What's the difference between AccountId, AuthenticatedUserId and Id of the UserContext class?

Question

The UserContext class provides 3 properties to identify the user. They are: AccountId, AuthenticatedUserId and Id.

What's the difference between them?

Answer 1

At least from a docs perspective, this is what they mean:

• UserId: The ID should be a Guid or another string complex enough to identify each user uniquely. For example, it could be a long random number. User IDs should persist across user sessions to track how users behave over time. There are various approaches for persisting the ID.

• AuthenticatedUserId: In a web app, users are (by default) identified by cookies. A user might be counted more than once if they access your app from a different machine or browser, or if they delete cookies. You can thus get a more accurate count by setting the authenticated user ID in the browser code.

  Note: The user ID is also set in a session cookie and sent to the server. If the server SDK is installed, the authenticated user ID is sent as part of the context properties of both client and server telemetry. You can then filter and search on it.

• AccountId: In multi-tenant applications this is the account ID or name, which the user is acting with. Examples may be subscription ID for Azure portal or blog name for a blogging platform.

References:

• Send user context IDs to enable usage experiences in Azure Application Insights
• Telemetry context: Application Insights data model
• There's an open issue on GitHub that requested more clarity for the AccountId property: https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInsights-Home/issues/424

Hope this helps.