Application Analytics Services Help Developers, Marketers

HockeyApp (generally available) and Application Insights (in preview) are Microsoft-hosted services that monitor, analyze, and track deployed applications for development and maintenance purposes. HockeyApp can also be used to deploy applications to user groups for pre-release testing. The two services target different application types, although they have overlapping functionality. Support for mobile and other client application types is being transitioned from Application Insights to HockeyApp, which could disrupt certain customer scenarios. Mobile Engagement is a third Microsoft-hosted service for analyzing deployed applications, but it targets personnel aiming to understand usage trends and promote published offerings, who could be outside of a development team.

HockeyApp Distributes, Monitors Mobile Apps

HockeyApp was originally developed by a Germany-based company that Microsoft acquired in late 2014. The service allows developers to distribute pre-release versions of Android, iOS, OS X, Universal Windows Platform, Windows Store, and Windows Phone applications and track usage metrics and crash occurrences for pre-release and production applications. Developers can enable applications to accept user feedback that is sent to the HockeyApp service. The service can help organizations execute staged test rollouts of internal and public-facing applications. For example, multiple versions, such as alpha and beta builds, can be deployed simultaneously to different test groups.