Logs are the complete record of what happened in your workspace, and the first place to look when something did not go the way you expected. Where a report tells you how many, a log tells you which one and why.
There are five kinds:
- Clicks
- Leads
- Conversions
- Integration requests
- Tracking requests
They all behave like any other table in PalDock. The same filters, columns, and export apply, and partners see only their own rows.
State
Every entry carries a state.
- OK means it was processed.
- Failed means it was not, usually because it did not pass validation. A failed entry is normally discarded, unless Refuse leads is enabled, in which case it is kept.
State is the coarse answer. The status underneath it says what actually happened.
Lead statuses
- Accepted: the lead was received and is on its way
- Processing: at least one channel is still working on it. The detail lists the channels and what each is doing, such as waiting, bidding, or verifying
- Sold: at least one channel bought the lead. The detail lists which ones, for how much, and where the customer was sent
- Not sold: every channel had its turn and none took it. The detail lists each channel and why, which is where the reject reasons from your integrations show up
- Refused by Validation: the lead passed the structure but failed an external check, such as a phone or bank account validation. The detail names the field and the check
- Refused by Filters: the lead was stopped by an offer filter before it reached any channel
- Refused by Pingtree: the lead went into the pingtree and came out unsold
- Error: something broke rather than said no. A timeout, a 5xx from an advertiser, or an error inside the pingtree
- Invalid data: the lead was rejected on arrival. The detail names the field and what was wrong: a required field missing, a value that is not one of the allowed options, or a value that does not match the required format
- Not allowed: the affiliate is not permitted to send to this offer
- No destination: there was nowhere to send it. No active channel, no pingtree, or no offer link
- Duplicate: the advertiser already has this lead
Sold and processing together
These two can appear at once, and only these two. When one channel has bought the lead while another is still working, the status is Sold and the detail shows both.
Not sold never appears alongside them, because it is only decided once every channel has finished.
Click statuses
- Accepted: the click was recorded and the visitor was redirected. The detail includes the URL, worth checking when the visitor ended up somewhere unexpected, since a redirect can come from a cap or a rule rather than the offer’s own link
- Invalid data: a required parameter was missing or malformed
- Bot: the click was identified as not coming from a person
- Not allowed: the affiliate is not permitted to send to this offer
- No destination: no offer link, an inactive offer, or a cap that has been reached
- Refused by Filters: the click was filtered out
The detail
The detail column is where the reason lives. For anything involving channels it is a list, one entry per channel, so you can see that Channel A paid, Channel B said the person was a duplicate, and Channel C timed out.
That is what makes it worth reading rather than glancing at. The status tells you the outcome, the detail tells you why, and with several channels the answer is different for each one.
Conversion logs
The conversion log is where you go when a conversion exists but no transaction came out of it. Some conversions succeed and produce a transaction, others do not, for example because they were deduplicated on the advertiser’s external ID. The log tells you which happened.
Every step of a conversion’s life is recorded:
- created, and created as a child of another conversion
- updated
- redirected
- sent into the pingtree, and what the pingtree answered
- what an advertiser answered
- every incoming postback, and every Tracking API call sent out
Each entry has a severity, so you can tell an ordinary event from a warning and from a genuine error.
For the full list of reasons a conversion produced no transaction, see Tracking and Conversion Logs. When the conversion itself is fine, the cause is on the commission side. See How PalDock picks a commission.
Tracking logs
Tracking requests carry a result on top of the state, saying whether the request was processed, how it was handled, or why it was refused. The full list of results and what to do about each is on Tracking errors and reasons.
The one you will meet most often is Unmatched: the request arrived and was valid, but PalDock could not tie it to any conversion. That almost always means the identifier the advertiser sent is not the one you stored. Start with Tracking processing and check that {external_id} is being stored by your integration.
Integration logs
Every run of an integration is logged node by node, with the data each node received and returned.
This is a different level of detail from the lead log. The lead log tells you the lead was not sold, the integration log tells you which request failed and what came back. See Connection Creator.
Which log to open
- A lead or a click did not do what you expected: the lead or click log. Read the status, then the detail.
- A specific request failed against an advertiser: the integration log.
- A conversion was recorded but there is no payout: the conversion log.
- A postback or pixel seems to have done nothing: the tracking log.
