topic Distinguish synthetic transactions from real transactions on all subsequent layers in the architecture in Synthetic Monitoring

Distinguish synthetic transactions from real transactions on all subsequent layers in the architecture

jashan — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 18:29:38 GMT

When executing synthetic transactions on an application, business should be able to distinguish between synthetic and real user traffic so that all the reporting tools like Dynatrace/Adobe analytics etc. can only calculate their KPIs/metrics based on real user traffic.

Is there already a solution for this?

If not, I was thinking to just add custom headers in synthetic execution and create request attribute rule based on the header value for Dynatrace to differentiate between synthetic transactions on server level. and for Adobe and other tools to also consume the same header value, although for that it may require some code changes as well in the application itself to pass on this header value to all the downstream layers.

Re: Distinguish synthetic transactions from real transactions on all subsequent layers in the architecture

HannahM — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 08:20:54 GMT

Any Application metric that is split by user type can be used for this. https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/analyze-explore-automate/metrics-classic/built-in-metrics#web-applications

Synthetic Monitors add headers to their traffic. For Browser monitors 'RuxitSynthetic/1.0' is added to the User-Agent header, and for HTTP Monitors the User-Agent header is set to DynatraceSynthetic/{version}, where {version} is the current version of the Synthetic engine executing the monitor. You can find out more about the headers we add here for Browser Monitors and here for HTTP Monitors.

Re: Distinguish synthetic transactions from real transactions on all subsequent layers in the architecture

jashan — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 17:32:30 GMT

Thank you for the quick response, and the documentation link