✕
Skip to content
Article
How the Ecosystem Reacted to Salesforce’s New Agentforce Pricing
Article
Does Salesforce Have a Resume Fraud Problem? 
Article
The Ultimate Guide to Every Salesforce Product in 2025 With...
Article
Salesforce Acquires Data Giant Informatica for $8B
Article
How the Ecosystem Reacted to Salesforce’s New Agentforce Pricing
Article
Does Salesforce Have a Resume Fraud Problem? 
Article
The Ultimate Guide to Every Salesforce Product in 2025 With...
Article
Salesforce Acquires Data Giant Informatica for $8B
Article
How the Ecosystem Reacted to Salesforce’s New Agentforce Pricing
Salesforce Ben
  • Events
  • Career
  • AppAssessor
  • Salesforce News
  • Articles by Role
    • Admins
    • DevOps
    • Developers
    • Marketers
    • Consultants
    • Architects
    • Business Analysts
  • Where to Start
  • Salesforce Certification List
  • How to Get Certified
  • Free Salesforce Practice Exams
    • Admin Practice Exam
    • Platform App Builder Practice Exam
    • Platform Developer 1 Practice Exam
  • How to Get a Job in Salesforce

Find us on:

Salesforce Ben
  • Events
  • Career
  • AppAssessor
  • Salesforce News
  • Articles by Role

      Articles by role:

    • Admins
    • DevOps
    • Developers
    • Marketers
    • Consultants
    • Architects
    • Business Analysts
    • Featured

      The Great Salesforce Job Market Reset

      By Sasha Semjonova

      December 09, 2024
      How to Avoid Bad Salesforce Partners: The Three-Question Test

      By Jon Cline

      January 08, 2025
  • Newsletter
  • user
    • Courses Login
  • Events
  • Career
  • AppAssessor
  • Salesforce News
  • Articles by Role

      Articles by role:

    • Admins
    • DevOps
    • Developers
    • Marketers
    • Consultants
    • Architects
    • Business Analysts
    • Featured

      The Great Salesforce Job Market Reset

      By Sasha Semjonova

      December 09, 2024
      How to Avoid Bad Salesforce Partners: The Three-Question Test

      By Jon Cline

      January 08, 2025

What’s trending

The Dangers of Salesforce Career Bootcamps: Overhyped Promises and Hidden Risks
Top 6 Future Roles for Salesforce Admins
Salesforce Summer ‘25 Release: Everything You Need to Know Before Go-Live
Salesforce Reveal Marketing Cloud Next: Agentic Marketing to Help Engage at Scale
Salesforce App Hijacked by Hackers: Google Reveals Data Exfiltration Exploit

UPCOMING EVENTS

Salesforce AI Checklist: How Admins and Architects Avoid Costly Mistakes

17
Jun

Virtual

SF Ben Webinar

Continuous Salesforce delivery: how DevOps powered my career from developer to CEO

17
Jun

Virtual

Webinar

Agentforce World Tour Zurich

18
Jun

Zurich, Switzerland

Salesforce Official

Dreamin’ in Color

19
Jun

Raleigh, NC

Community

SouthEast Dreamin’

26
Jun

Atlanta, GA

Community
See more
Share
Marketers / Account Engagement (Pardot) / Marketing Automation

4 Ways to Troubleshoot Account Engagement (Pardot)

By Annalisa Duina

June 13, 2023

Working in marketing automation can be challenging as it often involves managing multiple issues simultaneously. However, being able to identify and address these problems in such a complex environment can be extremely rewarding. When it comes to understanding the intricacies of the platform, troubleshooting is one of the most effective ways to learn.

If you’re reading this article, chances are you don’t know what is broken. All you know at this point is that a field is not populating as expected or a thousand sync errors that have mysteriously appeared overnight! Here are some tips on how to navigate these scenarios and where to look for clues…

1. The Audits Tab

The Audits tab in Account Engagement (Pardot) is your source of truth and is where the prospect’s activity is recorded in detail. My first recommendation when encountering an issue is to go and look in the prospect record, specifically in the Audits tab – if something isn’t working you’ll likely have one or more prospects affected by the issue. 

While it may require a significant amount of time (and effort!), this step could be the key to solving the puzzle. Personally, I like to review each page of the audit logs thoroughly. However, if you’re unable to identify the problem, answering the question ‘what happened when‘ is a critical first step in your investigation.

READ MORE: Steps to Take When Faced With Prospect Complaints

To access the Audits tab for a specific prospect in the Account Engagement Lightning App, navigate to the Prospects section and select the relevant prospect. Once you are on the prospect’s record page, click on the Audits tab to view the relevant information.

In the top section of the Audits page, you’ll be able to see what has changed in the record and when. The date and time are down to the minute, which is essential for understanding the order in which actions and changes have occurred.

