Monitoring Dynamics 365 Business Central with Application Insights

Discover how Microsoft Application Insights helps Dynamics 365 Business Central users monitor ERP system performance, quickly identify issues, and keep operations running smoothly. This user-friendly guide explains what Application Insights is, how to set it up with Business Central, and best practices to optimise your ERP environment effectively.

Introduction

Business Central (the ERP solution in Dynamics 365) runs critical business processes in the cloud, so keeping it performing well and free of errors is essential. Microsoft Application Insights is a tool designed to help with exactly that.

In this guide, we’ll explain what Application Insights is (and where it came from), how it works with Business Central SaaS, and what you as an end user can do with it.

We’ll keep things non-technical and focus on how it helps monitor performance, detect issues, and maintain the health of your Business Central system. You’ll also learn how to access Application Insights in Business Central and some best practices to get the most value.

Finally, we’ll briefly mention how Application Insights is used broadly across other Azure applications.

What is Microsoft Application Insights?

Microsoft Application Insights is a cloud-based service (part of Azure Monitor) that collects and analyses telemetry data from live applications to help ensure they are running optimally.

In simpler terms, it’s an application monitoring tool.

It originated as a feature for monitoring web applications’ performance and user behavior on Azure, and over time it became a core component of Azure’s monitoring suite (Azure Monitor). The goal of Application Insights is to make sure your apps are healthy and give you the information you need to fix problems and improve user experience.

Key things Application Insights can do include:

• Detect performance issues automatically: It can continually watch your application for slow response times or other performance anomalies and flag them for your attention. This helps ensure you’re getting optimal performance from your application.
• Diagnose errors and problems: Application Insights gathers detailed error logs and failure data, which helps in pinpointing the root cause of issues quickly. Instead of guessing what went wrong, you can see error reports and traces to understand exactly where the problem occurred.
• Track usage and user behavior: It records how users interact with your application – for example, which features or pages they use most. This usage data can show you what parts of the system are popular and how users navigate through the app. Such insights help in understanding user needs and improving the application’s usability.
• Continuously improve app health: By monitoring key metrics over time, Application Insights helps you maintain an optimal user experience. You can see trends in performance (like if certain operations are getting slower) and gather data to make informed decisions on tuning the system for better speed and reliability.

In short, Application Insights is an application performance management service that originated from Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. It was built to give developers and IT professionals visibility into live applications. Over the years, it has evolved to be easier for non-developers to use as well.

Initially, interpreting telemetry data (the raw signals and logs from an app) required technical expertise, but Microsoft has added friendly dashboards and integrations (e.g. with Power BI) that make the data more approachable. This means even if you’re not a developer, you can leverage Application Insights to keep an eye on your system’s well-being.

Related Article: Top 10 Business Central Performance Issues

Why Use Application Insights in Business Central?

Business Central (especially the SaaS, cloud version) produces a wealth of telemetry – data about what’s happening behind the scenes in your ERP system.

By channeling this telemetry into Application Insights, end users and administrators get a window into the system’s health and usage that was previously hard to obtain without technical skills. Here are some of the practical benefits of using Application Insights with Business Central:

Monitor performance and responsiveness

Telemetry can tell you how well your Business Central environment is performing. It tracks things like the speed of various processes and database queries, so you can identify bottlenecks or slow operations. For example, if a particular page or report in Business Central is consistently slow, telemetry data will reveal that, allowing you to take action (such as optimising an extension or contacting support) before it impacts users heavily. It essentially provides a performance “report card” for your system on an ongoing basis.

Detect and diagnose issues faster

When errors occur in Business Central, telemetry records them along with contextual information (which user encountered the error, which object or function had a problem, etc.). This makes troubleshooting much easier. Instead of a mysterious error message, you can use Application Insights to find the underlying error log and see what went wrong. For instance, if users see a generic error like “Sorry, we just updated this page. Please close and reopen,” the telemetry will often show the real cause (such as a conflict where two users tried to modify the same record). By leveraging these insights, you can resolve issues faster and with less guesswork.

Proactive problem prevention

One of the big advantages of continuous telemetry is the ability to spot potential issues before they escalate. Application Insights isn’t just for reacting to errors that have already happened – it helps you be proactive. For example, you might notice from the telemetry that a certain operation’s response time is gradually increasing week by week, even before anyone has complained. You could investigate and address that trend before it becomes a noticeable problem. As experts note, telemetry “offers comprehensive insights into the condition and behavior” of the environment and is not only about finding existing problems but preventing them by catching early warning signs. This means fewer surprises and more stable system performance.

