Tridion tracking link not resolving, redirecting to error page

Question

I am running into an issue with tracking+redirecting links opened in an email sent via Outbound Email. The tracking link looks like this:

https://.../outboundemail/Tracking/?a=L&p=$5vdNbzUvsknlTVoC-kAsbSJELY_wvHJA-Zxtvh5zWcV8X_vwKPkMID_fB8EHQeYBG5Np5LD9xPVa_czNUBGndAwcV2zfEkwdW9Ka7BOaV-7ArVnnLBZ83z$$

The route /outboundemail/Tracking maps to an MVC controller action, which only contains the following code:

Handler handler = new Handler(System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request);
Response.Redirect(handler.Url);

where Handler is from Tridion.OutboundEmail.ContentDelivery.Tracking. The handler URL always is a redirect to the error page URL, as it is configured in the cd_audiencemanager_conf.xml element /Redirect/GeneralError.

My questions are:

• to how best troubleshoot this, which log files to look into
• wanting to understand how the Tridion handler uses the value of the p-parameter to determine a URL. Is there synching going on under the hood from CM->CD side, is the URL in a CD DB somewhere?

Answer 1

The URL is valid and points to an absolute URL. So there's no link resolving needed and it should just be redirected directly.

So most likely you are getting an error that isn't related to the actual handling, but something else (such as not being able to load the configuration file).

To find the error, look in the log file configured for either your website (if using in-process) or the Audience Manager micro-service (if you are using that).

As for how it uses the value of the "p" parameter, it's using a simple encryption mechanism to store the values that it needs in one parameter. So the data is all there, just obfuscated.