How to avoid export errors in Discount Manager and how to fix them

How does export from Discount Manager (DM) to Benefit Manager (BM) work?

Discount Manager is one of the modules of the ALIVE Platform used for managing discounts. IGO Benefit Manager is a web system that allows ISIC/ITIC/IYTC Cardholders to use the discounts in real life. Whenever you make some changes in your DM (adding/editing Discount Provider, adding Branch, editing Discount etc.), after some time, the changes are exported to IGO Benefit Manager. Only information that are saved in Benefit Manager can be used by your online customers to get discounts and they are available in mobile App. That’s why successful export into BM is essential. Export items from DM to BM runs automatically a couple of times a day. So, when you make some changes, you have to wait some time to see them in Benefit Manager.

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During import into BM, all items in your uploaded Discount Provider/Branch/Discount are checked. If there is any problem in your data, BM refuses the data and the export from DM fails. Sometimes, some of your data is in incorrect format, sometimes the problem is more complex.

How can you find out that your Discount Provider was not exported successfully?

First sign that something is not OK is indicated by a red triangle with an exclamation mark which is shown beside the Discount Provider’s name. This sign tells you that something is wrong, but you have to make deeper analysis to find out what is wrong.

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Go to detail of this Discount Provider and look at “Basic information” window. At the bottom of this window, there is a column called “BM export status”. This status can have either “Not Exported”, “Exported” or “Export Failed” value. “Export failed” status means that there was some kind of problem while exporting the item.

With your mouse pointer, hover over the “Export failed” text and you will see a short message telling you the reason why the export couldn’t be successful. Typical errors are:

• websiteUrl url.invalid; – format of the URL is probably not correct. Try to correct it in Provider detail.

• externalId notUpdateable; – if you get this information, please send us a message.

If you get another error message that you don’t understand, send us a message through Service desk or email and we’ll try to help you. Maybe you find out that there is no problem at Discount Provider’s level. In such case, you have to go deeper and investigate this Provider’s Branches and Discounts in more detail.

Maybe you haven’t found anything wrong at Discount Provider’s level. Then, probably one of the Branches of this Discount Provider has a problem. Export problems at Branch level are very common, so in next parts of the tutorial, we will focus on them. In Discount Provider detail, click the tab “Branches“. In the list, look at Branches‘ names. Probably, beside one (or more) name, you’ll see the red triangle again. You will get the description of the error when you hover with your mouse directly over the triangle icon. It can take 3-5 seconds for the label with error description to appear. If you still can’t see the error description, move your mouse out of the icon and try it again. The error description is written in a way that could be understood even though you are not a programmer 🙂 See the following picture (click it to enlarge).

In picture above, it is for example clear, that something with Postal Code is not correct. And really, in “Postal Code“ field, there is some text instead of real postal code. Click on “Edit Branch” button, fix what is wrong and save the Branch. In a couple of hours, if everything else is OK, the Export status should change from “Export failed” to “Exported”. When you are not sure what is wrong with that column and how you can fix it, good practice is to have a look at another Branch which was exported correctly and change your problematic Branch in the same way. Below, you can see the most common errors in Branch profiles:

• contactPhone invalidFormat;  – contact phone has incorrect format (there are dots for example, like +42.724.961.321 – you have to remove them).

• postalCode invalidFormat; – postal code has incorrect format (for example, there is text and other alphanumeric characters instead of numbers).

• contactEmail email.invalid; – email address has incorrect format (for example, there is “@” or domain name missing).

• cityName noCityFound; – in this case, the situation is a bit complicated. If you get this type of error, please see next part of this tutorial.

Into Benefit Manager, names of all cities are loaded from a geodatabase called “GeoNames”. So, if you get “cityName noCityFound;“ type of error when exporting your Branch, this means that the city where your Branch is located is probably missing in GeoNames or it has slightly different name.

What is GeoNames database?

GeoNames is a geographical database accessible through various web services. GeoNames contains names of various types of geographical objects (towns, rivers, lakes, famous destinations etc.). The database is under Creative Commons attributions license, so everyone with user name and password can add new objects into it. GeoNames database is a third party service, so this tutorial can give you only a brief description about how to add a town/village that can be used for ALIVE Platform Discount Manager. For more information about GeoNames database, feel free to read its user manual (http://www.geonames.org/manual.html). To add new city/town/village into GeoNames to be used in your Discount Manager, follow these steps: 1/ Visit http://www.GeoNames.org/ 2/ Create user account, set up your user name, password and other mandatory items. 3/ Within GeoNames application map, find the locality you want to add to the database. Click the locality using your right mouse button and choose “Insert new name here” option. Into the form that appears, insert as much information as possible. To use it in Discount Manager and IGO Benefit Manager, be sure that you fill the fields “class” and “code” as follows:

class: city/village (P)

code: populated place (PPL)

Mind that to make the cooperation between Discount Manager and GeoNames database work properly, names of the cities have to be really identical. For example, if in your Branch profile the town is called “Kralova” and in GeoNames, the same city is called “Kralova pri Senci”, the export most probably won’t work. When finished, confirm your changes. From the following day, this town should be reported into the IGO Benefit Manager database and it should cooperate with your Discount Manager. If you want to edit name of an existing town in GeoNames, do it through clicking on the “pencil” icon (you’ll find it in detail of the record).

However, there is also the second way how to solve this type of error: instead of adding new city into GeoNames, change the city in your Branch’s address (in DM) to some larger city which lies nearby and which is already integrated in GeoNames. This solution is not as good as the one described above, but in some aspects it may be easier for you.

Maybe you’ll find that the problem is at Discount level. In this case, the red triangle will be displayed next to the name of your Discount. Hover over the triangle with your mouse and you will get the description of the error. It can take 3-5 seconds for the label with error description to appear. Typical export errors on Discount level are:

• description string.blank; – in Discount detail (in Basic Information window), no Description was added, so you have to add some text.

  providerId invalidValue; – if you get this information, please send us a message.

  tagIds duplicateValue; – if you get this information, please send us a message.

  cardTypes notUpdateable – if you get this information, please send us a message.

If you get another error message that you don’t understand, send us a message through Service desk or email and we’ll try to help you.

Whatever you want to change in your Discount Providers/Branches/Discounts, please make the changes only in your DM, NOT in BM! Both systems are synchronized, but the synchronization runs only in one way (from DM to BM). So, whatever you change/create/delete in DM will be automatically exported to BM after some time. If you make some changes in BM, the synchronization would be broken, so please be really careful about that!