Logs

Logs

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.

There are five kinds:

• Clicks
• Leads
• Conversions
• Integration requests
• Tracking requests

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

Conversions have their own log, recording every step of their life:

• 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 and outgoing postback

Each entry has a severity, so you can tell an ordinary event from a warning and from a genuine error.

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.

Incoming postbacks add one more outcome:

• Unmatched : the request arrived and was valid, but PalDock could not tie it to any conversion

Unmatched 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.