Troubleshooting an activity error

Sponsor Administrators can resolve errors a partner might encounter when they start an activity. For example, an error might occur when the partner starts an activity with an attribute task, or during a task with an API dialog.

A sponsor user can also search for an erroneous participant activity by using the Error filter in the Monitor Participant Activity Progress pane on the Monitoring tab.

If the activity contains an API dialog, consider this information about DNS updates:

Important: When new domains (URLs) are created and new Domain Name Service (DNS) records are added to an external DNS, it can sometimes take 8-48 hours for the changes to fully propagate to the SoftLayer DNS servers. This delay can occur whether the URL is in the sponsor's company's network or in a third-party network. The delay can also occur if there is a public DNS change for any URL or domain that IBM PEM accesses. However, the impact normally is experienced only the first time a new URL is used.

For example, <domain>.com is part of an API call in an IBM PEM activity. If the IP address behind this domain changes for any reason (possibly due to a failover on <domain>.com), it takes this designated amount of time for the SoftLayer DNS to update. Until that time, anyone who runs the IBM PEM activity still uses the old IP address. The API call fails until after the new IP address is updated in the SoftLayer DNS.

  1. Sign in to the PEM Portal as a Sponsor Administrator.
  2. From your dashboard, locate the activity with the error and click View Details.
    The error is indicated with an X in a red circle in the Status column for the activity. In the sponsor view for a task, if the API dialog has an error, the API dialog is populated with the reason for the error in the Reason for failure field.
    Note: You can also select Activities > Monitoring to view activities in progress.
  3. In the Actions column for the activity, select Resolve Error.
    If the error is not already resolved, a message describes the error that occurred.
  4. Resolve the error according to the description of the error.
    For example, if you assigned an attribute to a partner during an activity execution and later the attribute was removed from the system, the partner would get an error when they run the activity.

    If the reason for failure is due to unsupported encoding or a Base64 encoding failure, you need to notify the partner that the file upload is not valid and they need to upload a valid file to proceed. To confirm a Base64 encoding error, contact IBM to find out whether the following error message is in the log files: MRM.Activity.Execution.Base64EncodingException (BCHAC0068E)

After the error is resolved, the partner user gets an email and can resume the processing of the activity. If the error was a file error, make sure the partner knows that the file upload was invalid, and a valid file needs to be uploaded. The file might be invalid due to file corruption or an incorrect file extension.
Note: If the error occurred due to the Activity Definition, then a new activity with corrections must be created and shared again with partners.