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Application Insights for .NET console applications

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Application Insights lets you monitor your web application for availability, performance, and usage.

You need a subscription with Microsoft Azure. Sign in with a Microsoft account, which you might have for Windows, Xbox Live, or other Microsoft cloud services. Your team might have an organizational subscription to Azure: ask the owner to add you to it using your Microsoft account.

Note

It is highly recommended to use the Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WorkerService package and associated instructions from here for any Console Applications. This package is compatible with Long Term Support (LTS) versions of .NET Core and .NET Framework or higher.

Note

On March 31st, 2025, support for instrumentation key ingestion will end. Instrumentation key ingestion will continue to work, but we’ll no longer provide updates or support for the feature. Transition to connection strings to take advantage of new capabilities.

Getting started

  • In the Azure portal, create an Application Insights resource. For application type, choose General.
  • Take a copy of the connection string. Find the connection string in the Essentials drop-down of the new resource you created.
  • Install latest Microsoft.ApplicationInsights package.
  • Set the connection string in your code before tracking any telemetry (or set the APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable). After that, you should be able to manually track telemetry and see it on the Azure portal
// you may use different options to create configuration as shown later in this article
TelemetryConfiguration configuration = TelemetryConfiguration.CreateDefault();
configuration.ConnectionString = <Copy connection string from Application Insights Resource Overview>;
var telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient(configuration);
telemetryClient.TrackTrace("Hello World!");

Note

Telemetry is not sent instantly. Telemetry items are batched and sent by the ApplicationInsights SDK. In Console apps, which exit right after calling Track() methods, telemetry may not be sent unless Flush() and Sleep/Delay is done before the app exits as shown in full example later in this article. Sleep is not required if you are using InMemoryChannel. There is an active issue regarding the need for Sleep which is tracked here: ApplicationInsights-dotnet/issues/407

You may initialize and configure Application Insights from the code or using ApplicationInsights.config file. Make sure initialization happens as early as possible.

Note

Instructions referring to ApplicationInsights.config are only applicable to apps that are targeting the .NET Framework, and do not apply to .NET Core applications.

Using config file

By default, Application Insights SDK looks for ApplicationInsights.config file in the working directory when TelemetryConfiguration is being created

TelemetryConfiguration config = TelemetryConfiguration.Active; // Reads ApplicationInsights.config file if present

You may also specify path to the config file.

using System.IO;
TelemetryConfiguration configuration = TelemetryConfiguration.CreateFromConfiguration(File.ReadAllText("C:\\ApplicationInsights.config"));
var telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient(configuration);

For more information, see configuration file reference.

You may get a full example of the config file by installing latest version of Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsServer package. Here's the minimal configuration for dependency collection that is equivalent to the code example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ApplicationInsights xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ApplicationInsights/2013/Settings">
  <ConnectionString>"Copy connection string from Application Insights Resource Overview"</ConnectionString>
  <TelemetryInitializers>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector.HttpDependenciesParsingTelemetryInitializer, Microsoft.AI.DependencyCollector"/>
  </TelemetryInitializers>
  <TelemetryModules>
    <Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector.DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule, Microsoft.AI.DependencyCollector">
      <ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains>
        <Add>core.windows.net</Add>
        <Add>core.chinacloudapi.cn</Add>
        <Add>core.cloudapi.de</Add>
        <Add>core.usgovcloudapi.net</Add>
        <Add>localhost</Add>
        <Add>127.0.0.1</Add>
      </ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains>
      <IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities>
        <Add>Microsoft.Azure.ServiceBus</Add>
        <Add>Microsoft.Azure.EventHubs</Add>
      </IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities>
    </Add>
  </TelemetryModules>
  <TelemetryChannel Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.WindowsServer.TelemetryChannel.ServerTelemetryChannel, Microsoft.AI.ServerTelemetryChannel"/>
</ApplicationInsights>

Configuring telemetry collection from code

Note

Reading config file is not supported on .NET Core. You may consider using Application Insights SDK for ASP.NET Core

  • During application start-up, create and configure DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule instance - it must be singleton and must be preserved for application lifetime.
var module = new DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule();

// prevent Correlation Id to be sent to certain endpoints. You may add other domains as needed.
module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("core.windows.net");
//...

// enable known dependency tracking, note that in future versions, we will extend this list. 
// please check default settings in https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-dotnet-server/blob/develop/Src/DependencyCollector/DependencyCollector/ApplicationInsights.config.install.xdt

module.IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities.Add("Microsoft.Azure.ServiceBus");
module.IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities.Add("Microsoft.Azure.EventHubs");
//....

// initialize the module
module.Initialize(configuration);
  • Add common telemetry initializers
// ensures proper DependencyTelemetry.Type is set for Azure RESTful API calls
configuration.TelemetryInitializers.Add(new HttpDependenciesParsingTelemetryInitializer());

If you created configuration with plain TelemetryConfiguration() constructor, you need to enable correlation support additionally. It is not needed if you read configuration from file, used TelemetryConfiguration.CreateDefault() or TelemetryConfiguration.Active.

configuration.TelemetryInitializers.Add(new OperationCorrelationTelemetryInitializer());
  • You may also want to install and initialize Performance Counter collector module as described here

Full example

using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights;
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.DependencyCollector;
using Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace ConsoleApp
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            TelemetryConfiguration configuration = TelemetryConfiguration.CreateDefault();

            configuration.ConnectionString = "removed";
            configuration.TelemetryInitializers.Add(new HttpDependenciesParsingTelemetryInitializer());

            var telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient(configuration);
            using (InitializeDependencyTracking(configuration))
            {
                // run app...

                telemetryClient.TrackTrace("Hello World!");

                using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
                {
                    // Http dependency is automatically tracked!
                    httpClient.GetAsync("https://microsoft.com").Wait();
                }

            }

            // before exit, flush the remaining data
            telemetryClient.Flush();

            // flush is not blocking when not using InMemoryChannel so wait a bit. There is an active issue regarding the need for `Sleep`/`Delay`
            // which is tracked here: https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInsights-dotnet/issues/407
            Task.Delay(5000).Wait();

        }

        static DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule InitializeDependencyTracking(TelemetryConfiguration configuration)
        {
            var module = new DependencyTrackingTelemetryModule();

            // prevent Correlation Id to be sent to certain endpoints. You may add other domains as needed.
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("core.windows.net");
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("core.chinacloudapi.cn");
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("core.cloudapi.de");
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("core.usgovcloudapi.net");
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("localhost");
            module.ExcludeComponentCorrelationHttpHeadersOnDomains.Add("127.0.0.1");

            // enable known dependency tracking, note that in future versions, we will extend this list. 
            // please check default settings in https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInsights-dotnet-server/blob/develop/WEB/Src/DependencyCollector/DependencyCollector/ApplicationInsights.config.install.xdt

            module.IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities.Add("Microsoft.Azure.ServiceBus");
            module.IncludeDiagnosticSourceActivities.Add("Microsoft.Azure.EventHubs");

            // initialize the module
            module.Initialize(configuration);

            return module;
        }
    }
}

Next steps

  • Monitor dependencies to see if REST, SQL, or other external resources are slowing you down.
  • Use the API to send your own events and metrics for a more detailed view of your app's performance and usage.