Azure-docs: Steps do not result in weekly telemetry reports being sent

[SidShetye]

Was directed here from the auto-weekly telemetry reports that are extremely useful to us. The latest email from the application insights team ("[email protected]") said

> Note: The weekly telemetry report is being deprecated after June 18, 2018. See this for information on setting up custom reports.

and links to this page. But the instructions on this page do NOT produce the same result as the weekly reports. The core query is fine but it needs to be hooked into a weekly azure function and then an actual email must also be set out. There is no email template etc - really half baked.

Please fix ASAP because the telemetry reports appear to be shutting down in 4 days.

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Document Details

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• ID: 87c39d05-acfe-7d9c-1b2b-3274f807a972
• Version Independent ID: 68e136c8-f2f4-cc29-f6e5-a8f1a2685f0c
• Content: Automate custom reports with Azure Application Insights data
• Content Source: articles/application-insights/automate-custom-reports.md
• Service: application-insights
• GitHub Login: @sdash
• Microsoft Alias: sdash

[kobulloc-MSFT]

@SidShetye Thank you for reaching out to us about the discrepancy between the docs and your experience. I've assigned this to the document author so they can update this accordingly.

[mrbullwinkle]

@BryanTrach-MSFT can you change this to a doc-enhancement request? The current doc does work for outlining the basics of how to send custom e-mails with App Insights data. The customer has requested extending the doc to walkthrough how-to exactly replicate the functionality that was present in the weekly digest e-mails. You can assign this one to me. I am also including @SoubhagyaDash for visibility as he owns this functionality at the PM level.

[andrewjwatts]

I second this, We rely on this email and would really like an update on how to create a weekly report. I also can not find "Use the "Application Insights scheduled digest" Azure function template in the Monitoring scenario." on the app insights page anywhere! Where am I supposed to be looking, this is not a good document to follow.

[SidShetye]

@andrewjwatts I've uploaded what works for our team at https://gist.github.com/SidShetye/ce68e85596f698985d924831f237cfd9

It's not identical to what's being phased out but a step ahead.

@SoubhagyaDash as PM I want to give feedback that this is an extremely poor user experience. Think of all the online services you use as a consumer that have notifications. Now imagine each such service asked you to write serverless code and setup SMTP servers for notifications or summaries. That is a frustratingly disproportionate burden put on the customer for a paid service. This should be as simple as a checkbox [ ] Send me weekly statistics. Advanced metrics can always be build with custom code, custom queries and custom infrastructure but it cannot be the default expectation. Please reconsider.

[mrbullwinkle]

@andrewjwatts and @SidShetye thank you for your feedback and for opening this issue. My apologies for the frustration caused by the docs. I went through yesterday and struggled as well trying to figure out how to get the Application Insights Azure Function template to work properly. I have added step-by-step documentation, both for how to configure the template as well as how to get SendGrid up and running if you have never used it before. The new content is merged internally, but it won't go live until 3 PM (UTC-7) later today. This still isn't going to provide an exact replica of the previous report, but it should clear up the confusion in the docs. If you have further feedback for the product group I would recommend using the feedback forums so that your feedback can be amplified and voted up by other customers.

[andrewjwatts]

Thanks that the improved post. I have now created a weekly report using this. Its not as good as the original but its a start!

Thanks again

[micktion]

@SidShetye As far as I can tell all you've done is remove SendGrid and replace it with code to work with an SMTP server. I'd actually prefer SendGrid.

Secondly I'm a little surprised you guys, this is working for you guys, the issue I'm encountering is well before it attempts to send an email as described here... https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/issues/10852

[mrbullwinkle]

@andrewjwatts Thank you for giving the updated instructions a try. Definitely feel free to voice your concerns with the lack of parity between the old report and the Azure Functions template on https://feedback.azure.com/forums/357324-application-insights. If you do please add a link to your feedback here so that I can upvote it as well. The PG may not bring back the old report due to its lack of ability to be customized, but I am sure they would be open to suggestions of how to improve the out-of-box Azure Functions template experience to better meet your needs.

[mrbullwinkle]

please-close

[SidShetye]

@micktion SMTP makes it general purpose across any provider, including your favorite one.

I’d suggest diff’ing the provided csx against the MSFT provided azure func csx file ... ours differs in

1. Upgrading to SMTP
2. Allows queries beyond 7 days
3. Gets metrics for 0-1 week and 1-2 weeks to show the deltas in performance
4. Different email template

Feel free to edit/share/whatever; it’s provided as-is ;)