Introducing the Windows Desktop Program for Desktop Application Analytics

Introducing the Windows Desktop Program for Desktop Application Analytics

An important feature for desktop application developers is the ability to view detailed analytics about application performance and its popularity with users. Until today, developers had difficulty accessing these analytics without cobbling together multiple tools. With the new Windows Desktop Program, developers now have a convenient, one-stop portal to view their desktop application analytics or access the data via an API. Statistics and charts quickly show how the applications are doing– from how many customers they’ve reached to detailed performance data on crashes and failures. With these analytics, developers can better track and prioritize fixes, monitor the distribution of their application, prepare and improve the overall experience for their customers.

There’s no charge to access this data—all you need to do is sign up with a Microsoft account to identify yourself, then upload a signed file using the same trusted, valid certificate your company uses to sign your applications.

Once you sign up for the Windows Desktop Application Program and register your certificates, you’ll be able to use the analytics reports to:

• View a summary of all failure types, sorted by number of hits
• Drill down into each failure and download stack traces and CAB files to debug the issue faster
• Compare the health status and adoption of a newly released version of your application to previous releases
• View health data in aggregate or by region, allowing you to isolate issues that are specific to a region
• Compare performance and adoption of your desktop applications across Windows versions, such as the latest Windows 10 or Windows Insider releases.

To view analytics for your applications:

1. Sign up for the Windows Desktop Application Program. If you already have a Windows Dev Center account, you can opt in to this program on the Programs page in Account settings. Otherwise, you can sign up here.

1. Follow the steps to download an unsigned file, sign it with the same code-signing certificate your company uses to sign your desktop applications, and upload the newly signed file back through the portal.
2. That’s it! We will take the signed file you just uploaded and map it to the telemetry we collect on all applications with the same certificate to show you your analytics data. To learn more, check out our documentation here.

To learn more about the Windows Desktop Application Program, check out this video from our Windows Developer series.

Source: Introducing the Windows Desktop Program for Desktop Application Analytics