3

While doing a POC for SmartTarget, we noticed the following strange behaviour

  • We have a Component Template that contains the "Add to Smarttarget" TBB
  • when publishing a number of Components with this template, only a couple of them get added to Fredhopper (we published five Components, and only one was actually sent to the SmartTarget Deployment Webservice)
  • oddly enough, when we tried to republish that one Component again, we also noticed it wasn't sent to the webservice with the republish. (so this problem isn't related to any content within the Component that can't be processed by SmartTarget for some reason).

We enabled debug logging on the deployer side, but didn't see any warnings or errors.

I'm a bit puzzled by this, does anyone have an idea what could be causing this, or where I could look to find why this happens?

We're using Tridion 2013-SP1 and SmartTarget 2014-SP1. The deployer and the Fredhopper servers are running on linux machines.

5
  • 1
    We also have the same setup (Tridion 2013SP1, SmartTarget 2014SP1, Fredhopper running on Linux) and we as well have experienced the Deployment Service not working properly in a sense that not all items that need to end up in Fredhopper do. On 2 of our environments we are using a file system share (Fredhopper is not on the same machine), and on one we have the Deployment Service set up. The 2 work the same (and properly), but the 3rd with the service does "swallow" items from time to time.
    – Atila Sos
    Jun 13, 2017 at 21:15
  • that's interesting. In our scenario, it looks like the deployer doesn't even send the items to the deployment service from time to time. however, i'll ask the infrastructure guys to set up a file share, so we can bypass the deployment webservice Jun 14, 2017 at 7:34
  • 1
    The service itself does not filter out anything. Do you have any load-balancers or network proxies that might interfere with the call to the deployment service? Also, how sure are you that the service isn't being called? There are more steps after that which could fail (such as Fredhopper rejecting the data)... Jun 14, 2017 at 9:54
  • In our smarttarget log on the tridion deployer side, we notice log statements that indicate that an item is being sent to the smarttarget webservice, but we only see this for certain items being published, not for others. the number of occurrences of these log statements corresponds to the number of log statements we find in the smarttarget deployer service log, and the number of items actually sent to fredhopper. We'll investigate the route of load balancers etc. Jun 14, 2017 at 11:53
  • @PeterKjaer, I believe you are right with your guess of a load balancer interfering. We changed the incoming folder of our deployer to a new folder ,and now all published items do get properly sent to the smarttarget webservice. Most likely, some other service/deployer was interfering with the items in the 'old' incoming folder Jun 14, 2017 at 14:57

1 Answer 1

3

Based on the facts that:

  • It occurs randomly
  • Your logs show that the requests to the web service are never made

...my guess is that the problem is with a load balancer, network proxy, or another deployer instance interfering with the request.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.