Intermittent failure of xConnect contact creation

Question

We are currently experiencing an issue in our Production environment (CD or CM in a scaled CD, CM, PRC, REP and xConnect setup) where client returns contact about 10% of the time when using the example xConnect contact creation code here.

using Sitecore.Analytics.Model;
using Sitecore.Analytics.Model.Entities;
using Sitecore.XConnect;
using Sitecore.XConnect.Client;
using Sitecore.XConnect.Collection.Model;

namespace Documentation
{
    public class TrackAnonymousContacts
    {
        public void Example()
        {
            if (Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.IsNew)
            {
                var manager = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.CreateObject("tracking/contactManager", true) as Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.ContactManager;

                if (manager != null)
                {
                    Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactSaveMode = ContactSaveMode.AlwaysSave;
                    manager.SaveContactToCollectionDb(Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact);

                    var trackerIdentifier = new IdentifiedContactReference(Sitecore.Analytics.XConnect.DataAccess.Constants.IdentifierSource, Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactId.ToString("N"));

                    using (XConnectClient client = Sitecore.XConnect.Client.Configuration.SitecoreXConnectClientConfiguration.GetClient())
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            var contact = client.Get<Contact>(trackerIdentifier, new Sitecore.XConnect.ContactExpandOptions());

                            if (contact != null)
                            {
                                client.SetFacet<PersonalInformation>(contact, PersonalInformation.DefaultFacetKey, new PersonalInformation()
                                {
                                    FirstName = "Myrtle" // Replace with real input source
                                });

                                client.Submit();

                                manager.RemoveFromSession(Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactId);
                                Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Session.Contact = manager.LoadContact(Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactId);
                            }
                        }
                        catch (XdbExecutionException ex)
                        {
                            // Manage conflicts / exceptions
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

We do not see this issue in any other environments and it is impacting our conversion / identification of users. We've deployed additional logging and various potential solutions eg. Retry contact creation X times, using different manager methods or first identifying the user before pushing contact facets.

It is also worth noting it's running on 9.0 Update-2 and that there are no errors in the logs for the contact creation in either Sitecore or xConnect.

Has anyone experienced this issue before?

Answer 1

Your code is expecting the contact to be in the xConnect server when you request it. And maybe because of the xConnect load/network it may not be there yet.

Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactSaveMode = ContactSaveMode.AlwaysSave;
manager.SaveContactToCollectionDb(Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact);
var trackerIdentifier = new IdentifiedContactReference(Sitecore.Analytics.XConnect.DataAccess.Constants.IdentifierSource, Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactId.ToString("N"));

Use this code and if the Tracker.Current.Contact.IsNew force the contact to be pushed back to xConnect before you ask for it. This happens in the SaveContact() function.

// here is your tracker identifier
var trackerIdentifier = GetContactReference();


public IdentifiedContactReference GetContactReference()
{
    // get the contact id from the current contact
    var id = GetContactId();

    // if the contact is new or has no identifiers
    var anon = Tracker.Current.Contact.IsNew || Tracker.Current.Contact.Identifiers.Count == 0;

    // if the user is anon, get the xD.Tracker identifier, else get the one we found
    return anon
        ? new IdentifiedContactReference(Sitecore.Analytics.XConnect.DataAccess.Constants.IdentifierSource, Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactId.ToString("N"))
        : new IdentifiedContactReference(id.Source, id.Identifier);
}

public Analytics.Model.Entities.ContactIdentifier GetContactId()
{
    if (Tracker.Current?.Contact == null)
    {
        return null;
    }
    if (Tracker.Current.Contact.IsNew)
    {
        // write the contact to xConnect so we can work with it
        this.SaveContact();
    }

    return Tracker.Current.Contact.Identifiers.FirstOrDefault();
}

public void SaveContact()
{
    // we need the contract to be saved to xConnect. It is only in session now
    Tracker.Current.Contact.ContactSaveMode = ContactSaveMode.AlwaysSave;
    this.contactManager.SaveContactToCollectionDb(Tracker.Current.Contact);
}