Enable Office Diagnostic Data to unlock the power of Microsoft 365 Apps health.

[Guest Eric_Wayne]

In the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center you can monitor your Microsoft 365 Apps health as well as leverage update validation during your monthly patching rollout. Both of these powerful tools are available in the Apps Admin Center. The prerequisite for seeing this data is enabling Office Diagnostic Data (ODD) to allow us to collect your usage and patching signals and then return them to you in a way that allows you to really see what is happening in your environment from an Apps health perspective. Additionally, sending diagnostic data to Microsoft allows us to better track the quality of the builds we release, identify potential issues faster and deliver a better product to you.

 

 

 

What is Office Diagnostic Data?

 

Office Diagnostic Data (ODD) is a set of diagnostic signals that are collected by the Microsoft 365 Apps on your device and include details of how the M365 Apps are functioning, including signals related to App reliability, App performance, and versioning information, among other things. Microsoft can use this data to keep our applications updated, safe, and working well. Microsoft gives customers control over what type of ODD is sent to Microsoft, including the ability to turn it off almost completely.

 

 

 

How can I tell if I am sending Office Diagnostics Data to Microsoft

 

To ensure your devices in your tenant are sending diagnostic data you can check the tracker in the Apps Health section of the Apps admin center. Under the Overview page, in the Insights section, click on “See details” to show the flyout of how many devices are sending data. If you are not seeing the number of devices sending data you think you should, check to make sure you are configured to send data, your network is not blocking the traffic and that your devices are in support.

 

 

 

Picture of the Microsoft 365 Apps health page in the Apps admin center showing number of devices configured to send optional diagnostic data.

 

 

 

 

 

Why: Value of enabling ODD

 

We encourage customers to enable Office Diagnostic Data (ODD) to provide visibility into the health of their M365 Apps. With ODD enabled, both Microsoft and the customer's tenant admins can proactively address issues that may impact the user experience. When Microsoft engineering receives detailed diagnostic signals from your devices, we are able to monitor for major issues and can take steps to mitigate reliability and performance problems—and even alert you to actions that you may need to take to resolve issues.

 

If ODD is disabled (set to the lowest level of "Neither"), Microsoft engineering has no visibility into your user’s experiences, and your tenant's issues will not be considered when prioritizing bug fixes.

 

 

 

For customers, Microsoft has created a separate admin portal called the Apps Admin Center (config.office.com). If a tenant has ODD enabled, the admin can access M365 App health data and act on recommendations from Microsoft (through Config.office.com). Additionally, if Microsoft identifies an issue that is not within our control to resolve, we will often reach out to advise the customer on how to fix the problem.

 

 

 

To summarize, by sending ODD to Microsoft, you can benefit from the following:

 

• Access health dashboards in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center that show you the relevant app health data.
  
• Influence the development and prioritization of new features and bug fixes.
  
• Benefit from the latest security updates and patches that are intended to improve your user experience.
  
• When relevant, receive proactive guidance and recommendations from Microsoft on how to improve the performance and reliability of your Microsoft 365 Apps.
  
• Experience proactive resolution of issues and bugs.
  

 

We have customers from all over the world and from various industries, including government and security, who have enabled ODD (Office Diagnostics Data). This allows us to collaborate more effectively and keep a proactive eye on their health and experience. Enabling ODD can help us partner better and improve our customers' experiences.

 

 

 

What is collected?

 

The level of diagnostics data you choose determines what type of data is collected by ODD. To enable us to process your app health trends and provide proactive support, we recommend that you set ODD to at least the Required level. This level collects the minimum amount of data needed to identify and fix issues. If you set ODD to Neither, you are essentially disabling it and preventing Microsoft from proactively improving your user experience. This means that you will be left alone in dealing with your tenant issues and user escalations reactively, without any proactive help from Microsoft engineering . Please refer to the following table for more information on the different levels of ODD.

 

 

 

Level	Description
Required	The minimum data necessary to help keep Office secure, up-to-date, and performing as expected on the device it’s installed on. Includes version of Office and information about crashes.
Optional	Required + Additional data that helps us make product improvements and provides enhanced information to help us detect, diagnose, and remediate issues. Includes performance info such as how long it takes to save a document.
Neither	No diagnostic data about Office client software running on the user’s device is collected and sent to us. This option, however, significantly limits our ability to detect, diagnose, and remediate problems your users may encounter using Office.

