Context

When viewing excluded records in an audience, the system shows that a person or company was excluded due to an exclusion rule, but does not specify which particular rule triggered the exclusion. Users may need to audit and understand which specific exclusion rule affected a particular record.

Answer

Important Limitations to Consider

When troubleshooting exclusion rules, be aware of these key limitations:

• Person-level exclusions may have delays: Person-level exclusion rules can fail for newly created people due to caching delays in the system. If you're investigating why a person wasn't excluded initially but was excluded later, this caching limitation may be the cause.

• Company-level exclusions are more reliable: For more consistent exclusion behavior, especially for competitors or other company-based criteria, use company-level exclusions instead of person-level exclusions.

• Company exclusion counts include all associated people: When viewing the "Excluded Count" for a company-level exclusion, the number shown represents all people at those companies, not just the number of companies you selected. This is why the excluded count may appear much higher than expected - a company-level exclusion of 86 companies might show an excluded count of several thousand people if those companies have many associated contacts in your data.

• Exclusion rules are global by default: Exclusion lists apply to all audiences automatically, but you can turn them off for specific audiences if needed. Company-level exclusions will automatically exclude all people within those companies - you don't need to create separate person-level exclusions. If your goal is to exclude only specific contacts at certain companies (rather than everyone at those companies), use a people-type exclusion for that subset instead.

If you discover that a person-level exclusion rule is causing inconsistent behavior during your investigation, consider recreating the exclusion as a company-level rule for more reliable results.

While there isn't a direct way to see which rule caused an exclusion, you can use the following method to identify the specific exclusion rule:

First Step: Verify Exclusion Rules Are Active

1. Check if exclusion rules are enabled for your audience: Some exclusion rules (like “Internal Employees”) may be enabled by default when creating new audiences. Navigate to the exclusion rules section at the bottom of your audience builder to see which rules are currently active.

2. Look for unexpected filtering: If you're troubleshooting why a record doesn't appear in an audience (rather than investigating a record that's already shown as excluded), an active exclusion rule may be filtering it out before it even appears in your excluded records view.

3. Test with exclusions temporarily disabled: If you suspect an exclusion is preventing records from appearing, temporarily disable exclusion rules one at a time to see if your missing records appear. This is especially useful when testing with internal contacts or known records that should match your audience criteria.

Check the Person-Level Exclusions Tab

1. Navigate to the person's profile in Unify

2. Click on the Exclusions tab

3. Review the list of exclusions that apply to this person

Alternative Method: Toggle Exclusion Rules

2. Create a new audience that contains only the specific person or company you want to check

   • Use the "company name" condition to isolate the record you want to investigate

   Note: Be aware that some exclusion rules may be enabled by default when creating new audiences, which could immediately filter out your test records.

3. Go to the exclusion rules section at the bottom of the audience builder

4. Toggle individual exclusion rules on and off one at a time (remember that exclusion rules are global by default, so disabling a rule will affect all audiences unless specifically overridden)

5. When the record disappears from the audience after enabling a specific exclusion rule, you've identified the rule that is causing the exclusion

6. Important: After changing any exclusion settings, wait approximately 30 minutes before re-testing, as exclusion changes require time to propagate through the system

This process allows you to systematically identify which exclusion rule is affecting any specific record in your audience.

Understanding Exclusion Rule Hierarchy for Troubleshooting

When investigating exclusion issues, it's crucial to understand how different exclusion levels interact, as this affects which rules actually apply:

• Universal exclusions are applied by default to all audiences, but can be toggled off at the audience level

• Audience-level exclusions can override universal exclusions - when creating or editing an audience, you can selectively disable universal exclusions for that specific audience

• Sequence-level exclusions always take precedence over both universal and audience-level exclusions

Critical Troubleshooting Tip: If you find that a universal exclusion didn't work as expected, check whether it was toggled off at the audience level. This is a common cause of exclusion rules not applying when users expect them to.

Enhanced Troubleshooting Steps

To supplement the basic identification method, add these verification steps:

1. Verify exclusion hierarchy settings: When checking exclusion rules at the audience level, confirm that your universal exclusions are enabled (not toggled off) for the specific audience you're investigating

2. For sequence-related exclusions: If investigating why someone was or wasn't enrolled in a sequence or play despite exclusion rules, check multiple levels:

   • Verify that universal exclusions are properly configured at the audience level

   • Check if the exclusion has the "Sequences" toggle enabled in Settings → Organization → Exclusions, as this is required for exclusions to proactively block sequence enrollments

   • For ruleset-specific behavior, go to Settings → Features → Sequences → Rulesets and verify the sequence toggle for that specific exclusion within the relevant ruleset

   • Remember that changes to exclusion settings require approximately 30 minutes to take effect

Enhanced Sequence-Specific Troubleshooting Methods

While the standard methods for identifying exclusion rules work well for general cases, sequence enrollments have additional diagnostic tools and behaviors that can help pinpoint exclusion issues more directly.

Direct Sequence Diagnostic Methods

Check the Sequence's Not Enrolled View First

1. Navigate to Sequences → [your sequence] → Enrollments → Not Enrolled

2. Look for the person in this view – if they appear here, the failure reason will identify which specific exclusion rule blocked enrollment

Understanding Expected Queuing Behavior

• Contacts matching exclusion criteria may still appear as “queued” in sequences – this is normal behavior and does not indicate the exclusion failed

• Exclusions are applied at send time, not queue time – queued contacts matching your exclusion rules will be automatically skipped when the sequence attempts to send

Multi-CRM Environment Considerations

Opportunity-Based Exclusions Across Multiple CRMs

1. Navigate to the company record in Unify

2. Scroll down to view all active opportunities associated with the company across ALL connected CRMs

3. Check if any opportunities from secondary CRM systems (e.g., HubSpot when Salesforce is primary) match your exclusion criteria

Ruleset-Specific Behavior

For sequences using named rulesets, exclusions can be part of ruleset configurations that apply to specific sequences rather than globally. When troubleshooting:

1. Go to Settings → Features → Sequences → Rulesets

2. Verify the sequence toggle for the specific exclusion within the relevant ruleset

3. Remember that exclusions can be part of named rulesets that apply only to certain sequences

Workaround for Individual Exceptions

1. Navigate to the exclusion rule that is blocking the person

2. Add a filter condition: “email is not [person's email address]”

3. Wait approximately 30 minutes for the change to propagate

4. Retry the sequence enrollment