Previously asked at open-telemetry/community#1598

Is there a documented pattern or generally accepted method of implementing a heartbeat in a desktop application? That is, a periodic message send to a collector for the purpose of determining an active session count? Or perhaps a general pattern of reporting back Boolean states?

I was going down the path of using a Counter with a 0|1 value and just letting that contact a Collector periodically, but wanted to double-check.

My notes thus far:

• Metrics reader can be configured non-cumulative for fire once
  If there is no change, metrics exporter should receive nothing by default opentelemetry-dotnet#2524

• On-going work related to establishing conventions for service uptime
  Semantic conventions for Uptime Monitoring oteps#185

Prior art:

• Microsoft App Insights Live Metrics https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/live-metrics-stream/