Overview

This article outlines troubleshooting steps to take if you are not seeing a user count associated with a segment that is expected to contain users.

Troubleshooting Steps

1. Check whether the count process has run since users were added to this segment

User counts are performed about once every 24 hours, via a process separate from segment uploads. You can check the last time the count process occurred via the “Count Update Date” field on a segment that has a non-zero user count. (Note that segments without a user count will have a blank “Count Update Date” field.)

Compare this timestamp to when the upload that should populate this segment completed. If the count process has not run since the upload finished, wait until the next time the count process runs and check again.

Note that users are immediately targetable when they’ve been added into a segment – if your segment upload has completed, you will be able to serve against this segment immediately, regardless of whether there is a user count.

If the count process has run since users should have been added into the segment, continue on to the steps below.

2. Ensure the account ID on the segment upload matches the account ID where the segment exists in Buzz

If a segment upload was created under a different account than the account where this segment was created, these users will not be added to it.

For example, if the segment upload was created in account 3, but the segment you’re trying to populate lives in account 2, the upload will not process correctly. You would need to create the upload under account 2.

3. Check upload file formatting for errors

Buzz expects upload files to contain one row per user ID, in the below format:

<User ID>|<Segment Key 1>:<Value (optional)>|<Segment Key 2>:<Value (optional)>|etc.

For example, the below row would place user ID “AAF01E66AmkAACEV2OeITA” into segments “buzzkey-6” and “buzzkey-12”:

AAF01E66AmkAACEV2OeITA|buzzkey-6|buzzkey-12:2.7

Ensure your upload file follows this pattern of one row per user ID, with pipe-separated segment keys. For more information on segment upload file formatting, click here.

4. Ensure the “user ID type” field on the segment upload matches the user ID type in the upload file

If the file you’ve uploaded contains different ID types than what was specified on the “user_id_type” field, the file will not be processed correctly. Check that the IDs in the file match the selected ID type:

*Note that there are a few other ID types not included for brevity; please reach out to support@beeswax.com for clarification if needed.

5. Ensure the “segment key type” field on the segment upload matches the segment key types in the file

The “segment_key_type” field may be set to either “DEFAULT” or “ALTERNATIVE.”

If “DEFAULT” is used, it is expected that the segment keys in the file will follow this pattern: <buzzkey>-<segment ID>. For example, if your buzz key is “canary”, and you’re attempting to insert users into segment ID 12, the segment key should look like this: canary-12.

If “ALTERNATIVE” is used, it is expected that the segment keys in the file will correspond to alternative IDs you’ve set on your segments in Buzz. For example, let’s say you’ve created the below segment:

To insert users into this segment using the “ALTERNATIVE” segment key type, you would use a key of 1003806829.

6. Ensure you’ve selected the proper “file format”

If you are using the pipe-delimited file format described above, “file_format” should be set to either “BEESWAX” or “DELIMITED” (the two are identical and can be used interchangeably).

The other file types are used when uploading a file in a format used by a 3rd party DMP/data provider. If you select any other file format when uploading a file in the pipe-delimited format described above, the upload will fail.

7. Check whether the file uses the correct character encodings

Segment upload files should either use ASCII text, or UTF-8 text without a BOM (byte order mark) - other encodings will not work.

Additionally, upload files should use either LF or CRLF line terminators - files using CR line terminators will not be processed properly.

8. Reach out to support@beeswax.com

If you haven’t been able to identify the issue so far, reach out to support@beeswax.com with the segment ID(s) and segment upload ID(s) (or filename(s)) in question for further assistance.