Sessions in Azure Application Insights
I spent several hours reading various articles about Azure Application Insights (AAI). I'm trying to figure out how AAI defines what a session is and where I can find the number of unique sessions (first time visitors) and returning visitors. In fact, I know where to find the number of unique sessions, but I cannot see where I can find the number of returning visitors.
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Application Insights defines a session as the time period between the first and last telemetry item with the same session ID. Session IDs are generated by different variations of Application Insights tooling code running in applications. For example, in web applications, this is done using JavaScript running in the browser and automatically tracking page views.
Specifically, the JavaScript code generates a new session ID when the browser loads the page for the first time. This session ID is reused until all telemetry objects (page views, events, etc.) have been tracked by the application for 30 minutes. If telemetry is not monitored after 30 minutes, it is assumed that the user has stopped interacting with the application and the session will expire. When telemetry tracking resumes after a timeout, a new session ID will be generated to indicate the start of a new user session.
To analyze the number of returning users, you can schedule "Users (unique)" and "New users (unique)" as described here .
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We've expanded our documentation here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-insights-web-track-usage/#sessions to cover this. Please let us know if additional information is asked
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