Usage insights and system optimisation

Telemetry data can reveal how people are actually using Business Central. You can see usage statistics – for instance, which modules or features are used most often, and at what times of day the system is busiest. Such insights help in decision-making: maybe you’ll discover that a feature you thought was critical isn’t used much at all, or vice versa. This information can guide training efforts (if a feature isn’t used, perhaps users need training on it) or future improvements. It also serves as a benchmark for normal operation. By understanding typical usage patterns and performance baselines, you can maintain high standards and quickly spot when something deviates from the norm.

Maintain system health and security

Keeping an eye on telemetry contributes to overall system health and even security. You can monitor system events and error logs for unusual activity that might indicate a problem or even a security threat. For example, an unusually high number of failed login attempts or repeated errors in a particular module could signal something that needs attention. Telemetry essentially acts as a 24/7 watchdog for your Business Central environment, alerting you to conditions that merit a closer look. It’s much like a health check-up for your ERP – continuous monitoring leads to early detection of issues, which leads to quicker resolutions and a more robust, secure system.

In summary, Application Insights turns Business Central’s telemetry data into actionable insights. It helps answer questions like: Is my system running efficiently? Where are the slow points? Did anything error out today? Are we trending towards a problem?

By using Application Insights, Business Central administrators or power users can ensure the system remains healthy and responsive, and they can address small issues before they become big ones. This empowers organisations to get the most out of Business Central with minimal downtime or performance hiccups.

Using Application Insights in Business Central (SaaS)

So, how do you actually get these insights for your Business Central SaaS environment? There are two main aspects here: enabling the telemetry integration and accessing the data in a useful way.

Enabling Telemetry (Connecting Business Central to Application Insights)

By default, Business Central cloud environments do emit telemetry, but to retain and analyse that data over time you need to funnel it into an Application Insights resource. Setting this up is a one-time administrative task:

Azure Setup

Because Application Insights is an Azure service, you (or your partner/IT admin) will need an Azure subscription to use it. Within Azure, you create an Application Insights resource (essentially a container in Azure that will receive and store telemetry data). This is typically done through the Azure Portal by selecting Application Insights and choosing settings like the resource name and location. (If your organisation doesn’t have Azure expertise, don’t worry, this is a fairly straightforward process, and Microsoft’s documentation provides step-by-step guidance on creating an Application Insights resource.)

Linking Business Central to Azure

Once the Azure Application Insights resource exists, you link your Business Central environment to it. This is done in the Business Central Administration Center for your tenant. An administrator will open the Admin Center, go to the Environments list, and select the specific environment (e.g., Production) to configure. There is an option to “Application Insights Key” or Connection String for Telemetry – this is where you input the connection details from the Azure resource. Essentially, you copy the Connection String (or Instrumentation Key) from your Azure Application Insights resource and paste it into this field in Business Central’s admin settings. You’ll then enable telemetry (there’s usually a checkbox or toggle to turn it on) and save the setting.

• • Note: Turning this on will typically restart the Business Central environment (the system does this automatically when you save the setting). It’s recommended to do it during off-hours to avoid disrupting users. After the restart, Business Central will begin sending its telemetry data to the specified Application Insights resource in Azure.

Verification

After enabling, it’s good practice to verify that data is flowing. You can do this by going to the Azure Portal, opening your Application Insights resource, and checking the Logs or Metrics sections to see if new telemetry entries from Business Central are appearing. If you see entries (for example, logs of user sessions, AL code events, or errors), then the connection is working. From that point on, Azure will continuously receive telemetry from Business Central.

At this stage, you’ve essentially set up a pipeline: Business Central emits telemetry events (things like page loads, report executions, errors, etc.), and those events are now being recorded in Azure Application Insights for your later analysis.

It’s worth noting that this telemetry integration can be enabled for both Business Central online and on-premises installations. In on-premises cases, admins configure a similar connection string on the BC server to send data to Azure. Our focus here is SaaS, but the concept is the same – Azure Application Insights will be the central place where telemetry is collected.

Accessing and Using Telemetry Data

Enabling the connection is only the first step – the real value comes from using the telemetry data to gain insights. So how do end users or admins actually access the information gathered by Application Insights?

Azure Portal – Application Insights

The primary interface provided by Microsoft is the Azure Portal itself. When you navigate to your Application Insights resource in Azure, you have several tools at your disposal. You can use the Application Insights dashboard to get an at-a-glance view of application health and usage, or use features like Logs (Analytics) to query the raw data.

The data from Business Central is categorised into tables (for example, one table for traces/logs, one for page views, one for errors, etc.) in a Log Analytics workspace. Using a query language called Kusto (KQL), you can retrieve specific information – for instance, “show me all error events in the last 24 hours” or “list the top 5 longest-running queries this week.” This is a powerful way to dig into details when needed.

