Office 365 – Office Telemetry – Part 1

Hi All,

In this article, we will discuss basics about Office Telemetry.

What is Office Telemetry?

1. Office Telemetry is new compatibility-monitoring framework that works almost all version of office till Office 2003.
2. Office Telemetry is new built in from Office 2013.
3. Office Telemetry can be used to assess compatibility issues.
4. Office Telemetry replaces previous following Office 2010 compatibility tools
   • Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM)
   • Office Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI)
   • Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT)
5. Office Telemetry helps to speed up Office deployments and reduces the risk of Office upgrade
6. Office Telemetry also works with Office 365 ProPlus and included with the applications

How Office Telemetry works from Office 2013?

1. When an Office document is loaded, used, closed or if an error occurs in Office application the application adds an entry regarding event to a local data store.
2. Each entry includes problem description and link to “more information”.
3. Inventory and usage data is also tracked.

Office 365 is new built in Office 2013, so how it works in previous versions of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010:

1. For previous version clients we need to install an Office Telemetry agent on each computer running the previous version office.
2. Office Telemetry agents collect the details about installed add-ins and most recently used documents
3. For these clients we didn’t get application event data
4. We can collect inventory and usage data

Data that the telemetry agents collects in Office: Office Telemetry agent collects different information for different applications.

1. The file names of Office files that are in most recently used list
2. The names of add-ins and solutions which interacts with Office
3. System Information – User Name, Computer Name

For recently opened documents and templates following data is collected

1. File Name
2. File Format
3. Total Users
4. Number of Office
5. User Name
6. Computer Name
7. Location
8. Size in KB
9. Author
10. Last Loaded
11. Title
12. Office Version

Few Exceptions:

1. For OneNote, Office Telemetry agent only collects Notebook name and Location.
2. Files which are in SharePoint or in Network Share, only file name and locations are collected
3. For Otulook, inventory of documents is not get collected
4. If the list of most recently used documents is disabled on users computer then Office Telemetry agent doesn’t collect inventory data for documents and templates

For Office 2013 and 2016 Telemetry agents also collects following data for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook:

1. Sessions
2. Compatibility issue or crash
3. Date and Time that the critical or informative event happened
4. Users
5. More Info

Office Telemetry Tools: We can view Telemetry data by using two tools

1. Telemetry Dashboard
2. Telemetry Log

Office Telemetry Components:

1. Telemetry Logging
2. Telemetry agent
3. Group Policy Settings
4. Shared Folder
5. Telemetry Processor
6. Telemetry database

In next part we will discuss in more details.

References:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/jj863580.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt599629(v=office.16).aspx

Keep reading, share your thoughts, experiences. Feel free to contact us to discuss more. If you have any suggestion / feedback / doubt, you are most welcome.

Stay tuned on Knowledge-Junction, will come up with more such articles.

Thanks for reading 😊