Trial creation fails only when previously we have defined campaign platform modifiers

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Hello,

I am a software engineer working at Farfetch in the adwords systems and we are currently experiencing some issues since the 23th of April in the TrialService for all of our test accounts.

We are using the API version v201802 via the python client v10.1.0. Worths mentioning the test pipeline was working from the 21th of April and suddenly is broken without any code addition since then. Everything is dockerized and versions controlled.

The details we can provide:

• We are successfully creating trials under many different conditions: having ad schedule modifiers, having user list modifiers, adgroups and adtargets or without them.
• The problem arises when we have platform modifiers and we try to create a trial for campaigns with those platform modifiers.
• Another detail is that the adgroups can have platform modifiers and the trial is created, but it doesn't work if the campaigns have platform modifiers.
• The error provided by the Adwords UI is Unable to create, and the details says: Item not found. Image attached.
  
• One of the campaigns having the problem has the id 1375632211, the trial name is experiment1_1375632211, the account id is 8579778597 and the root account id is 7033853333.
• We are constantly destroying and creating campaigns for the integration tests, so those ids will be archived by the time you can have a look at that.

Thanks,

Yeray

[Bharani Cherukuri (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Yeray,

Could you please share the complete SOAP request and response logs for the API request, so I can take a look? You can reply back via Reply privately to author option. 

If you're using AdWords UI and experiencing the issue, could you please post this question on the Advertisers community forum? The product experts there will be able to take a look and assist you further. 

Thanks,
Bharani, AdWords API Team

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Hello Bharani,

as requested:

('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><SOAP-ENV:Envelope '
 'xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" '
 'xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" '
 'xmlns:tns="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/cm/v201802" '
 'xmlns:ns0="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/cm/v201802" '
 'xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><SOAP-ENV:Header><tns:RequestHeader><tns:clientCustomerId>****</tns:clientCustomerId><tns:developerToken>******</tns:developerToken><tns:userAgent>unknown '
 '(AwApi-Python, googleads/10.1.0, '
 'Python/3.6.5)</tns:userAgent><tns:validateOnly>false</tns:validateOnly><tns:partialFailure>false</tns:partialFailure></tns:RequestHeader></SOAP-ENV:Header><ns1:Body><ns0:mutate><ns0:operations><ns0:operator>ADD</ns0:operator><ns0:operand><ns0:baseCampaignId>1378678200</ns0:baseCampaignId><ns0:draftId>281474976710656</ns0:draftId><ns0:name>experiment1_1378678200</ns0:name><ns0:startDate>2018-05-01</ns0:startDate><ns0:trafficSplitPercent>30</ns0:trafficSplitPercent></ns0:operand></ns0:operations><ns0:operations><ns0:operator>ADD</ns0:operator><ns0:operand><ns0:baseCampaignId>1378678203</ns0:baseCampaignId><ns0:draftId>281474976710656</ns0:draftId><ns0:name>experiment1_1378678203</ns0:name><ns0:startDate>2018-05-01</ns0:startDate><ns0:trafficSplitPercent>30</ns0:trafficSplitPercent></ns0:operand></ns0:operations></ns0:mutate></ns1:Body></SOAP-ENV:Envelope>')

We are definetely using the API, but I didn't think the soap request was adding valuable information.

Thanks,

Yeray

[Bharani Cherukuri (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Yeray, 

Thank you for deleting the post with sensitive information. Could you please share the SOAP logs for both request and response, so I can take a look at the error you're receiving? It looks like the Campaign and Draft has been removed from the UI. It is possible that the Trial creation is failing because of this. Could you please keep the Campaign and Draft campaigns in the account and retry the request again, so we can take a look in the UI? You can use the Reply privately to author to share information privately.

Regards,

Bharani, AdWords API Team

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Hello!

Unfortunately, we are not using the trial async error method of the API, so I won't be able to share the error log with you this time. We actively poll the TrialService to check the status of the trials until everything is different to the status CREATING.

I will leave all the information in the account as it is when it fails. The drafts, trials, campaigns and platform modifiers are there, so maybe the problem is somewhere else.

I am also attaching screenshots of that information in the UI.

Thanks,

Yeray

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Also, remember we are also creating experiments as part of our CI process under many different circumstances, except when there is a platform modifier in the campaign we are trying to clone.

[Bharani Cherukuri (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Yeray, 

Thank you for adding more details. I was able to take a look at the change history for this specific campaign(Id: 1379345720) and it looks like it was created on May 2,2018, by adding four Platform criteria (Connected TV, Desktop, Mobile Highend, Tablet). I could see that when the debug mode is enabled for the experiment: experiment1_1379345720, the Trial operation is failing with INVALID_ID for the Criterion ID: 30004 which corresponds to the Connected TV. Please find the attached screenshots as a reference. Could you create a campaign and perform an experiment again removing the Connected TV criteria and let me know how it goes? 

As a part of my debugging, I was not able to add this criteria through AdWords API. I was also able to generate the reports for this specific criteria and only three supported Platform criteria are returned. For my knowledge, could you please share the API logs on how you're creating the campaign by adding the Connected TV as a criteria?

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Hello Bharani,

thank you for the answer. Looks like we are moving towards the source of the error, however, AFAIK the user of the Adwords API doesn't create the platforms attached to a campaign but they are created by default for each campaign. We were only aware of the existence of devices (Desktop, Mobile Highend and Tablet) and thus we only modify them as you can see in the logs. This CI test pipeline has been working for 1 complete year now but it started failing last 24th of April due to the experiments failure only when there are platforms modifiers previously set. I have attached 2 screenshots of the logs where you can see in our Adwords CI account with more activity when exactly we started to see the problem (5:38 pm of the 24th), just 30 seconds earlier we were creating campaigns as always with only 3 platforms, but I would like to insist, this isn't something we can configure through the API and thus, there isn't anything explicitly related in the API call to create the campaign.

I can also add that we have 5 adwords test accounts and all of them are affected by the issue consistently.

With this evidence I would like to suggest that the process of creating an experiment is somehow incorrectly trying to clone a modifier (30004) that we haven't created/modified and even worst, it looks like it doesn't exist anymore.

Please let me know how this progresses or if we can be of any help, we are very much interested on a solution.

Thanks,

Yeray

[Bharani Cherukuri (AdWords API Team)]

Hello, 

For the account mentioned in my previous reply, the Campaign: Campaign_ES_1 was created on May 2, 2018 and the Platform criteria has been added through the AdWords API. Could you share the API SOAP request and response logs for this operation? It will help us figure out on how exactly this criteria (Connected TV) is getting added to the account.

Additionally, please note that the screenshot provided was for a different campaign and I was not able to look up the change history for this Campaign_ES_2 for April 24,2018. It is probably associated with a different account. I will not be able to comment on how these changes have been made. 

You can reply back via Reply privately to author option to share the logs privately.

[yeray....@farfetch.com]

Hello Bharani,

it looks like the bug is gone now. We haven't changed the way we are creating campaigns nor the way we are creating experiments, but our tests accounts are now creating campaigns without connected TV platforms.
There wasn't anything in the SOAP requests nor in the responses making any kind of reference to the connected TV but glad to see it has been fixed.

Thanks,
Yeray

[Bharani Cherukuri (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Yeray, 

I'm glad that your issue has been resolved. If you happen to see the issue again, please capture the SOAP logs and share it with us so we can investigate the issue.