System Events

The Behind-the-Scenes Intelligence

System events capture the technical operations that happen during lead processing - enhancements that add value, errors that need attention, and flow completions that mark journey's end. While other events track business decisions, system events monitor the machinery that makes it all work.

📍 You are here: Understanding technical and operational event tracking
🔧 What you'll learn: Enhancement tracking, error handling, and system monitoring
📈 The outcome: Operational excellence through technical visibility

Understanding System Events

Categories of System Events

System events cover:

Enhancement Operations - Data append success/failure
Flow Lifecycle - Journey completion tracking
Error Conditions - Technical issues and failures
System Health - Performance and capacity

Why System Events Matter

They reveal:

Which enhancements provide value
Where technical issues occur
How efficiently flows process
When systems need attention

Enhancement Events

Enhancement.Success

When data append works:

{
  "event_type": "enhancement.success",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:45.456Z",
  "lead_id": "lead_7K9mHpQR3x2B5N8j",
  "enhancement": {
    "step_id": "step_9K3nL5mP2Q8wR4xB",
    "name": "Phone Intelligence",
    "service": "TrueCaller ID",
    "position": 2
  },
  "outcome": "success",
  "duration_ms": 234,
  "data_appended": {
    "phone_type": "mobile",
    "carrier": "Verizon",
    "risk_score": 15,
    "line_status": "active",
    "is_wireless": true
  },
  "cost": 0.02,
  "cache_hit": false,
  "metadata": {
    "api_version": "2.1",
    "response_size": 1024,
    "data_freshness": "real-time"
  }
}

What Success Events Show

Enhancement Value:

Data Added:
  - New fields appended
  - Validation results
  - Risk scores
  - Identity data

Performance:
  - Processing time
  - Cache utilization
  - API reliability
  
Cost Tracking:
  - Per-enhancement costs
  - Cache savings
  - ROI calculation

Enhancement.Failed

When enhancements fail:

{
  "event_type": "enhancement.failed",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:48.789Z",
  "lead_id": "lead_8M1pL5nR2x6C3K9j",
  "enhancement": {
    "step_id": "step_9K3nL5mP2Q8wR4xB",
    "name": "Identity Verification",
    "service": "ID Verify Pro"
  },
  "outcome": "failed",
  "duration_ms": 5023,
  "failure": {
    "reason": "Service timeout",
    "category": "technical",
    "error_code": "TIMEOUT_ERROR",
    "details": "No response after 5 seconds"
  },
  "impact": {
    "data_missing": ["identity_verified", "age", "financial_band"],
    "flow_continued": true,
    "used_defaults": true
  },
  "retry": {
    "attempted": true,
    "count": 2,
    "will_retry": false
  }
}

Common Enhancement Failures

Technical Issues:

Timeout:
  - Slow API response
  - Network delays
  - Service overload
  
Authentication:
  - Invalid API key
  - Expired token
  - Rate limit exceeded
  
Connection:
  - Service down
  - DNS failure
  - SSL errors

Data Issues:

Invalid Input:
  - Malformed phone
  - Invalid email
  - Missing required data
  
No Match Found:
  - Person not in database
  - Business not recognized
  - Address not found
  
Quality Issues:
  - Low confidence match
  - Conflicting data
  - Stale information

Flow Completion Events

Flow.Completed

End of the journey:

{
  "event_type": "flow.completed",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:49.123Z",
  "lead_id": "lead_7K9mHpQR3x2B5N8j",
  "flow": {
    "id": "flow_3Q8mK5nL2P9wR4xB",
    "name": "Premium Insurance Flow",
    "version": 12
  },
  "summary": {
    "total_duration_ms": 3456,
    "steps_executed": 8,
    "enhancements_applied": 3,
    "deliveries_attempted": 2,
    "final_outcome": "delivered"
  },
  "journey": {
    "source": "Facebook Lead Ads",
    "accepted": true,
    "enhanced": true,
    "delivered_to": ["Premier Insurance", "Standard Insurance"],
    "total_revenue": 67.50,
    "total_cost": 12.50,
    "margin": 55.00
  },
  "performance": {
    "processing_time": "fast",
    "bottlenecks": [],
    "cache_hits": 2
  }
}

Flow Completion Insights

What completion events reveal:

Performance Metrics:
  - Total processing time
  - Steps per second
  - Bottleneck identification
  - Resource usage
  
Business Metrics:
  - Revenue generated
  - Costs incurred
  - Margin achieved
  - Delivery success
  
Quality Indicators:
  - Enhancements applied
  - Validations passed
  - Rules satisfied
  - Buyers reached

Error Events

Error.Occurred

When things go wrong:

{
  "event_type": "error.occurred",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:50.456Z",
  "lead_id": "lead_9N2mK4pL5R8xQ3wB",
  "error": {
    "type": "ProcessingError",
    "severity": "high",
    "message": "Failed to parse delivery response",
    "code": "PARSE_ERROR"
  },
  "context": {
    "step": "Buyer Delivery",
    "operation": "Response parsing",
    "input": "{invalid json}",
    "expected": "JSON object"
  },
  "impact": {
    "lead_affected": true,
    "flow_stopped": false,
    "data_lost": false,
    "recovery_action": "Used default response"
  },
  "troubleshooting": {
    "suggestion": "Check buyer API documentation",
    "related_errors": 15,
    "pattern_detected": true
  }
}

