.
6. Go back to your Azure Portal and copy the Application ID of your Application Insights App. That Application ID is found under the Application Insights App->Configure->API Access.
7. Go to your Power BI (Pro) Service. Choose Apps from the navigation pane and click “Get Apps”.
8. Type “Business Central Usage” in the Search Box. You will see the Dynamics 365 Business Central Usage Analytics App to download.
9. Get it Now!
10. Follow on-screen instructions to Install or Update.
11. Once the App downloads it will only see the Contoso data until you connect to your clients’ Environments.
12. Accept Oauth2 as the Authentication Method and click “Sign in and connect” with your AAD login/password/MFA.
13. Sign in with your Azure Active Directory account.
14. Once you are authenticated, you will need to specify the Application Insights Application ID to connect to your clients’ data. Paste that ID in and specify a “Lookback period”.
15. The data takes a few minutes to load, depending on how many clients you connected with the App Insights Connection String and how far to look back.
16. Various categories of data are listed on the left navigation pane. I chose Error Dialogs. In particular, I noticed 23 errors for one client in “Bin Content”. 17 of those errors refer to a system job trying remove items from “non-existent” Bin Locations. This was enough information to go into the system and debug the errors.
It is always better to call your customer with foreknowledge than to wait for the complaints.
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