Upgrade Session Replay

Latest Dynatrace
Explanation
Published Nov 03, 2026

If you already record user sessions with Session Replay Classic, upgrading to Session Replay changes how recordings are stored and who can access them. How you capture and mask sessions stays largely familiar. This is an upgrade journey, not a feature inventory: work through this guide and its sub-pages in order.

Session Replay builds on Real User Monitoring (RUM), so upgrade RUM first.

Why upgrade?

With Session Replay on Latest Dynatrace, you still capture and replay every click or tap in a movie-like experience. You gain the following:

Replays in Grail: Recordings are stored in Grail in the user.replays table, along with your RUM data in the user.events and user.sessions tables.
New replay experience in Users & Sessions: You watch replays in the Users & Sessions app, next to the session they belong to. A replay availability indicator shows whether a replay exists for a session. For details, see Users & Sessions.
Access control with IAM policies: You grant replay access with IAM policies, such as the ready-made Read User Replays policy, instead of Classic user group permissions and management zones.
Preview Extended retention: Retain Session Replay data beyond the default retention period. You can use it only if you take part in the Extended Retention for RUM & Synthetic preview. For details, see Calculate your consumption of Real User and Synthetic Monitoring - Retain.
Side-by-side upgrade: Session Replay Classic stays on while you turn on Session Replay for a frontend, so you move one frontend at a time.

Before you begin

Prerequisites

Before starting the upgrade, ensure the following are in place.

RUM upgrade

Session Replay requires Real User Monitoring to be activated for your frontend. Complete the RUM upgrade first. This guide doesn't repeat those steps and covers only what Session Replay adds.

Session Replay Classic

Session Replay Classic must be turned on for a frontend before you can turn on Session Replay for it. This applies to web and mobile frontends.

License

Session Replay requires a Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) license.

While Session Replay Classic and Session Replay are both on, you are billed only once. Storing the replay data in Grail doesn't add any cost.

Permissions

To configure Session Replay, you need write access to the Session Replay settings (builtin:sessionreplay* schemas) in addition to your RUM settings permissions. To replay sessions, you need the IAM permissions listed in RUM permissions. For how to set them up, see Upgrade Session Replay permissions and segmentation.

Scope

You don't have to upgrade all your frontends at once. You can turn on Session Replay for individual frontends and upgrade the rest at your own pace.

This upgrade guide covers the following frontend types:

Frontend type	Coverage
Web frontends	Fully covered: page-based applications, single-page applications, and applications that use iFrames, within the technical restrictions
Android and iOS	Fully covered: native apps

Check your upgrade readiness

Before starting, use the Check your upgrade readiness dashboard to check that the frontends where you use Session Replay already send data to Grail. To open the dashboard, go to Dashboards > All dashboards > Ready-made and select Check your upgrade readiness. Then, in the Digital experience monitoring section, look at those frontends.