Visual Studio App Center

Send your event data from RudderStack to Visual Studio App Center.

App Center is Microsoft’s cross-platform build automation and management platform that lets you seamlessly manage your app’s lifecycle. With App Center, you can easily manage and automate your builds, effectively test your apps in the cloud, and monitor their real-time usage with the help of crash data and analytics.

RudderStack lets you send your event data to App Center via its native web SDKs.

Getting started

Before configuring your source and destination in RudderStack, check whether the platform you are sending the events from is supported by App Center. Refer the following table to do so:

Connection ModeWebMobileServer
Device mode-Supported-
Cloud mode---
info
To learn more about the difference between cloud mode and device mode in RudderStack, refer to the RudderStack Connection Modes guide.

Once you have confirmed that the platform supports sending events to App Center, perform the steps below:

  • From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source and select App Center from the list of destinations.
  • Name your destination, and click Next. You should be able to see the following screen:
Connection settings for App Center destination
  • Enter the relevant details and click Next to complete the setup. The API Secret Key can be found as App Secret on the Getting Started page or Settings page on the App Center portal.

Adding device mode integration

Once you add App Center as a destination in the RudderStack dashboard, follow these steps to add it to your mobile project depending on your integration platform:

Track

A track call lets you track custom events as they occur in your web application.

A sample track call looks like the following:

[[RSClient sharedInstance] track:@"Product Clicked" properties:@{
    @"product_id" : @"pr01",
    @"name" : @"Cadbury"
}];
info
The above track call is directly passed on to App Center via its trackEvent api in both the RudderStack Android & iOS SDKs.

The eventProperties object should only contain the values of type String and Number- the other property types will be simply ignored, if sent.

For example, if eventProperties is set as:

{
  "colours": [
    "red",
    "black"
  ],
  "city": "New Orleans",
  "state": "Louisiana"
}

then RudderStack will send the data to App Center as:

{
  "city": "New Orleans",
  "state": "Louisiana"
}

Screen

The screen method allows you to record whenever a user sees the mobile screen, along with any associated optional properties. This call is similar to the page call, but is exclusive to your mobile device.

A sample screen call using the RudderStack Android SDK looks like the following code snippet:

[[RSClient sharedInstance] screen:@"Home" properties:@{
    @"category" : @"launcher"
}];

In the above snippet, RudderStack captures the information related to the screen being viewed, such as screen’s name and category.

info
The above screen call is directly passed on to App Center as a track event via its trackEvent API, with event name as Viewed {screen name} screen along with the its properties. The above example will be sent as a track event with name Viewed MainActivity screen along with its properties.

Opting in/out of sending user data to App Center

Any users visting your app can express their consent over sending data to App Center. Based on this consent you can either opt in or out of sending that user’s data to App Center.

Refer to the section below for more details on how to use this feature.

FAQ

How do I get the App Center API secret?

The API Secret Key can be found as App Secret on the Getting Started page or Settings page on your App Center portal.

What is transmission interval?

The App Center SDK uploads logs in a batch of 50. If the SDK doesn’t have 50 logs to send, it will still send logs after 3 seconds (set by default). There can be a maximum of 3 batches sent in parallel. In this case, this interval of 3 seconds is the transmission interval. Note that the value of this transmission interval must always be between 3 seconds and 86400 seconds (one day).


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