Got an update to a ticket asking if it could be closed. I clicked the link in the ticket to get to the web site to close it. The web site told me before I could do anything I needed to provide my email address. “Um, the same one you used to email me to get here?”<\/p>\n
I closed the browser window and tried again. Same thing. So I provided it. Next it informed me it already has that one. If this is in error, then I should email the administrator. The administrator tells me this sometimes occurs. They have no idea why.<\/p>\n
While waiting on the administrator to respond, I happened to click on the link from another ticket. That one worked. I\u00c2\u00a0think<\/strong> all the prior updates to the failing ticket worked until the issue, but they all fail now, which is kind of good.<\/p>\n But it made me curious, so I started looking closer. I like root causes. What is the one thing that caused a failure. Even as I accept that many times the root cause is a scapegoat. Many things contribute to a failure, so often times it is a cascade of events leading to the thing we label the “root.”<\/p>\n First, I compared URLs of the failing link versus the link in the next update for a different ticket which works. I copy both to my text editor. There is a pattern. The URLs sent by the ticketing system have one variable provided. There is a pattern to them that I should be able to determine. The obvious part is the ticket number is first. The non-obvious part is code after. The ticketing system has areas for tickets of different types. It looks like the URLs that are failing have a type code inconsistent with the type of others. When I change it to the right area type, I get in.<\/p>\n But, it is easy to make a typo and end up in the wrong work\u00c2\u00a0space.<\/p>\n The question is why would it do this? I looked at the frequency. Only 28 times was the wrong code sent out of 4,480 messages.They only\u00c2\u00a0affected five tickets. All five are ones I opened. They happen on all messages for those tickets. They all have the same failure.<\/p>\n Also, it might be a bad assumption that the ticketing system is what is sending the corrupted URL. It could be an anti-viral server scanning email, something on the email system “fixing” a problem, or the security software work runs on my system. Hard to pin down what system in helping caused the corruption. Maybe not worth the effort.<\/p>\n Also, this kind of thing could be like chasing the White Rabbit down the hole. It probably just leads to more questions and surprises than actual answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Got an update to a ticket asking if it could be closed. I clicked the link in the ticket to get to the web site to close it. The web site told me before I could do anything I needed to provide my email address. “Um, the same one you used to email me to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email-interweb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rUBW-2dr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}