Trace

When someone asks “why did this deal need approval?” — or “why didn’t it, when it should have?” — the Trace tab answers it. Every time approval rules are evaluated for a deal, Pinion records what happened; Trace shows you that record.

Looking up a deal

On the Trace tab of the Approvals app:

  1. Choose the parent type — Quote or Opportunity.
  2. Enter the record’s ID.
  3. Click Load.

You get one card per rule evaluation, most recent first.

The Trace tab — a rule evaluation card with a Fired/Not Fired result, the logic expression, and a condition table of Expected vs Actual vs Result
Trace — per rule: whether it fired, the logic as evaluated, and each condition's expected vs actual value.

What each card shows

  • The rule and when it was evaluated.
  • A result — Fired, Not Fired, or Skipped (e.g. smart approval, or an approver had already approved an unchanged version).
  • The logic as evaluated — the per-condition results combined under the rule’s logic and its outcome (e.g. true (All) → true).
  • A condition table, one row per condition (columns # · FIELD · OPERATOR · EXPECTED · ACTUAL · RESULT):
    • the field it tested (e.g. Opportunity.Amount),
    • the operator (the operator name, e.g. Greater_Than),
    • the Expected value (the threshold / reference the rule was authored with),
    • the Actual value on the deal at evaluation time,
    • the Result — true / false,
    • and the variable name, if the condition referenced an Approval Variable.

This is what makes “why” answerable at a glance: you can see the exact value the deal had versus the threshold that did (or didn’t) trip the rule.

Grouping

When a submission was per-configuration, the logs are grouped by configuration so you can see each one’s evaluations separately; older parent-level evaluations appear under an Unscoped group.

Good to know

  • Trace is read-only — it’s generated automatically at rule-evaluation time; there’s nothing to author or edit here.
  • Who can see it — anyone with access to the parent record can view its trace; there’s no separate approval-viewer permission.
  • It shows the most recent evaluations (a generous cap), and old trace rows are auto-purged after a retention window — so Trace is for recent debugging, not a permanent archive.
  • Approval Rules ▸ Conditions — what the Expected values and logic come from.
  • My Approvals — the per-request firing criteria drawer shows the same actual-vs-expected detail for the one request you’re deciding.
  • Rule Simulator covers Product/Pricing rules; for approval routing, Trace is the equivalent debugging view.