Non-technical Description

TIS allows bulk updating of specific data via upload of a spreadsheet, if any of the data in the spreadsheet fails to be create/updated then it is recorded by TIS for the user to fix and re-upload. After any upload with rows that failed to update, TIS provides a button to download the failures for review.

In this case attempted to download the failure report failed and an error was displayed to the user.

Open

The investigation found that the failure was cause by modifications to the TIS provided template, said modifications make a reference to an external SharePoint workbook which can not be correctly resolved and handled by the bulk upload application.

The actual creation/updating of data was not affected by this issue, only the error report download.

Trigger

• User uploaded a bulk upload using a modified template and could not download the error report.

Detection

• User reported issue on Teams (TIS Support Channel)

Resolution

• Workaround provided to use the TIS provided template or ensure all modifications are fully removed.

Timeline

BST unless otherwise stated

• May 3, 2022 16:49 - Issue reported by TIS admin on Teams (TIS Support Channel)

• May 3, 2022 20:00 - Investigation by TIS team began

• May 3, 2022 21:18 - Issue was reproduced by TIS team, a workaround was provided to the user

• May 4, 2022 11:40 - The issue was confirmed to be due to modifications made to the bulk upload template

• May 3, 2022 12:24 - Root cause communicated back to the user, recommendation to use the default template or ensure all modifications are removed

Root Cause(s)

• The process that exports the import errors could not correctly handle the uploaded spreadsheet.

• The spreadsheet had been modified in such a way that the attempt to transform it to provide import failures could not handle it.

• The modification to the bulk upload template referred to an external spreadsheet on SharePoint which is not accessible.

• There appears to have been an attempt to automate population and/or validation of several columns based on an external lookup spreadsheet.

Action Items

Lessons Learned

• In-place transformation of spreadsheets is a nightmare.