However, for many end users, writing queries might be too technical, which is why Microsoft and partners have built friendlier options (more on that in a moment). The Azure Portal also offers pre-built visualisations: you can view graphs of server response times, counts of exceptions (errors) over time, user session counts, and so on, right out of the box. These visual charts and the ability to drill into individual telemetry events allow you to explore what’s happening in your Business Central environment in near real-time.

Power BI “Usage Analytics” App

To make telemetry analysis easier for Business Central customers, Microsoft has provided a Power BI app called Dynamics 365 Business Central – Usage Analytics. This is essentially a set of pre-built dashboards and reports tailored to Business Central telemetry data.

After you’ve connected Business Central to Application Insights, you can install this app in Power BI (it’s available on Microsoft AppSource). The app will prompt you to connect it to your Application Insights data (you provide the same connection info or Azure credentials), and then it will populate a rich set of reports.

These reports cover areas like user traffic, performance, errors, and administrative operations. For example, you might see a dashboard showing how many users were active each day, which pages or reports are used most, a list of the top errors and which users encountered them, and even recommendations for performance tuning based on the telemetry.

The Power BI interface is very user-friendly: you get charts, graphs, and tables that you can filter and slice (e.g., view data for a particular date range or compare one environment to another). The key benefit is that you don’t have to be an expert to read these insights – it’s presented in plain language and visuals.

Many Business Central admins find this app useful for regular monitoring meetings or reports, because it highlights the important information without any coding. And since it’s Power BI, you can even customise or extend the reports if there’s something specific you want to track. (For instance, if you care about a specific Business Central extension’s performance, you could add a custom visual for that.)

Business Central Admin Center (built-in telemetry viewer)

In addition to the Azure-based tools, Business Central itself provides a simple telemetry viewer in the Admin Center. There’s a Telemetry tab for each environment that lets you filter and see recent telemetry events directly, even without setting up Application Insights externally.

This tool shows top-level events (like AL code events, errors, and certain operations) within a short time window. It’s handy for quick troubleshooting. For example, if a user reports an error at 10:00 AM, you (as an admin) can go to the telemetry viewer, filter around 10:00 AM, and likely see the error and what caused it. It might show an error message or an operation that failed, giving immediate clues.

In practice, many organisations use a combination of these options. The Admin Center telemetry view is great for an immediate check when something happens (“What was that error just now?”), whereas the Azure Application Insights and Power BI route is used for continuous monitoring and historical analysis (“What’s our average response time trend this month?” or “Did we have any unusual errors this week?”).

Tip: If you’re not sure where to start, the Power BI Usage Analytics app is a friendly entry point. It was designed for end users in mind, requiring minimal setup, and it presents the telemetry in narratives and charts (for example, “Most used pages” or “Error count by day”) that are easy to understand. On the other hand, if you have a specific question that the pre-built reports don’t answer, you or a tech-savvy colleague can go into Azure Portal and use the Logs query to get that info. Both approaches ultimately use the same data from Application Insights – it’s just a matter of the interface and format that you find most useful.

Best Practices for Effective Use of Telemetry

To get the maximum benefit from Application Insights in Business Central, consider these best practices:

Enable telemetry from day one (and for every environment)

Make sure to turn on the Application Insights integration as soon as your Business Central environment is live. This way, you start collecting data from the get-go.

Having that history is invaluable – you can’t analyze what you never recorded. In fact, if you ever reach out to Microsoft support about a performance issue, one of the first questions they’ll ask is whether you have telemetry enabled with Application Insights. That’s because the support engineers can use that data to diagnose issues (for example, to check if your environment is being affected by another tenant using excessive resources – a “noisy neighbor” scenario in the cloud).

Bottom line: don’t wait for a crisis to turn telemetry on; enable it proactively so you have the data when you need it.

Establish a performance baseline

After enabling telemetry, use the data from a “steady state” period to set a baseline for what normal looks like in your system.

For example, measure the typical response times of pages when things are running well, or the usual number of background tasks per hour, etc. This baseline can serve as a benchmark to compare against in the future. If down the line a user says “the system feels slow,” you can verify that by comparing current telemetry to your baseline metrics. If you see that, say, report execution times have doubled compared to the baseline, you have solid evidence of a performance regression.

Conversely, if the metrics are similar to baseline, the slowness might be due to network or perception. Baselines also help in capacity planning and system tuning – they represent the healthy standard you aim to maintain.

Monitor telemetry regularly (don’t just set and forget)

Telemetry is most powerful when used proactively. Make it a habit to review your telemetry dashboards or reports periodically – for example, weekly or monthly health checks.

