Event ingestion warnings
What each ingestion warning means, whether the event was kept, and how to fix the tracking that caused it.
When an event arrives with a problem, My Journey Analytics either fixes what it safely can and keeps the event, or drops it and records why. Each case is recorded as an ingestion warning, so a missing event or a person who did not merge always has an explanation.
Find your warnings
- Open Data management from the sidebar's Data menu.
- Open the Event ingestion warnings tab.
It lists the warnings from the last 30 days, grouped by type, with a count, a chart over time and when each was last seen. Expand a row to see the individual warnings. Paste a person's distinct ID, a session ID or a warning type into the search box to narrow the list. Each type links to its section on this page.
Merges
Refused to merge an already identified user
An $identify or $create_alias event asked to merge two people, but the one being merged in had already been identified as someone else. Two identified people are never merged automatically, so both were left as they were. The event itself was kept.
This usually means the same browser was used by two users without myjourney.reset() in between, or the same anonymous ID was sent with two different user IDs from your server. Call reset when a user signs out; see How identifying works.
Refused to merge with an illegal distinct ID
A merge was asked for with a placeholder ID such as anonymous, null, undefined or 0. Merging on it would join unrelated people, so it was refused. Check that the value you pass to identify or alias is really the user's ID, and is not empty or a default from your code.
A merge exceeded its distinct ID move limit and was dropped
The person being merged had more distinct IDs than one merge is allowed to move, so the merge did not happen. This usually points to one ID being shared by very many visitors, such as an ID hard-coded in your site.
A merge settled without merging and cannot be retried
The merge was examined and could not be completed, and trying the same event again would give the same answer. If you see many of these, contact support with an example.
Event data
Ignored an invalid timestamp, event was still ingested
The event's timestamp could not be read, or was out of range. The event was kept with the time it was processed instead. Check that you send timestamps in ISO 8601 format, such as 2026-10-16T09:30:00Z.
A timestamp more than 23 hours ahead of our clock is different: it is replaced with the time the event arrived, and no warning is recorded. This usually means the device's clock is wrong, or a timestamp was built in the wrong time zone.
Discarded event exceeding 1MB limit
The event was too large to store and was dropped. This is almost always a property holding a large value, such as a whole page's HTML or a long list. Send a reference, such as an ID, instead of the content.
Invalid heatmap data
The heatmap data sent with an event could not be read, and was left out. The rest of the event was kept.
Skipped person profile processing for a high-volume distinct ID
One distinct ID sent an unusually large number of events. They were all kept, but recorded without updating the person profile. This often means many visitors share one ID, such as a fixed ID used for server-side events; give each visitor their own ID.
Discarded cookieless event because cookieless tracking is disabled
An event was sent in cookieless mode, but cookieless tracking is not turned on for the project. Turn it on under Cookieless tracking in Settings → Project → Web analytics, or stop the library from sending cookieless events.
Discarded AI events
A non-AI event was sent to the address reserved for AI events. Send ordinary events to the usual capture address instead.
Other warnings
| Warning | What happened |
|---|---|
| Discarded event with no event name | The event was dropped. Every event needs a name. |
| Discarded event with no distinct ID | The event was dropped. Every event needs a distinct ID. |
| Ingested event after shortening its distinct ID to the 200 character limit | The event was kept with a shortened ID. Use shorter IDs. |
Discarded an event that requires person processing because $process_person_profile was set to false | An $identify, $create_alias or $groupidentify event was sent as anonymous, so it was dropped. See Anonymous and identified events. |
| Person properties exceeded the size limit and were trimmed or rejected | A person's properties grew too large. Remove large or unneeded person properties. |
| Rejected a batch containing duplicate event UUIDs | The same event UUID appeared twice in one request. Give each event its own UUID. |
Related
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