 

 

 

How to enable ODD?

 

There are a number of ways to configure Office Diagnostic Data on your devices, the method you use will depend on how you manage your devices. The following are the primary methods used by most customers.

 

 

 

 

 

Cloud Policy:

 

 

 

Use the “configure the level of client software diagnostics data sent by office to Microsoft” in the apps admin center(config.office.com)

 

Levels:

 

• Optional
  

• Required*
  

• Neither
  

 

If policy is not configured, optional diagnostic data is sent to Microsoft.

 

*Minimum recommended

 

 

 

Picture of Microsoft 365 Apps Cloud Policy page showing policy to configure the level of client software diagnostic data sent by Office to Microsoft.

 

Use policy settings to manage privacy controls for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise - Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn

 

 

 

Control Setting via GPO (for Windows)

 

Configure the level of client software diagnostic data sent by Office to Microsoft (admx.help)

 

 

 

Control privacy settings by editing the registry.

 

 Use the following information to configure privacy settings directly in the registry

 

Picture of the description of the policy setting for configuring the level of client software diagnostic data sent by Office to Microsoft.

 

 

 

 

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\common\clienttelemetry] "sendtelemetry"=dword:00000002

 

 

 

How to view the Data sent to Microsoft

 

 

 

Use Diagnostic Data Viewer

 

• Go to Start, select Settings>Office data settings
  
• Enable toggle for Office diagnostic data viewing on
  

 

Picture of the Office data settings data viewer toggle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture of the Diagnostic data viewer data events

 

 

 

 

 

Diagnostic Data Viewer Overview (Windows 10 and Windows 11) - Windows Privacy | Microsoft Learn

 

 

 

How can an admin monitor M365 Apps health?

 

Microsoft 365 Apps health takes the diagnostic data you send to Microsoft and gives it right back to you in an easy to read and understand section within the M365 Apps admin center. Apps health tracks things like load time, crash rates and file open time to give you a holistic view of the health of the devices in your organization.

 

 

 

You can drill into each individual application, focus on a specific servicing channel or monitor the health of your add-ins all from Apps health inside the Apps admin center.

 

Picture of Microsoft 365 Apps health application metrics page

 

 

 

Picture of Microsoft 365 Apps health Add-in overview page

 

 

 

 

 

Privacy:

 

 

 

What is included in Office Diagnostic Data? 

 

Depending on the level of control you have set up, the information that will be sent to Microsoft will be different.  For Microsoft to help you keeping your tenant healthy proactively, we it is sufficient enabling ODD at the “Required” level. For a full list of Office Diagnostic data sent to Microsoft when “Required” level is set up, please refer to: Required diagnostic data for Office - Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn 

 

 

 

How does Microsoft keep our data private?

 

Microsoft is the industry leader in protecting customer data and will only use your data to provide the services that you have purchased from Microsoft. Read more about how we protect & manage your data here.

 

 

 

How long diagnostic data stored?

 

For commercial customers, our typical engineering practice is to retain diagnostic data from Microsoft 365 Apps for up to 18 months. If an enterprise subscription expires or is terminated, Microsoft holds for 90 days and then deletes data within the next 90 days, as outlined in the DPA. 

 

 

 

Is user data collected?

 

With Office Diagnostic data no user content or personal information (such as usernames or email addresses) is collected. Data that we received is pseudonymized. Diagnostic data also does not include any file content or information about apps unrelated to Office.

 

 

 

Where is data stored?

 

Office Diagnostics Data for EU customers is now stored within the EU, aligning with our commitment to regional data residency. The rest of the data continues to be securely stored in the United States, ensuring comprehensive data management and privacy.

 

 

 

Network

 

Office Diagnostics Data is transmitted to Microsoft through Office 365 endpoints, utilizing the devices’ network. This process typically involves a low volume of data, which is unlikely to impact network performance. Additionally, the data is secured both during transit and while stored, ensuring its confidentiality and integrity.

 

 

 

What is the impact in my Network?

 

 

The bandwidth consumed by Office Diagnostic Data varies as it depends on user interaction with Office Apps. While “Required” events typically upload once per session, user-driven events differ. To estimate data upload, enable diagnostics on a few devices and monitor connections to diagnostic endpoints via your firewall. For individual device data, use the Diagnostic Data Viewer on a ‘typical’ user’s device.

 

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