Synthetic monitoring is a proactive application performance monitoring method that simulates user interactions to detect potential issues before they impact real users. It involves using scripts to emulate user behavior across various scenarios, devices, and locations, providing insights into application performance and availability. This technique is particularly useful for identifying short-term issues during application development and for ensuring system health, performance optimization, and compliance with service level agreements. Unlike real user monitoring, which tracks actual user actions, synthetic monitoring can operate both inside and outside an organization's firewall, offering continuous, automated testing across different browsers and devices. However, challenges include the complexity of setup, the need for technical expertise, and the potential for false alerts due to minor application changes. Despite these challenges, synthetic monitoring is valuable for managing application performance, especially when combined with tools like Dynatrace, which offer comprehensive solutions for monitoring and improving the digital user experience.