Technical issues affected back end visual reporting - Update from Tech Team Please

[ClareS]

@Scott There are numerous threads now in the tech forum all related to the backend reporting/indexing which stopped being updated on February 2 including:

• Last sold
• Last viewed
• New products created since then not visible in the backend (although they can be accessed via the listing URL)
• New products not visible in the "New Products" results in the customer view

As far as I can see there have been no moderator updates in any of the threads. Just countless worried and frustrated designers. There has been talk of server issues/severe weather issues, but no response from anyone at Zazzle to let us know if this is a planned pause to updates or if something has happened that the tech team are trying to resolve. 

Can we please have an update. It would be helpful to know whether we should stop publishing products until the problem is fixed.

Thank you

[Martin]

Hi @ClareS

I suspect Zazzle must have a mountain of "legacy" issues from previous iterations of the site. It's the fact that they always appear to be fire fighting that makes me think this. But they would have to be very brave to introduce a new clean system. I guess we are stuck with the IT department constantly going "Arrgghhh now what!".  

As your IT skills are way better than mine, do you think this could the issue(s)?

[IuliaIonicioiu]

That is exactly what I was wondering: should we create new items (since everything seems to be stuck, or very very slow)? That would be helpful to know, if someone from tech support could help us with some info.

[Jadendreamer13]

Looks like a patch has been implemented.

[Marcia]

Not completely better yet, however. Last viewed, last sold, & new products showing up in collections & mp still wonky. Some appearing, some updated, but not all. And mostly not in any particular order. 

Would really appreciate an update from the moderators, even if only to say they're aware this is still a problem & it's being worked on.

[Scott]

Hey Everyone,

The engineering team is currently working through a few issues at this time, most of which are related to our indexing process. I’ve gone through and closed duplicate conversations, and I can confirm that all issues that have been reported here recently have been forwarded along to engineering.

There are a few different indexing-related issues, but they may not all be fixed at the same time. As I’ve mentioned in the past, indexing fixes are a little bit like fixing a clogged drain – you make a change and then you observe for a little while to see if the drain clears of water as you’d expect. So it’s definitely possible that you’ll see products start to slowly appear here and there without much prior notice. When I hear from engineering that we’re good then I’ll check back here to see if everyone’s products are appearing again.

In the meantime, yes, you can continue posting new products. Indexing issues mean that products are not showing up where you expect them to show up. There isn’t a loss of data happening.

For those that are not aware, I’m a member of the Software QA team here at Zazzle. This means that I have a pretty good idea of what’s happening behind the scenes here. Unfortunately, with indexing issues there isn’t a lot of information available to share. The most that we can do is collect the bug reports and forward them along. I usually prefer to avoid sharing an ETA because any little hiccup in progress can mean that the ETA becomes inaccurate and then people become upset. We do hope that this will be resolved as soon as possible.

I’ll be closing this discussion since it’s a duplicate of the rest of the conversations. If you would like to share an update I would suggest finding the appropriate discussion thread and adding your observations there.

We’re sorry that this is happening. The moderation team will continue to monitor discussions, and I'll be monitoring progress over the next few days.

-Scott