Load File Activity: Uploading new file hangs with no...

[icoggin]

Hello all has anyone come across this one? I have plenty of space. Other files can load and this file looks like a completely ordinary 1.6k lines of tab delimited text. No column headers are very long or contain spaces or odd characters. If something was wrong with the file I would expect to see an error message from Campaign? I upload new file from local machine and all I then get is the Uploading "xxx.txt" message and nothing at all happens. If I click on "Confirm" the file has not been uploaded. Anyone have any clues as to what needs to change with file or settings? Thanks.

[minakshis868318]

Hi @icoggin - Could you please share a screenshot of audit log of the workflow. This will help us to understand the error/issue

[icoggin]

Sorry minakshis868318 I thought I had replied to this. I do not have system admin access to get to the audit logs. I have asked our named support people to get into them and investigate further. If nobody on the community has come across this hopefully their extra access can help us.

[minakshis868318]

That's all right! I hope the support team gets you the correct answer. Usually for these cases file/log helps to dig more on the issue but i know we can't share any client information here. Hope you get the resolution soon and let me know too about it. Thanks

[icoggin]

No worries minakshis868318 it is an obscure one as well as confidential info, I will hope to be able to get to a resolution with the support team to share back here.

[david--garcia]

But you can upload other txt files with no issues?

[icoggin]

I can upload the same text file but with one column removed and it works. the column it therefore must fail on is a 16 digit numeric field stored as text. I have worked out that much but not what it is about that column which fails.

[david--garcia]

Can you share the file? also have you tried uploading it as .csv

[icoggin]

It wont be possible to share the file or even the offending column by itself due to confidential data items. I have also tried as a .csv this does not upload either with the same issue

[david--garcia]

Create a duplicate of the file, keep 5 lines, mask all sensitive information with dummy information but retaining character lenghts, we need to know how the file looks like to be able to help also share the workflow file upload screenshot configuration

[icoggin]

I appreciate the support David. Its a credit card number field that is the issue so I cannot share. It does not get as far as uploading for the execution or file structure so the defintion of the field in Adobe has not even been set. It is a 16 digit field displayed as text (some start with a leading zero). It took some testing to find the credit card number field. If I removed the column the file upload worked, now I ahve tested it further to see what value(s) in that field might be the issue. I cut up the file (1745 records) into chunks and eventually found that in one of my splits of the data the 227th record appeared to make the file fail. But when I tried the 227th credit card number by itself the file loaded. It is therefore NOT down to the format of that 227th credit card number. So I thought it must be a combination of that 227th record and one of the others. Thinking that perhaps ACS was trying to change one to a timestamp and one to numeric (or similar) and falling over. However, putting the 227th record with the 226th in a file with 2 records loaded. Putting the 227th record with the first 225 also loaded. It is therefore NOT down to a combination of that 227th record and another record. I tried changing a lot of the File Structure: File Format: Configuration and the File Structure: File Format: Column Separator options (leaving it as tab delimited which it probably needs to be). This made no difference to the test results. I also tried saving the text file in notepad as UTF-8 or ANSI and also with or without a final linefeed. It also made no difference to the test results. It is unlikely to be down to do with the File Structure options. This left me the conclusion that it must be down to having 227 (or more) credit card number records. I sorted the records and split them up when I loaded a file with the first 226 records it loaded. The first 227 records did not load. A file with the last 226 records loaded, the last 227 records did not. The same finding for 226 and 227 records from the middle of the list. I went through 40+ test files to get to this stage. i am not sure how it works but perhaps as new customers of Adobe we do have a bit more support. Anyway we have a shared Teams site with Adobe where I have uploaded 6 test files. File with 226 and 227 records from the first, last and middle(ish) of the credit card numbers list. We are sure to need credit card number in a future campaign workflow and do not want to split up files into 226 record chunks to merge together again. I am asking the support contacts we have there to investigate and let us know what can be done about it. Hopefully their system admin access can find something in the logs. I cannot upload or paste work information to this site so given that and the above odd scenario we might have to wait until they come back with something (unless this strange thing rings any bells in the community....)

[minakshis868318]

Hi @icoggin - Could you try to change the datatype of that column to integer as the values and datatype is string. Give a try incase this works for you.

You can change the format by 

1.Click on the change the file format

2. Then change the datatype of the field from this drop down

Thanks

[icoggin]

Thanks for the suggestion minakshis868318. I see something slightly different in the web interface but it does not get as far as allowing me to change the datatypes of the fields in file structure. It hangs when uploading the file and never gets as far. Also I need to keep it as string. It holds digits but some of them have a leading zero which is valid so it needs to remain as a text datatype.

[Sukrity_Wadhwa]

Hi @icoggin,

Were you able to resolve this query or do you still need help here? Do let us know.

Thanks!

[icoggin · Accepted solution]

Hi Sukrity. In the end we did not really get to the root cause of it. In itself the file size was not an issue as both a colleague and myself had the issue in the end with the same sort of number as text (with leading zeroes needed). With that field altered the files loaded. with very small files it loaded but big files with that field failed to load. something else was happening.
However we do not no what Adobe was doing differently to that field. Our support could not reproduce it but after he had successfully loaded a test file that failed for more I could then after load it successfully too - as if being in cache in our campaign instance skipped the error.
Not really workable though as a solution. My colleague tried using a work around route outside of our company's Citrix network. This is not ideal - but when we did this, i.e. took out of the equation the slower network and Citrix - all the files loaded. Including those that failed before.
Because we think this is fairly rare we are happy with this work around. Hopefully sharing might save some time for others.
(I still speculate that Adobe campaign is trying to convert that field to another data type and running out of time / memory over the network connection. Given the number of test files and scenarios we went through there must be something there with that field. So if you know anything more find anything please let us know.)

[Sukrity_Wadhwa]

Thanks for the update on your query and for sharing your workaround to help the Community.