Error Categories

Processing Errors:

Parsing Failures:
  - Invalid JSON/XML
  - Unexpected format
  - Encoding issues
  
Logic Errors:
  - Rule conflicts
  - Circular references
  - Invalid conditions
  
Data Errors:
  - Type mismatches
  - Required fields missing
  - Validation failures

System Errors:

Resource Issues:
  - Memory limit
  - CPU throttling
  - Disk space
  
Service Failures:
  - Database down
  - Cache unavailable
  - Queue backup
  
Integration Errors:
  - API changes
  - Protocol mismatch
  - Version conflicts

Using System Events

Enhancement ROI Analysis

Calculate enhancement value:

Phone Enhancement Analysis:
  
This Month:
  Attempts: 50,000
  Successes: 48,500 (97%)
  Cache Hits: 15,000 (30%)
  
Costs:
  API Calls: 33,500 × $0.02 = $670
  Cache Savings: 15,000 × $0.02 = $300
  Total Cost: $670
  
Value Generated:
  Better routing: +$5,000
  Higher prices: +$3,000
  Fewer returns: +$2,000
  
ROI: 1,492% 🎯

Error Pattern Detection

Identify systematic issues:

Error Analysis This Week:

Parsing Errors:
  Total: 234
  Pattern: All from Buyer X
  Time: Mostly 2-3 PM
  Action: Contact buyer tech team
  
Timeout Errors:
  Total: 567
  Pattern: Enhancement service Y
  Time: Throughout day
  Action: Increase timeout, add cache
  
Auth Errors:
  Total: 45
  Pattern: Every 30 days
  Action: Automate token renewal

Flow Performance Optimization

Use completion events:

Flow Performance Metrics:

Average Duration: 1.2 seconds
  Breakdown:
    Source validation: 100ms
    Enhancement 1: 300ms ← Bottleneck
    Enhancement 2: 200ms
    Routing: 50ms
    Delivery: 550ms
    
Optimization:
  - Cache Enhancement 1 results
  - Parallel processing
  - Timeout adjustment
  
Result: 40% faster processing

System Event Patterns

Healthy System Pattern

What good looks like:

Hourly Metrics:
  Flow completions: 5,000
  Enhancement success: 98%
  Errors: < 0.1%
  Avg duration: < 1 second
  
Indicators:
  ✓ High cache hit rate
  ✓ Low error rate
  ✓ Fast processing
  ✓ Stable patterns

Degraded Performance Pattern

Warning signs:

Issues Detected:
  - Enhancement timeouts increasing
  - Cache hit rate dropping
  - Error rate climbing
  - Processing slowing
  
Likely Causes:
  - Service degradation
  - Volume spike
  - Configuration issue
  - External API problems

Crisis Pattern

Immediate action needed:

Critical Indicators:
  - Error rate > 5%
  - Processing > 10 seconds
  - Failures cascading
  - Revenue impacted
  
Response Plan:
  1. Identify root cause
  2. Implement workaround
  3. Notify stakeholders
  4. Monitor recovery

Monitoring Best Practices

Real-Time Dashboards

Track system health:

Key Widgets:
  - Enhancement success rate
  - Error rate by type
  - Processing time trend
  - Volume vs capacity
  
Alerts:
  - Error spike detected
  - Enhancement degraded
  - Processing slowdown
  - Capacity warning

Historical Analysis

Learn from patterns:

Weekly Review:
  - Error trends
  - Performance patterns
  - Enhancement ROI
  - Capacity planning
  
Monthly Deep Dive:
  - System optimization
  - Cost analysis
  - Service reliability
  - Architecture review

Proactive Maintenance

Prevent issues:

Regular Tasks:
  - Monitor error patterns
  - Update API credentials
  - Clear old cache entries
  - Optimize slow queries
  
Automation:
  - Auto-retry logic
  - Fallback services
  - Circuit breakers
  - Self-healing flows

Troubleshooting Guide

Enhancement Failures

"Service always timing out"

Check service status
Increase timeout
Implement caching
Add fallback service

"Low cache hit rate"

Review cache keys
Extend cache duration
Analyze data patterns
Optimize cache strategy

Flow Performance Issues

"Flows running slowly"

Identify bottlenecks
Check enhancement times
Review parallel options
Optimize step order

"High error rates"

Group by error type
Find common patterns
Address root causes
Implement fixes

System Errors

"Parsing failures"

Validate input format
Check encoding
Review changes
Update parsers

"Resource errors"

Monitor usage
Scale infrastructure
Optimize queries
Add capacity

Your Next Steps

Essential Monitoring

Set Up Dashboards - System health visibility
Configure Alerts - Proactive notifications
Track ROI - Enhancement value
Plan Capacity - Scale ahead of demand

Advanced Topics

Performance Tuning - Speed improvements
Error Handling - Recovery strategies
Enhancement Strategy - Value optimization

Events Overview - Event system introduction
Monitoring Guide - Dashboard setup
API Reference - Programmatic access

🔧 Remember: System events are your technical conscience - they tell you when things work well and warn you when they don't. Monitor them closely, act on their insights, and your LeadConduit system will run like a well-oiled machine.

Ready to put it all together? Head back to the Events Overview to see how all event types work in harmony.