Analyze performance from frontend to backend
- Latest Dynatrace
- How-to guide
- Published May 07, 2026
Frontend-backend linking connects RUM data with the distributed traces captured by OneAgent or OpenTelemetry on your application's backend. With this end-to-end visibility, you can:
- Investigate slow page loads and user actions across the full request path.
- Pinpoint frontend errors caused by backend failures.
- Understand your application topology from the frontend through proxies and other intermediaries to backend services.
Several Dynatrace apps provide this connection, letting you jump from frontend data straight to backend traces or services.
Prerequisites
- For full frontend-backend linking functionality on web frontends, including support for the
Server-Timingheader, OneAgent version 1.331+ is required. - For frontend-backend linking on cross-origin XHR and Fetch requests from web frontends, you need to configure your endpoints and Dynatrace as described in Add the W3C trace context to cross-origin requests.
- If you use a custom networking stack on your mobile frontend, you need to propagate the trace context manually. For instructions and examples, see Android, iOS, or .NET MAUI.
Drill down from frontend to backend
The following apps let you start from a page load, error, session, or problem and drill down to backend details—the corresponding distributed trace in 
Distributed Tracing or a service in 
Services.
Experience Vitals
In Experience Vitals, the page load waterfall shows each request for a page load; select any request to reveal its details. When a distributed trace is available, the details include a View trace option to open it in Distributed Tracing.
The Overview tab for each frontend lists Called services, with links to Services for further investigation.
Error Inspector
In Error Inspector, select an error in the Explorer and use View traces in the Occurrences table to open the corresponding trace in Distributed Tracing and investigate a potential backend root cause.
Users & Sessions
In Users & Sessions, select a session to open its Events table. The event details include Tracing details with an Open in Distributed Tracing link for:
- Request events.
- Hard navigations (on web frontends only).
Problems
In Problems, select a problem. Under Impact > Services, you can drill down to Services and Distributed Tracing.
Limitations
The following features currently rely on RUM Classic correlation and don't support backends instrumented with OpenTelemetry only:
- Called services in Experience Vitals
- Impacted services in Problems