Dynatrace custom service: tracking backend processing time

shalinikumar — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:30:14 GMT

Hi Team,

One of our Application team for a Java Application - When they click a button named "Finish" in application frontend it used to process in and we used to get Response time in Dynatrace (custom metric we created with API to get this time).

Now the way they handle this is changed.

Whenever user click this button , the processing is happening in backend and application team like to see the processing time it took in Dynatrace.

We are not seeing that in Dynatrace now. Will creating custom service help here? If yes what all details we have to get

from the application team or developers ? Also is the custom service consume any license ?

Re: custom service

t_pawlak — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:50:18 GMT

Hi,
I will try answer.

Most common reason: the click flow was changed to:

quick frontend request
async backend processing (scheduler/worker/queue/job)
Then standard service response time only shows the short request, not the whole background work.

Service-related concepts

Will a Custom Service help?

Yes, if the backend processing has a clear Java entry point method/class/interface that OneAgent can instrument and treat as a service entry point.
Not enough, if you need true end-to-end click → completion across multiple components; then you need correlation/tracing.
Define custom services

Why define a custom service

Ask developers for:

Flow type: sync vs async, and what “done” means.
Backend entry point - Java: Fully Qualified Class Name + method (or interface) that starts the processing.
If worker/queue/scheduler- queue/topic name and the consumer/job class+method.
How to scope it to “Finish” only - endpoint/operation name, process group scope, unique marker/correlation-id.
A sample request/log/trace ID from one click to validate it in PurePath.

Creating a custom service is configuration; it’s not a separate “license item”. Sending custom metrics via API can consume DDUs for custom metrics

topic Dynatrace custom service: tracking backend processing time in Open Q&A

Dynatrace custom service: tracking backend processing time

Re: custom service