Well, since it was decided in the devcall to implement this, it is ok for me if you go ahead. Regarding the choice of the tracking technology, I trust your skills. The code that is needed to track a dialog seems to be very simple in any case.

I am just not sure if an opt-out is the way to go, or if it should rather be an opt-in. Maybe we could display a dialog asking for consent on first startup. That would be more privacy-friendly in my point of view and we do not want JabRef to appear that it tries to grab user data. I am sure there would be enough people who are willing to contribute their data even in case of opt-in.

👍 for opt-in

Nice that you give it a try 😄 👍 GA had no appropriate library?

Why do you want to spy almost everything I do?

@grimes2 My guess (I haven't participated in the discussion on this) is that this would enable us to see which features are actually used and which are not. If we had had data on content selector usage, we would not have removed them. At the same time, we would be able to see if there is a point at all in optimizing JabRef usage for really large databases or if this is a waste of time.

I added tracking of other dialogs and changed the default to "do not share telemetry data". Also, after the first minute of using JabRef, the user is asked whether he wants to share is data. I actually preferred to have a more non-invasive notification similar to

JavaFX provides a NotificationPanel exactly for this scenario, however, it doesn't work if the rest of the application is in swing.

Anyway, this PR is now finally ready for your feedback!

For later reference (I will add this links also to the wiki):

• Walk-through of how to use Azure Application Insights in Java
• Azure Application Insight github project

I tried it out locally, the dialog appears as desired, and the option can be disabled via the preferences. Code-wise, I have no objections. However, JabRef does not terminate when I close it and I get the a lot of messages in the console, e.g.:

AI: TRACE 31-03-2017 13:39, 28: Telemetry Configuration: illegal instrumentation key: null
AI: TRACE 31-03-2017 13:39, 28: InProcessTelemetryChannel sending telemetry
AI: ERROR 31-03-2017 13:39, 44: Failed to send, Bad request  : {"itemsReceived":1,"itemsAccepted":0,"errors":[{"index":0,"statusCode":400,"message":"Invalid instrumentation key"}]}
AI: TRACE 31-03-2017 13:39, 28: Telemetry Configuration: illegal instrumentation key: null
AI: TRACE 31-03-2017 13:39, 28: InProcessTelemetryChannel sending telemetry
AI: ERROR 31-03-2017 13:39, 46: Failed to send, Bad request  : {"itemsReceived":1,"itemsAccepted":0,"errors":[{"index":0,"statusCode":400,"message":"Invalid instrumentation key"}]}

Since this is a very sensitive topic, I think we should make the dialog a little more explanatory. Currently it says

To improve the user experience, we would like to collect data on the features you use. No personal data will be collected.

While everything is in that statement, I think we should be more explicit and repeat ourselves. Suggestion:

To improve the user experience, we would like to collect anonymous statistics on the features you use. We will only record what features you access and how often you do it. We will neither collect any personal data nor the content of bibliographic items. The collected data will be stored on XXX and we will only use it to prioritize our development efforts. If you choose to allow data collection, you can later disable it via Options -> Preferences -> General

I know this is quite long, but since this is a delicate topic, I think it is necessary. Btw.: where is the data actually stored?

@JabRef/developers I think this is so important that everyone should consider it briefly.

And a last comment: We will get flack from the Linux freaks when they find out that we dare to include a microsoft library. So be prepared for it ;-)

I like your suggestion for the dialog text and updated it accordingly. The data is store on Microsoft Azure server...no idea where exactly 😄 .

The reason for the error message is that a correct instrumentation key is only inserted by travis and thus you get these messages when you run JabRef from the IDE.

By the way, this is what I just got after installing soapUI:

Of course, they have a much more explicit privacy policy page for that.