Historical data not found error in license usage file
Summary
Customer is receiving an email with We couldn't process your license usage file
. On checking the logs, the error is Historical data not found
.
Details in https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/451976
An investigation indicated that the most likely case was that the license usage file was opened and the program ended up modifying the timestamps in the file. This theory was confirmed by the customer after reaching out to them.
Current behavior
Customer receives error when submitting Offline license usage file.
Expected behavior
No error, or more descriptive error.
Relevant logs and screenshot
Reported Examples
- https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/451976
- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/customers-gitlab-com/-/issues/8397+
Proposal
As mentioned in #7561 (comment 1616531493), the proposal to address this is to add warnings about opening the license usage file by
- Updating the docs with this warning about exporting the license usage data.
- Updating the email sent in case of a processing error to mention/warn that opening the file in a program like Excel could make the license usage file invalid due to modifying date format or something along those lines.
It might make sense to look into converting timestamps in a future iteration.
Text Proposal
For error email:
-
Invalid license usage file
-
Summary:
Invalid license usage file.
-
Description:
The license usage file could not be processed. Please make sure to submit the license usage file exactly as exported. This includes not opening it to avoid any content manipulation by the used program.
-
Summary:
-
Invalid historical data
-
Summary:
Invalid historical data
-
Description:
No or invalid historical data was found. Please make sure to submit the license usage file exactly as exported. This includes not opening it to avoid any content manipulation by the used program.
-
Summary:
Result
Add warnings that opening the license usage file in a program could modify its content and lead to processing errors. This will hopefully help customers more to understand this failure and how to resolve it.