APM Tips
Editorial policy
How we choose what to write, how we check it, what the dates on each page mean, and how to get a mistake fixed.
How topics are chosen
We write about the questions people running monitoring in production actually ask: why data is missing, how to turn something off, what a setting really does, how much a configuration will cost. Topics come from recurring troubleshooting questions in public forums and issue trackers, from product changes that alter the right answer, and from our own work. We prefer one page that fully answers one question over a long page that touches many.
How facts are checked
- Primary sources first. Claims about how Azure Monitor and Application Insights behave are checked against Microsoft Learn, and against Microsoft's own SDK repositories where Learn is silent. Claims about OpenTelemetry are checked against the OpenTelemetry documentation and specification.
- Dates and versions are stated, not implied. Retirement dates, package names and version boundaries are quoted from the source that announces them.
- Code is written for the version named next to it. When the classic SDK and the OpenTelemetry distros differ, the guide shows both and says which is which.
- Queries are checked against the documented schema and written to stay correct under sampling.
Sources and the day they were checked
Every guide and every query ends with a list of its sources. Each source shows the day an editor last opened it and confirmed that it still says what the page relies on. When a source changes in a way that affects a page, the page is updated and the date moves.
What "Updated" means
The "Updated" date at the top of a page is the last day its content changed in a way a reader would notice: a corrected fact, a new section, revised code. Re-confirming a source without changing the page moves that source's "checked" date, not the page's "Updated" date. Fixing a typo does not move it either.
Corrections
If something on the site is wrong or out of date, email contact@apmtips.com with the page address and what you believe is correct, ideally with a link to a source. We check every report. Substantive corrections are made on the page and move its "Updated" date.
Independence and money
The site is written by the APM Tips editorial team. At this time there are no sponsorships, no affiliate links and no advertising. If that ever changes, this page will say so before any such content appears, and sponsored or affiliate content will be labelled where it appears.