SmartTarget 2014: Publish succeeds, but nothing in Fredhopper

Question

G'day, folks. First attempt at installing SmartTarget (ST 2014 on Tridion 2013 SP1 to be exact), and I've reached something of a brick wall.

Setup: I've got three servers: Server A is hosting the CM, Server B is hosting the CD (httpupload), the SmartTarget Web Service, along with the Presentation Server, and Server C is hosting Fredhopper and the Deployment Web Service.

Publishing a test Component with the "Add to SmartTarget" TBB added to the CT yields "Success" in the Publishing Queue, but browsing through the Fredhopper Business Manager doesn't show that it made it into Fredhopper. In looking at the log files it seems that there might be a configuration issue.

I'm looking in c:\fredhopper\data\instances\<indexer>\log\qserver.txt and am seeing a strange message:

Database 'directory:C:\fredhopper\bin\..\data\instances\<indexer>\data\bizman\db\default' not created, connection made to existing database instead.

This appears three times at the end of qserver.txt.

EDIT 08/20/[email protected] CST: The secondary issue that I mentioned turned out to be unrelated to my original issue. Nick was right, however, so I'll create another question in order to give him the proper credit. Furthermore, to the original issue, I restarted the Fredhopper indexer in order to get a fresh log file. While attempting to process a successful publish from the CM, Fredhopper said:

INFO  20-08 16:59:25,621 - Write current time as TIMESTAMP - Transformation detected one or more steps with errors.
ERROR 20-08 16:59:25,621 - Write current time as TIMESTAMP - Errors detected!
ERROR 20-08 16:59:25,621 - Write current time as TIMESTAMP - Errors detected!
INFO  20-08 16:59:25,622 - Write current time as TIMESTAMP - Transformation is killing the other steps!

Tracing that back up the log file I came across this, which seemed to be related:

ERROR 20-08 16:59:25,619 - Format current time.0 - Unexpected error : 
ERROR 20-08 16:59:25,619 - Format current time.0 - java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/mail/Message
at org.pentaho.di.trans.steps.scriptvalues_mod.ScriptValuesMod.addValues(ScriptValuesMod.java:248)
at org.pentaho.di.trans.steps.scriptvalues_mod.ScriptValuesMod.processRow(ScriptValuesMod.java:667)
at org.pentaho.di.trans.step.BaseStep.runStepThread(BaseStep.java:2889)
at org.pentaho.di.trans.steps.scriptvalues_mod.ScriptValuesMod.run(ScriptValuesMod.java:730)
 Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.mail.Message
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1714)
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1559)
... 4 more

EDIT 08/20/[email protected] CST: As I mentioned in a comment below I'm able to see the published package land in the Fredhopper incoming folder, but unless I manually fire the Kettle job that's where it ends. With the resulting log entries above.

EDIT 08/21/[email protected] CST: Closing this, as Nick's comment got me over a stumbling block. New question here: SmartTarget 2014: Publish successful, but no data in Fredhopper

Thank you to all for the suggestions thus far. Much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I suspect there may be more than one issue behind the symptoms you describe. To get past your brick wall, consider the following:

From your last log we see that there is a service being called (most likely a soap or rest web service):

 at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceRequest.Execute[TElement](DataServiceContext context, QueryComponents queryComponents)

but your request is being blocked by security settings:

An error occurred while processing this request. Unauthorized

So next, look at what can cause a 403:

• a setting on the web service security config (there must be a web.xml or something)
• app container/server security settings
• web server security settings
• proxy server (if applicable)

Answer 2

Like when digging a tunnel it might be helpful to troubleshoot this issue from two ways. Or maybe from multiple ends.

From the Tridion CD side

If you publish a SmartTarget enabled DCP and the publishing process is succesfull the SmartTarget deployer has deployed the DCP to Fredhopper and the DCP is processed in the Fredhopper indexer instance. Are you sure that the SmartTarget deployer is installed and conifgured in the cd_deployer_conf.xml for the target you are publishing to?

The Content Delivery web service (aka SmartTarget web service or OData service) takes the Fredhopper URL from the smarttarget_conf.xml. Check the URL and Authencication settings in the QueryServer section.

From the Fredhopper side The SmartTarget promotions are hidden in the Fredhopper business manager, this is a feature of the SmartTarget API extension for Fredhopper. This might explain if you also cannot see any SmartTarget promotion, did you disable This? Check Hiding and showing Promotions in Business Manager (login required) in the documentation (login required).

You mentioned there is this database error in the qserver log and the Promotions overview. If you can browse the Fredhopper Business Manager you should be able to view promotions in http://the.fredhopper.host:8180/fredhopper/admin/campaigns.fh?

edit: removed the mentioning of DCPs which are hidden in Fredhopper, this is not the case.