Look for any spikes in errors or changes in performance trends. The idea is to catch potential problems early. If error counts are creeping up release after release, you’ll spot it before those errors become major support incidents. If a particular process is slowly getting slower, you’ll notice the trend and can investigate why (maybe a growing data volume or a new extension causing overhead). Regular monitoring can be as simple as glancing at the Power BI Usage Analytics report’s summary page to ensure everything is in expected ranges.

By being in tune with the telemetry, you can address issues before end users are impacted – truly preventive maintenance for your Business Central system.

Leverage user-friendly tools and reports

As mentioned, not everyone is a data scientist or wants to write query code. Take advantage of the tools that present telemetry in a clear, accessible way.

The Dynamics 365 Business Central Usage Analytics Power BI app is a prime example, it gives you a polished set of views into your data, including charts of performance and tables of errors categorised by user, without any heavy lifting on your part. Similarly, consider creating an internal dashboard or schedule a regular email report that highlights key telemetry metrics for your team. The easier it is to consume the telemetry information, the more likely you’ll use it consistently.

These tools can democratise the data – even non-technical team members can grasp insights like “we had 3 error incidents this week, down from 5 last week” or “average page load time is 1.2 seconds, which is within our acceptable range.” When telemetry is made human-readable, it becomes a normal part of operational checks rather than an obscure technical thing.

Filter out noise and focus on key data (manage the signal-to-noise ratio)

Business Central can emit a lot of telemetry events. Some are very useful, but some might be low-value for your purposes (for example, extremely detailed trace logs or very frequent heartbeat signals). Pulling in every single piece of telemetry without discrimination can lead to information overload and unnecessary Azure costs.

A best practice is to filter out or reduce collection of non-essential data so you can focus on what truly matters. For instance, if you find that certain telemetry categories (like web service call traces or background job pings) are generating huge volumes of data that you rarely look at, you might adjust the configuration to limit those. Azure Application Insights allows settings like sampling (only recording a fraction of events) or filtering by categories. By doing this, you keep your telemetry stream lean – containing mostly the actionable insights (errors, performance metrics, usage stats) and not every single minor event.

This approach not only makes analysis easier (less noise to sift through) but also helps ensure you stay within the free data limits of Application Insights (currently, the first 5 GB of data per month is free) so you aren’t inadvertently racking up costs.

In short: be intentional about what data you truly need to monitor your system’s health, and trim out the rest.

Share and use telemetry insights for support and improvement

Make telemetry a part of your support toolkit. If you’re working with a Microsoft partner or opening a ticket with Microsoft support, provide them with relevant telemetry findings.

For example, instead of just saying “some operations are slow,” you could say “our telemetry shows that page X has an average load time of 5 seconds this week, up from 1 second previously, and it started after the last update.” This kind of information can drastically reduce the time to pinpoint the cause, because it gives experts concrete data to investigate.

Additionally, telemetry can reveal issues beyond just your Business Central configuration. Recall the earlier “noisy neighbor” example – if your telemetry shows good performance on average but you experience random slowdowns at certain times, Microsoft can use the data to see if another tenant on the same server was spiking resources at those times. If so, they can move your environment to balance it out. Without telemetry, such issues are hard to prove. With telemetry, you have evidence to back up your requests and to ensure your Business Central system gets the attention or resources it needs.

Always loop back the insights from telemetry into your decision-making process – whether it’s optimising an internal process, requesting a service upgrade, or simply training users to avoid certain actions that cause strain. Over time, these improvements compound, leading to a smoother running Business Central deployment.

Following these best practices will help your organisation fully realise the value of Application Insights. The key theme is proactive, data-driven management of Business Central: by continuously observing the telemetry and acting on what it tells you, you maintain control and avoid being blindsided by issues.

Application Insights Beyond Business Central

While our focus here is Business Central, it’s worth noting that Application Insights is used across many Azure-based applications and services, not just Dynamics 365 Business Central.

It is a general-purpose monitoring tool in the Azure ecosystem. For example, other Dynamics 365 products like Dynamics 365 F&SCM also leverage Application Insights for telemetry – giving administrators of those systems similar visibility into performance trends and potential issues.

Outside of Dynamics, developers routinely embed Application Insights in all kinds of solutions: from custom web applications and e-commerce sites to mobile app backends and Azure Functions.

If you have a website or API running in Azure, you can use Application Insights to track page load times, request rates, error exceptions, dependency call durations (like how long a database query took), and user interaction events. All of this helps ensure those applications are running smoothly and helps developers spot and fix problems early.

In essence, Application Insights serves as the “eyes and ears” for applications in the cloud. Its widespread use means that it’s a mature, well-supported platform. So when you use it for Business Central, you’re tapping into the same robust monitoring framework that supports everything from large enterprise web services to other Microsoft cloud products.

It’s one more tool in the toolbox for keeping modern cloud applications (like Business Central) healthy, performant, and continuously improving.

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