Once that is done, scroll down and analyze the next 3 sections:

  • Automation Rules (the prospect has matched): If a prospect matches an automation rule that has since been deleted, it will be marked as ‘[Deleted]’ and you won’t be able to view the associated rules. This can make your investigation extremely challenging. To avoid this issue, it’s a good practice to keep a record of the automation rules you’ve created so you can reference them even after deletion.
  • Engagement Studio Programs (your prospect has been a member of): Try finding changes related to the engagement studio steps in your audit log to see when they happened and compare it to the time the error occurred. This helps identify if the Engagement Studio is to blame.
  • Imports (to see when and if the prospect has been imported): Importing doesn’t always mean creating a new prospect. The import date may not be the same as the creation date, and one prospect can be imported multiple times. It’s important to review your import history carefully because changes in prospect field values can occur with each import, and these can often be the source of issues.

2. Fields Behaviour and Sync Errors

If you’re experiencing an issue with a field populating differently in Salesforce and Account Engagement (Pardot), you should look in two places:

  • Prospect Fields
  • Sync Errors

Prospect Fields

To access this section navigate to the Account Engagement Settings tab. Expand the section Object and Field Configuration in the left-hand side panel and click Prospect Fields.

Select the relevant field and – with the help of your Salesforce Administrator – investigate the most common causes of sync issues:

  • Sync Behaviour Type
  • Field API Name trap

Sync Errors

The good news is that the sync error list tells you exactly what the error is, allowing you to troubleshoot the issue quickly and effectively.

To view your sync errors, dates and reason for errors navigate to the Account Engagement Settings tab. On the left-hand side panel click on Connectors. To access the list, click on the action cog located next to the Salesforce connector and choose Sync Errors from the drop-down menu. 

Tip: If you have a long list, export your sync error list or add prospects to a static list using table actions for a better user experience.

READ MORE: Pardot Sync Errors: Solve Your Salesforce Connector Sync Error Queue

3. Automation Rules ‘Match Type’

The usual suspect… Undoubtedly, this is the easiest mistake a user can make – however it is the most significant!

One way you can prevent this is as you build or audit automation rules, recite your rule criteria out loud to see if it makes sense. (This might be entertaining to witness if you are back in an office environment!)

Tip: Remember the Golden Rule! If using multiple criteria with the match any type, and the statement is ‘positive’ (prospect is) use type ‘Match any’ (or).

If your statement is ‘negative’ (prospect isn’t) change the match type to ‘Match All’ (and).

READ MORE: Pardot Automation Rules (in Account Engagement) + 6 Examples

4. Export Your Data in Full

If you’re still having trouble, try downloading a Full Export of the affected data and analyzing it to find the cause of the issue. To do this efficiently, use pivot tables and remove any unnecessary columns.

Final Thoughts

In addition to the points mentioned earlier, remember to ask for help. Depending on the edition of your account, the level of support available to you may vary. However, the team will do their best to assist you and guide you towards a solution.

Last but not least, collaborating with other Account Engagement and Salesforce users internally can often be the most effective approach. As professionals (and humans), we can sometimes become stuck in our thinking and fail to see alternative perspectives, but seeking out the opinions of other users can be key to solving our mystery.

READ MORE: How Salesforce and Pardot Admins Can Align [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Author

Annalisa Duina

Annalisa is a London-based Marketing Technology and Salesforce expert.

More like this:

Marketers

Calculate Credit Consumption With Digital Wallet in Marketing Cloud Next

By Lucy Mazalon

June 12, 2025
Marketers

Salesforce vs. Braze vs. Klaviyo: Comparing Marketing Automation Tools

By Alina Makarova

May 16, 2025
Marketers

What Google’s Cookie Reversal Means for CDP and Data Clean Rooms

By Alina Makarova

May 14, 2025

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Newsletter:

    By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    Find us on:

    Salesforce Ben

    Salesforce Ben
    Third Floor Library Building
    Sun Street
    Tewkesbury
    Gloucestershire
    United Kingdom
    GL20 5NX

    • Where to Start
    • Salesforce Certification List
    • How to Get Certified
    • Free Salesforce Practice Exams
      • Admin Practice Exam
      • Platform App Builder Practice Exam
      • Platform Developer 1 Practice Exam
    • How to Get a Job in Salesforce
    • Events
    • Career
    • AppAssessor
    • Salesforce News
    • Articles by Role
    • Admins
    • DevOps
    • Developers
    • Marketers
    • Consultants
    • Architects
    • Business Analysts
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Write For Us
    • Influencer Program
    • Advertise With Us
    • Pledge 1%
    • Privacy Policy
    • Change Cookie Preferences
    • Log in to Courses

    © 2014-2025 SalesforceBen.com