The primary benefit of telemetry is the ability of an end user to monitor the state of an object or environment while physically far removed from it. Once you’ve shipped a product, you can’t be physically present, peering over the shoulders of thousands (or millions) of users as they engage with your product to find out what works, what’s easy, and what’s cumbersome. Thanks to telemetry, those insights can be delivered directly into a dashboard for you to analyze and act on.

Because telemetry provides insights into how well your product is working for your end users – as they use it – it’s an incredibly valuable tool for ongoing performance monitoring and management. Plus, you can use the data you’ve gathered from version 1.0 to drive improvements and prioritize updates for your release of version 2.0.

Telemetry enables you to answer questions such as:

Are your customers using the features you expect? How are they engaging with your product?

How frequently are users engaging with your app, and for what duration?

What settings options to users select most? Do they prefer certain display types, input modalities, screen orientation, or other device configurations?

What happens when crashes occur? Are crashes happening more frequently when certain features or functions are used? What’s the context surrounding a crash?

Obviously, the answers to these and the many other questions that can be answered with telemetry are invaluable to the development process, enabling you to make continuous improvements and introduce new features that, to your end users, may seem as though you’ve been reading their minds – which you have been, thanks to telemetry.