Add way to send telemetry

Telemetry often gets a bad name. But I think there is quite some value in having app devs be able to gather information about how their apps are used. Or for Nextcloud in general. Often feature adoption in Nextcloud is measured in questionable ways. For example if you send our surveys you are more likely to only reach a specific audience etc.

My use case is simple. If you maintain an app you might think feature X is never used lets kill it. But if you actual had some data to back this up you could make a more informed decision.

All of this should of course be somewhat transparent. And allow control to still be at the user.

What I imagine is a service in Nextcloud where apps can register their telemetry handler. The Nextcloud server will then with a cron job send telemetry to all the destinations every X day(s).

What I imagine as a MVP

• Telemetry setting in the admin panel
• possibility to completely disable telemetry (config.php?)
• In the admin settings the ability to inspect the last X reports send
• When an app registers themselves to send telemetry a notification is dispatched so that an admin can approve or decline that app from sending telemetry
• Of course if the nextcloud server itself wants to send telemetry it should also properly ask permission ;)

The interface could be quite stupid and just have the app dev define

• URL to post to
• json body

Curious to hear views.

Start by reviewing the Nextcloud server's admin settings, app registration, notification, and cron entry points described in the proposal. A complete implementation would define the telemetry service and its permission, configuration, reporting, inspection, and scheduling behavior, with user and administrator controls covered.