# How to link an instrumented mobile/web app to a service instrumented with OTel ?

**URL:** <https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214>\
**Category:** OpenTelemetry\
**Tags:** distributed-traces-classic, services-classic, opentelemetry, dynatrace-sdk\
**Created:** [April 18, 2024, 5:06pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214 "2024-04-18T17:06:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aymeric\_M](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/aymeric_m/32/35713_2.png) [@Aymeric\_M](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/Aymeric_M)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2024, 5:06pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214/1 "2024-04-18T17:06:52Z")

</div>

What are the steps to ensure that a service instrumented using Opentelemetry (not possible to install OneAgent for this service) is linked to all other services and frontends in the ServiceFlow ?

We enabled “Send&nbsp;W3C&nbsp;Trace Context HTTP headers” in One Agent configuration.

Does that mean that if the web page served by a OneAgent instrumented server calls directly the OTel instrumented service there will be a trace id generated in browser ?

What about a mobile app instrumented by the Dynatrace SDK ?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Eric\_Yu](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/eric_yu/32/20360_2.png) [@Eric\_Yu](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/Eric_Yu)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2024, 4:45pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214/2 "2024-04-22T16:45:51Z")

</div>

Correlation between web request and the frontend services use the following headers:

> **[Infrastructure pass-through requirements for RUM Classic](https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/observe/digital-experience/rum-classic/web-applications/initial-setup/infrastructure-pass-through-requirements-classic)**
>
> Learn which requests, headers, and cookies must pass through your infrastructure for RUM Classic to work as expected.

Regarding traces ingested through OpenTelemetry, it wouldn’t be possible unless you have a way to propagate that data from the frontend calls to your traces.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dant3](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/dant3/32/159_2.png) [@Dant3](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/Dant3)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2024, 1:45am UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214/3 "2024-04-23T01:45:05Z")

</div>

Take into consideration that the OTEL RUM is still in SIG and talking about semantic conventions (AFIK)

Until OTEL RUM is not standardized I don’t see Dynatrace adding support for WEB/Mobile App to and OTEL backend directly, since there is no OTEL RUM Specification to begin with.

Remember that the correlation today is based on cookies mostly. Not in traceid/spanid.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aymeric\_M](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/aymeric_m/32/35713_2.png) [@Aymeric\_M](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/Aymeric_M)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2024, 9:12am UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/how-to-link-an-instrumented-mobile-web-app-to-a-service-instrumented-with-otel/45214/4 "2024-04-26T09:12:03Z")

</div>

Thanks, I see that the W3C headers&nbsp; **traceparent** and&nbsp; **tracestate** &nbsp;are sent from the instrumented web frontends so the OTEL instrumented backend services should be correctly linked in the trace.  
We’ll see.