Step of get Contact by Email from Zoho Books is throwing the same error on multiple automations

[GSG]

Your Task History ID

https://connect.pabbly.com/task/history?filter_status=applied&filter_by_workflow_id=IjU3NjYwNTY4MDYzMzA0Mzc1MjY0NTUzYzUxMzEi_pc#

Since Friday last week, a number of our automations which involve "get contact by email" from Zoho Books are throwing a Customer ID error.

In the testing phase, the 'get contact by email' step is working correctly and we use the result of this step for the next step (create a sales order in Zoho Books), using the 'contact ID ' that is returned by the 'get contact by email' step.

However, in the live automation, the correct contact ID is not being brought into the Sales Order. The same incorrect contact ID is being populated into every single sales order (it's always the same one, and it is the first contact alphabetically in Zoho Books 'Aaron Marshall').

To test this issue, we created a brand new automation from scratch, but the same error persists on the get contact by email step and thereafter creation of sales order step. I attach 4 screenshots showing this error. As this has affected all of our automations which involve get contact by email (which is about 30 of them), I don't want to make any changes until I have spoken to you about this error, why it might suddenly have started happening and what is needed to fix it.

All the automations affected were working well for several months until Friday last week. Now they are all failing for the reason stated above.

 

[Preeti Paryani]

Hello @GSG,

The workflow has been set up correctly, and each step is functioning as expected. However, please note that, as indicated in the error message, the step failed because the customer is marked as inactive.

To avoid this issue, we recommend adding a Filter step to check and proceed only if the customer status is active. Please refer to the attached image for more details.

 

[GSG]

I think you misunderstand.

The customer in this case (and all other cases) was not inactive. The issue is that in the live scenario, when the get contact by email step is processed, it always returns the same customer ID (Id number 2130347000001645448 - which is inactive but is the wrong customer ID - i.e this customer ID does not belong to the email address used in the collect Customer information step). We have thousands of customers in our database and so why is this rogue customer ID always returned every single time?

To reiterate, this is not the customer ID that is associated with the email address that was used in this step to collect the customer information. As I mentioned in my original post, this is happening with every single step in all automations involving get contact by email address. The solution you offered is irrelevant for my problem, as in all cases the customer for whom we are collecting data in the step is not inactive.

The issue I am asking you to look into is the "get contact by email address" process is now flawed / corrupted by something. Something changed at the end of last week and this step is no longer working as it is supposed to work . Please can you check the backend for this step as it may be that Zoho Books has updated something in their App which requires Pabbly to adjust / tweak the setup for this step.

 

[GSG]

In a follow up to this thread,I notice that in the live version of the get contact by email step that 200 of the contacts in Zoho Books are being returned in the Pabbly response to the email address which belongs to one customer, whereas only one contact should be returned. The reason why the same ID number of 2130347000001645448 is returned is because this is the first name alphabetically in the entire customer list.

 

[Resham]

Hello,

Greetings!

We have added a step in your workflow to retrieve the correct email.

It seems to be working fine, please test and let me know if this works for you.

 

[GSG]

I simply dont understand what you are suggesting here.

Can you explain two things for me please:

1. why is adding a step to retrieve a customer's email from Woocommerce different from the email address being returned from the original Woocommerce trigger step?

2. how are we supposed to use this rather perplexing additional step of retrieving an order from Woocommerce in automations that do not involve any Woocommerce order data? We have many other workflows that involve looking up a customer's ID from Zoho Books and all of these other automations are also failing. Can you please explain what we are suppoosed to do with all of these other automations that do not involve woocommerce?

 

[Resham]

Hello,

We noticed the trigger is not sending the billing email every time, thus you are facing the issue, therefore we have added this endpoint, this will get us the email which we'll be using further.

 

[GSG]

Do you have an answer for the second question? We have seveal other automations involving get contact by email address that has nothing to do with woocommerce orders. What are we supposed to do regarding these?

It seems that your suggestion is a sticking plaster and not a permanent solution. If the trigger is not sending the billing email every time, then surely the best approach would be to address and fix this?