module-application-insights.md

Application Insights module

This module captures Azure Application Insights telemetry emitted by your application and displays it in the log view. It is most useful for .NET projects but works with any runtime that can send Application Insights telemetry.

Settings live under Settings / Preferences → Tools → Awesome Log Viewer → Application Insights.

Telemetry it understands

The module recognizes the standard Application Insights telemetry types and renders each one appropriately:

Type	Shown as
Message	A log message, colored by severity.
Request	An incoming request with its name and HTTP result code.
Remote dependency	An outbound call (HTTP, SQL, …) with its target, name, and result code.
Exception	The exception message, with the full stack trace in the detail panel.
Metric	The metric name(s) and value(s).
Event	A custom event name.
Page view	A page/view navigation name.

Requests and dependencies are colored by outcome (success / client error / server error) and expose a Duration so you can spot slow calls. Selecting any entry shows its full set of fields (ids, URL, result code, custom properties, inner exceptions, …) in the Formatted tab and the raw payload in the Raw tab.

How to capture telemetry

Two processors are available; pick whichever fits your project. Each can be enabled independently for Run and for Debug.

Network (recommended)

"The Network Log Processor starts an http server to catch the logs. Logs can be redirected to this by setting the environment: APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING."

The plugin starts a small HTTP server that speaks the Application Insights ingestion protocol, then points your app at it by setting APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING.

For .NET and Java run configurations the environment variable is injected automatically. The defaults are:

APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING=InstrumentationKey=${INSTRUMENTATION_KEY};IngestionEndpoint=http://localhost:${SERVER_PORT}/
APPINSIGHTS_DEVELOPER_MODE=true

• ${SERVER_PORT} is replaced at startup with the port the plugin chose.
• APPINSIGHTS_DEVELOPER_MODE=true makes the SDK send telemetry immediately instead of batching it, so entries appear without delay.

For any other run configuration, set a fixed port under Configuration and add the connection string to your run configuration yourself.

Console

"The Console Log Processor parses logs from the Debug output when debugging .NET projects to extract telemetry data. This allows catching all logs and simplifying debugging of sampling configurations."

The console processor reads telemetry that the Application Insights SDK writes to the Debug output while debugging a .NET project — no HTTP server, no environment variables. For non-.NET projects you can write telemetry as JSON to the console (as the .NET TelemetryDebugWriter does) and parse it with this processor.

Settings

The Application Insights page exposes the shared per-source settings (Activation, Output Source / Configuration, Environment Variables) plus:

Colors

A color can be assigned to each telemetry type so they stand out in the table:

Forwarding to Azure (or another collector)

With Forward logs (Experimental) enabled, if a real APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING is configured the captured telemetry is forwarded to that endpoint as well — so you can watch it locally in the plugin and still have it land in Azure Application Insights (or another collector).