An area that is hard for IT admins to get feedback is how Office is doing in their environment. Unless users call in for support, there is not much more information easily available. A less known Office feature is available for free as part of the Office suite. The Office Telemetry Dashboard can help assess all kind of compatibility issues that could happen as part of a major upgrade and help to identify the potential risk ahead of an upgrade.

The Office Telemetry dashboard was first introduced with Office 2013. It was released to replace the previous solution Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM).

The Office telemetry could be used in the following scenarios :

  • Planning a major upgrade to Office 2016 from older versions
  • Monitor your Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)  installations as they received newer major build ahead of the Semi-annual Channel

[x_alert heading=”Office 365 updates/upgrade” type=”info”]

If you are looking for how to manage Update for Office 365 you can see our previous posts and report in the following links :

[/x_alert]

In this post, we will describe how to plan, install and use Office Telemetry dashboard for Office 2016.

Planning topology and hardware for Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Before going into installation and configuration details, the data flow must be understood and the planning of the topology of the Telemetry servers defined.

Office Telemetry consist of the followings 5 components :

  • A simple network shared folder
  • Telemetry Processor
  • Telemetry database
  • Telemetry Dashboard
  • Telemetry Agent

The first 4 components are considered Server-side, while the Telemetry Agent is the client-side

Here’s the data flow process of Office Telemetry

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Now that the data flow is known, planning of the topology of the server side is important to prevent impact on the network as well on the Office Telemetry server.

Key points for topology design:

  • A Telemetry Dashboard can support up to 100 000 clients
  • A Telemetry Processor can support up to 50 000 clients
  • Client send approximately 64Kb of data to the network share
  • Client sends data every 8 hours by default.

This screen from TechNet gives a good overview of what a topology can look like.

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Most scenarios will simply require a single server that can host both the Telemetry Processor and the database.

If you have already an SQL server, it can be used for the Telemetry Database.

[x_alert heading=”Note” type=”info”]

The user that will run the installation wizard will need SysAdmin rights to the remote SQL server.

[/x_alert]

As for the performance needed, the following tables describes it best:

For Telemetry Database

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

For Telemetry Processor

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Please review Microsoft Technet page for sizing, data flow or how Telemetry data is collected.

Prerequisites for Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Client side :

  • Windows 7 SP1 and up
  • Windows Server 2008 and up
  • Office MSI or Click-to-run 2013 or 2016

[x_alert heading=”Note” type=”info”]For Office 2003 to 2010, it is possible to monitor them, but an agent will be required on those computers.[/x_alert]

Server side:

  • Operating system
    • For Telemetry Processor(server)
      • Windows server 2008/R2, 2012/R2
  • SQL server for Telemetry Processor
    • SQL Server 2005
    • SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
    • SQL Server 2008
    • SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
    • SQL Server 2008 R2
    • SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition
    • SQL Server 2012
    • SQL Server 2012 Express
  • Office 2013 or 2016 (Click-to-run or MSI) must be installed on the Telemetry Processor(server)
    • Default installation will do just fine

Other:

  • Office 2013 ADMX must be available
    • click here to download
  • Office 2016 ADMX must be available
    • click here to download

See detailed prerequisites on TechNet page

Configure Telemetry Processor and Share

Once we get the prerequisites done, we can begin the configuration of the first component, which is the Telemetry Processor along with the required network share

  • Create a new folder and share
    • Permission: No need to specify permission, as the setup will take care of it.

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • On the server, start Telemetry Dashboard for Office 2016, from the start menu

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Click on Let’s Get Started

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Under 2. Install Telemetry Processor, select Install Telemetry Processor on this computer

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Check Run the Office Telemetry Processor settings wizard now

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Click Next

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Click Next

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Specify the SQL server and click Connect 

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Enter the desired database Name, click Create

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Select Yes to configure permissions and the database role

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Enter the Shared folder  path created before

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Select Yes to set the permissions automatically

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Select if you want to participate in Microsoft Custom Experience improvement or not

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Click Finish

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

More details can be found on TechNet

Configure Telemetry Database

  • In the Telemetry Dashboard, select Connect to Database

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Provide the SQL server and database names

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Once connected, the dashboard will display, but will be empty at this point.
  • Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

[x_alert heading=”From TechNet” type=”info”]

To grant other administrators permission to access the telemetry database

  • You can download and use the Telemetry Dashboard Administration Tool (Tdadm) on the computer that is running SQL Server to allow other administrators to view data in Telemetry Dashboard. You don’t have to run this for your own account if you created a database when you installed the telemetry processor. Update the values for dbserver, dbname, and domain\user as needed.

