Bulk Export Activity Issue Beginning on June 22, 2022

Impact Window: 

  • Amsterdam Data Center: June 22, 2022, 7:01 AM CEST – June 25, 7:58 PM CEST 
  • Ashburn and San Jose Data Centers: June 24, 2022, 7:38 PM MDT – June 25, 11:58 AM MDT  
  • London Data Center: June 22, 2022, 6:01 AM BST – June 25, 6:58 PM BST 
  • Sydney Data Center: June 25, 2022, 8:11 AM AEST - June 26, 3:58 AM AEST 

Issue Description:
A regression in June 2022
release caused Bulk Export Activity API to export empty JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) string in the “attributes” column of the export file when an activity’s attributes contain a “null” value in any one of the attributes. 

The most common type of activities where “null” value can be observed are “Change Data Value” Activity and “Change Program Member Data” Activity.  For example, a person’s Country field changed from “null” to “United States” or from “United” States” to “null”. 

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.23.30 PM.png

 

The activity attributes are stored in JSON format.  In this example, the “Old Value” attribute contains a null value. The activity attributes are stored in JSON format.  In this example, the “Old Value” attribute contains a null value.  

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.25.50 PM.png


If Export Activity API calls were made during the impacted timeframe to export activities with “null” attribute value, the export file would have returned an empty JSON string “{}” for the attributes column as seen in example below instead of the full activity attributes JSON string. 

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.26.40 PM.png

The expected behavior is that the attributes column should have the details of the activity in JSON format as seen below but that did not occur during the impacted timeframe. 

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.27.35 PM.png

If an activity’s attributes did not contain a “null” value in any of the attributes, it would not have been impacted. Below are some examples. 

Example 1: Change Data Value Activity Attributes.  No “null” value in any of the attributes. 

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.28.07 PM.png

Example 2: Change Program Member Data Activity AttributesNo “null” value in any of the attributes  

Screen Shot 2022-06-29 at 2.28.52 PM.png


Remediation 

A patch was deployed to address the attributes column containing empty JSON string and Bulk Activity Export has since been exporting the complete data. If you have integrations that rely on the attributes column of the impacted activities, then the activity export job will need to be re-run to obtain the data if desired. 


No action is needed if the attributes column is not relevant to your use case.