Log Flow

Important

Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

Log Flow will show you what's being received by the backend in real time. The main use cases for log flow are:

  • Check if the SDK is properly integrated and if our backend is receiving data. Similar to when you do a microphone check: "Is this on?".
  • Ensure that the backend is receiving what the app is supposed to send.

General information

Log Flow will collect and display incoming data from the current day (in the UTC timezone). The data should appear within a few seconds after it's sent by the device with the Log Flow page open. It will automatically refresh every 3 seconds, and will load up to 100 data points. If more than 100 data points were generated by the application between 2 refreshes, the UI will indicate the "break" with an icon.

To populate the log flow page, you'll need to:

  1. Open the Log Flow page and wait a few seconds
  2. Start sending logs from your device

No previous logs will show unless this workflow above was done earlier in the same day (in the UTC timezone). Also, this process will need to be done again after 10 minutes of the page not being in focus.

Log flow will show you the following information:

  • Start of sessions
  • The fact that a crash occurred
  • Events, including the event name and its properties

All data includes a subset of the installation ID, which uniquely identifies devices and the time in local timezone where the log was emitted in the application.

"Is this on?"

The main use case of Log Flow is to check that the SDK was properly integrated. Open the page, send some logs, and verify whether your one-line integration worked after the first run. You should expect to see a STARTSESSION log with the session ID, every time the app is started.

Checking the data received

The other use case is to check that the App Center backend receives exactly what you send, such as event and event properties names and format.