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

Run the following on an elevated command line :

  • tdadm.exe -o permission -databaseserver dbserver -databasename dbname -add domain\user
Telemetry dashboard Office 2016
Wiki for Telemetry Dashboard Administration Tool[/x_alert]

Enable Telemetry on Office 2016 clients

Once the server side is configured, it’s time to enable and direct the Telemetry toward our Telemetry Processors. We need to configure a GPO for Office 2013 or Office 2016 in order to do so.

[x_alert heading=”Note” type=”info”]For older versions of Office (2003, 2007or 2010), an agent must be deployed on Windows client to use the Telemetry.

See the following post for instruction to deploy the agent with SCCM[/x_alert]

  • Edit a GPO and browse to User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Microsoft Office 2016/Telemetry Dashboard

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Edit Specify the UNC path to store Office Telemetry data
    • Provide the path to the share created earlier

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Edit Turn on telemetry data collection
    • Set to Enabled

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • Edit Turn on data uploading for Office Telemetry Agent
    • Set to Enabled

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • This should look like this.

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

  • After a couple hours, the number of Computer under the tab Telemetry Processor will go up

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

[x_alert heading=”For testing only” type=”info”]It is possible to enable the Telemetry for Office 2013 and 2016, by using registry keys. This should only be used for testing.

For details, see section Use the registry to enable and configure the Office telemetry agent [/x_alert]

Previous versions of Office require an agent to be deployed in order to use the Telemetry. Check out the section Telemetry Agent  for more details.

Results

Telemetry dashboard Office 2016

There are great videos and very detailed ways to used the Telemetry dashboard on TechNet site

Comments (13)

casino corona

04.17.2019 AT 11:26 PM
Unfortunately, some internet casinos do not accept players throlugh the USA and several countries in Eastern Europe. There aree quite a chuckle games to play in casinos, but probably tthe most noticeable are slots and roulette. Thdre are a number of causes of you to definitely consider the use of moving in for a free online casino, if your fact who's is free just isn't good enough.

Jared Wetmore

10.16.2018 AT 02:29 PM
trying to Connect to a dB where the telemetry data is , and I keep getting an error " Telemetry Dashboard couldnt create worksheets".. Is this because I dont have access to the DB ? thanks in advance.

eisha

06.22.2018 AT 03:32 PM
hi, I am not able to see the "Microsoft office 2016 " option in the administrative templates, please help.

Jonathan Lefebvre

06.26.2018 AT 09:20 AM
Hy Eisha, you need to download them from Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030 thanks Jonathan

Bob

02.28.2018 AT 11:46 AM
Hi John, Thanks for sharing this article. I'm going through the documentation, and there is no clear information about the ADMx files and what should you deploy. I think this question ties to the one earlier, where you say that for each version of office that you have deployed on your environment you need to deploy the corresponding ADMX for that version, in this case 2013 and 2016. And what about office 2010? I have just reviewed the ADMX file and I cannot find the settings in there to setup telemetry. Is it tied to the version of the Telemetry agent instead, so if you deploy the Telemetry agent from Office 2016 into 2010 Office client you will need to use the ADMX file for Office 2016? Thanks for you time

Jonathan Lefebvre

02.28.2018 AT 12:08 PM
Hi Bob, There is no GPO for OFfice 2010. This is only possible to do for Office 2013 and 2016, as the telemetry is built-in. For earlier version of Office, you need to deploy an agent. You can find details here : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219431(v=office.16).aspx thanks Jonathan

Bob

03.01.2018 AT 05:01 AM
Thanks Jonathan for the reply. That is what actually is confusing me, you need to deploy the agent for old office clients, but don't you need to configure them to point to the Telemetry/Share machine like you need to do with 2013/2016? How do you actually configure the clients that you deploy for 2007/2010? Sorry about this, probably I'm missing something easy here...

John

02.07.2018 AT 12:01 PM
Great article. So if you have a mixed environment of Office 2013 and 2016, should use use the 2013 or 2016 admin template? Cheers

Jonathan Lefebvre

02.07.2018 AT 12:04 PM
Hi John, Exactly! the ADMx are per version... so yes, 2013 is needed if you have some. thanks Jonathan