Progressive Profiling Erratic Behavior

[Aubrey_Morgan]

We noticed last week that it looks like progressive profiling isn't working for Windows 8 or Mobile (both iPhone and Android) on our website. We don't know exactly when this behavior started, but we think it aligns with our recent website redesign where we launched quite a few CSS changes the week prior.

I've flagged to our web team and we're all at a loss. We're not sure how or why any CSS changes would affect the functionality of our progressive profiling.

Has anyone else had issues? Are there recommendations on ways to troubleshoot or test in different clients/browsers as it requires multiple form submissions?

Thanks in advance!

[Aubrey_Morgan]

So after all this time, I've discovered the progprof is still erratic and I finally recorded the issue to prove it: Progressive Profiling Error Video

My colleague and I are both using the same version of Google chrome, and both filled out the same form in incognito - and while I had success with progprof, he did not. He is having the same issues with all of our forms and I am not. Sanford Whiteman​ why is this happening?

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'd need to look at the response from /getKnownLead and at other stuff on the wire when this is happening.  Absent other evidence, I would assume he isn't waiting long enough between posting the form and refreshing the page.  If the data is being posted successfully to /save2 it should be available via /getKnownLead quickly, though not immediately. 

As I mentioned above, ProgPro is dependent on fetching the latest committed values stored on the server; it's not, by contrast, dependent on data actually stored in a cookie (which is why it's not necessarily immediately available). But it is deeply dependent on the tracking cookie existing in the browser, since that cookie is the "lookup key" by which the lead is located in Marketo.  If your colleague has tracking protection turned on his browser, then cookies are not being set, so even the form fills will work the subsequent attempt to look up the lead will always fail.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

Looks like progressive profiling isn't working again for Windows. Once again, Marketo hasn't provided any bug reports on this issue and I've noticed this happening since yesterday. What's going on?

[SanfordWhiteman]

I just tested in Windows 7/IE 10 and Windows 10/Edge and had no problems.  Can you respond with a URL on which you can reproduce the problem, and the browser you're using to test?  Also include the fields on the form that are in the ProgPro group.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

I want to be clear: my colleague and I both tested on Chrome - he's using Windows 7 and I am using Mac OS. Prog Prof is working fine for me, where for him it only showed the original 5 fields. Upon testing this morning it looks like it's working for both of us, but the fact that we've encountered this bug twice is concerning.

In case we find this issue again, here is the page with a form for reference: https://www.mulesoft.com/lp/whitepaper/api/protect-APIs (use a mulesoft.com domain to not get processed into lead nurture).

Upon first form submission:

• First name
• Last name
• Email
• Phone
• Company

Secondary:

• Industry
• Job Role
• Job title

[SanfordWhiteman]

The code hasn't changed since the bug fix the other week, so there's no reason for the behavior to differ.

Also, Chrome is going to execute the JS the same on every OS. I think you're looking at coincidence across platforms (just as the earlier bug demonstrably affected every platform equally).

Maybe there's another side you're not considering? The associated lead is not guaranteed to be known on the very next page view. 999/1000 times on an unloaded instance, it will be, but if your instance is under load the rate could be lower. I would have to capture the moment it apparently fails for you to be sure, though. And it can be *very* hard to troubleshoot unless you are patient, because the next attempt may well work and you have to try again and again to trigger it.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'll QA it again. I'd also like to know your actual URL. By "Windows" do you actually mean "IE"? B/c browsers are too different for this to be a Windows-wide problem.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

There was a bug with progressive profiling for a few days last week that has since been fixed. Can you confirm that you are still experiencing issues?

[Aubrey_Morgan]

I just checked on my iphone and it appears to be working now - I'll have my team check other devices tomorrow. What operating systems were affected?

[Justin_Cooperm2 · Accepted solution]

It was a regression that was causing issues for a day or so last week. You shouldn't see this on any operating system now. If you do, let me know.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

Thanks. For future reference, how do you recommend we troubleshoot this?

[SanfordWhiteman]

The best thing is to post specific example URLs here if you think there's a problem and explain the steps necessary to reproduce. That's how I was able to identify the regression.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

I'd be happy to but I don't want a bunch of Marketo users getting called up by our sales team Was looking more for a process to troubleshoot internally.

[SanfordWhiteman]

But there's no way to get help from outside (including from Marketo support) if every fillout goes to sales! You should have a test company and/or domain that is always excluded.

I don't know if I understand the problem, though.  What process do you need other than, well, setting up test leads in Incognito windows and seeing if ProgPro works as your form setup intends?  Beyond that you need to be (or have) a developer. This was a code bug, and I was able to find it 'cause that's what I do... I wouldn't expect most people to know why it was happening, but you could prove that it was happening pretty quickly, right?

[Aubrey_Morgan]

Per my initial posting, we noticed that progressive profiling wasn't working specifically for certain operating systems - we caught it in Windows 8, iPhone and Android, however Mac OS and Windows 10 were not impacted. Therefore, simply testing in incognito will not resolve my concerns, unless I'm missing something?

Given that Marketo did not alert us nor provide any documentation that progressive profiling was down for several days, we assumed it was something we did on our side - hence why I asked the community to see if anyone else experienced the same troubles. I did not intend for the community to go in and test our forms, that's what support is for (btw we do have test companies as well as a sandbox environment).

I'm less concerned with why it happened, I'm more asking about Marketo's best practices or how other customers go about testing forms on all browsers and devices since we were in the dark and there was no clear trend from our side.

Hope this helps.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The bug affected all platforms. I can assure you that if you performed cross-browser testing with all unprimed caches, you would've seen it everywhere.

Now, I'm not saying you should've had to do this testing -- obviously Mkto let a bug make it to release, and shouldn't -- but I don't know what other advice you need about how to perform your own testing, if you should feel that's necessary.

[Aubrey_Morgan]

That's all I needed to hear - thanks!

[Aubrey_Morgan]

I just checked on my iphone and it appears to be working now - I'll have my team check other devices tomorrow. What operating systems were affected?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Aubrey,

Please provide some URL's where you observe this.

-Greg