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Telemetry — Routing Pageworks Events to Your Own Application Insights

This document is for a tenant administrator who wants Pageworks's extension telemetry to flow into their own Azure Application Insights (AI) resource, rather than (or in addition to) wherever it flows today.

Pageworks's custom trace events are emitted with TelemetryScope::All. Per Microsoft's own documentation on TelemetryScope (cited below), events logged at that scope go to both the Application Insights account configured in the extension's own app.json (publisher-controlled) and the environment-level Application Insights resource a tenant admin configures in the Business Central admin center. This means a tenant admin has a supported, working path to route Pageworks's events into their own AI resource — see §3 for the admin procedure.

1. What the engine emits​

Pageworks emits standard Business Central extension telemetry — Application Insights traces, written via the platform's Session.LogMessage API. There is no custom transport: every event is a standard AL Session.LogMessage call, so any tooling that already understands BC telemetry (Log Analytics, etc.) understands these events too.

Event IDSignalsVerbosityKey custom dimensions
LF0001A report render completed successfully.NormalreportId, layoutName, durationMs, pageCount
LF0002A report render failed.ErrorreportId, layoutName, durationMs, errorCode (catalog code from Error & finding code catalog)
LF0003A validation run completed (report or standalone partial).NormalreportId (0 if none), findingCount, errorCount
LF0004An extension registered/updated its baseline partials via PageworksRegistry.NormalappId (caller's app id, platform-supplied — never caller-controlled), prefix, partialCount
LF0005An extension registered/updated a baseline image asset via PageworksRegistry.RegisterImage.NormalappId, prefix, imageCount
LF0006An extension registered/updated a baseline font asset via PageworksRegistry.RegisterFont.NormalappId, prefix, fontCount
LF0007The install-time self-test ran.NormalSelfTestPassed

All events use DataClassification::SystemMetadata and TelemetryScope::All. All is deliberately chosen — over the narrower ExtensionPublisher — so that a customer can observe the app's telemetry in their own environment's Application Insights, not only in the publisher's. Dimensions carry only ids, names, counts, and durations — never document content or business data.

2. Two AI destinations BC actually supports​

Per Microsoft Learn (Setting up telemetry in an app/extension, Turn environment telemetry on or off, and the TelemetryScope option type reference), Business Central telemetry has exactly two independently-configured AI destinations:

  1. Per-extension (publisher-configured, build-time). The extension's own app.json carries "applicationInsightsConnectionString". This is set by whoever builds and ships the app and is baked into the .app package. A tenant admin installing the app cannot change it; there is no Extension Management page field for it. This is what TelemetryScope::ExtensionPublisher routes to.
  2. Per-environment (tenant-admin-configured, runtime). In the Business Central admin center, under Environments → [environment] → Application Insights Key, a tenant admin sets the connection string (or, on older versions, instrumentation key) of their own AI resource. This is the one AI destination genuinely under tenant admin control. It receives all standard platform telemetry for that environment automatically, plus any custom Session.LogMessage events emitted with TelemetryScope::All — but not events emitted with TelemetryScope::ExtensionPublisher.

Because Pageworks's LogMessage calls all use scope All, they reach both destinations: the publisher's own AI account (if one is configured) and the tenant admin's own environment-level Application Insights resource. A tenant admin's own environment-level Application Insights key does pick up Pageworks's events, once they've configured it per §3.

3. Routing to your own Application Insights — admin steps​

Because the engine emits at TelemetryScope::All, the only lever a tenant admin needs is environment-level telemetry. Setting it up:

  1. Create an Azure Application Insights resource if you don't have one (Create an Application Insights resource), and copy its connection string from the resource's Overview page in the Azure portal. Use the connection string, not the (deprecated) instrumentation key — Microsoft ended technical support for instrumentation-key-based ingestion on 31 March 2025.
  2. In the Business Central admin center, go to Environments, select the target environment, and open the Application Insights Key setting (shown as Define if not yet configured).
  3. Enable Application Insights and paste the connection string into the Instrumentation Key / connection string field, then Save. Applying this setting restarts the environment — schedule it outside business hours.
  4. This makes the environment emit its standard platform telemetry to your AI resource, and — because Pageworks's LF-series events are logged with TelemetryScope::All (§1, §2) — also causes those events to appear there. No further configuration is required.

4. Confirming events arrive​

Once environment-level telemetry is configured (§3):

  1. Trigger at least one render (success and, ideally, one deliberate failure) against the target environment so LF0001/LF0002 fire, and one validation run so LF0003 fires.

  2. In the Azure portal, open the target AI resource's Logs (Log Analytics) blade and run a KQL query such as:

    traces
    | where timestamp > ago(1h)
    | where customDimensions.eventId startswith "LF"
    | project timestamp, message, eventId = customDimensions.eventId,
        reportId = customDimensions.reportId, durationMs = customDimensions.durationMs
    | order by timestamp desc

    Note: the BC platform prefixes eventId with al when emitting to Application Insights, so the actual customDimensions value may read alLF0001 rather than LF0001 — check both forms if the first query returns nothing.

  3. Confirm at least one row per triggered event appears with the expected custom dimensions.

5. Closed-source note​

Pageworks ships closed-source. This does not affect standard platform telemetry routing — Application Insights connection strings and TelemetryScope are platform features that operate independently of AL source visibility; a closed-source extension emits and routes telemetry exactly like an open one.