bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/telemetry/choose-telemetry-scope-by-audience.md

bc-version	domain	keywords	technologies	countries	application-area
17..	telemetry	telemetryscope extensionpublisher all audience logmessage application-insights	al	w1	all

Choose TelemetryScope by who must receive the signal

Description

TelemetryScope::ExtensionPublisher sends a custom trace only to the Application Insights resource configured by the extension publisher. TelemetryScope::All also sends it to the environment's telemetry, where the customer or partner operating the tenant can query it. The compiler accepts either value, so a plausible-looking scope can silently hide an actionable signal from tenant operators or expose publisher-only implementation noise to them.

Best Practice

Use ExtensionPublisher for internal diagnostics that only the app publisher can interpret, such as cache behavior or private algorithm state. Use All for signals the tenant operator can act on, such as an integration failure, quota warning, or setup problem. Decide the audience independently from DataClassification; privacy guidance still governs whether the payload may be emitted at all.

See sample: choose-telemetry-scope-by-audience.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Defaulting every call to All, including low-level implementation diagnostics, or defaulting every call to ExtensionPublisher and thereby hiding customer-actionable failures from environment telemetry. Review only when the message and surrounding branch make the intended audience clear; an ambiguous diagnostic is not enough to infer the wrong scope.

See sample: choose-telemetry-scope-by-audience.bad.al.