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Quick-Start Guide to Data Feeds

Find your role below and click to see FAQs tailored to your situation. For FTP-related FAQs, see FTP Frequently Asked Questions.

IT Team With Chrome River Experience

You have experience working on Chrome River’s feed system. You know your way around the FTP folder and are not afraid to set up your own scripts to drop off and pick up the feed files.

Click here for FAQ!

IT Team Without Chrome River Experience

You haven't had much experience working with the Chrome River feed system and may not have sent feed files before.

Click here for FAQ!

Finance Team With Chrome River Experience

You are a master at navigating the whole Chrome River interface. You know where all the data is kept, and you know how to alter it. You may still need someone to send the feed files for you, but you know exactly how to set them up.

Click here for FAQ!

Finance Team Without Chrome River Experience

You are new to the Chrome River system and may not know what all of the different sets of data mean. You might be taking over from a prior admin or you are the pioneer who brought Chrome River to the company.

Click here for FAQ!

 

IT Team With Chrome River Experience

 

How do I remove myself from the Chrome River Feed confirmation emails and add someone else?

In Chrome River, click on your user name in the upper right corner of the dashboard. Then navigate to Settings > Notification Settings and scroll down to the email notification from which you wish to unsubscribe. Uncheck the blue box to the right of the name.

In order to reassign the notification to a different Chrome River user, see"View and Edit Additional Subscribers" in the Notifications Admin Screen article for details.

How do I send a feed to Chrome River?

  1. Once you have the feed file created per the specifications in Chrome River's Data Feed Specifications, save it with the extension of .txt.
  2. Now create a blank .ACK file that has the same name as the .txt file.
  3. Log in to your FTP and put the .txt file in the /files area of your FTP folder.
  4. After the .txt file is there, you may add the .ACK file to the /files area .
  5. The .ACK file needs to be added after the .txt file because that is what tells the Chrome River system that there is a file ready to be picked up.

The next time our system looks at your files to see if anything is ready to be processed, it will see the .ACK file and take that and the .txt file to process them.

Do I need to include every record in a feed every time I run it?

Some feeds require that you send every record every time and some only require the updated or changed records.

Feeds that require only the updated or changed records are

  • Matter
  • MatterOnSelect
  • MatterFilter
  • InvoiceVendor
  • InvoiceGL

Feeds that require every record, every time are

  • Person Feed
  • Entity Feed
  • EntityType Feed
  • Delegates Feed

These feeds need you to send everything because a whole new version of the data is created each time to ensure that everything is up to date. If a record isn’t included in these feeds, then that record will be automatically deleted from the system.

See Data Feed Specifications & FAQ for more details.

How can I send feeds to the QA/UAT environment?

If your organization uses a QA/UAT environment, all you need to do to send feeds to QA/UAT is change the name of the file you are uploading and put it on the FTP server for QA/UAT.

For example, in a Person Feed, the naming convention for the files looks like this:

Person-[Environment]-[CustomerCode]-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM.txt

In order to send Person-prod-ABCD-2022-01-31-1234.txt to the QA/UAT environment, you would just rename it Person-qa-ABCD-2022-01-31-1234.txt.

Then you would drop it and the corresponding .ACK file on the FTP server for QA/UAT, and our system will take it from there.

See Data Feed Specifications & FAQ for details on where to put the feed files.

How long does the upload process for a feed take?

Our system does a sweep of the FTP directory every 12 minutes. Afterward, the processing of a feed file depends on its contents and server traffic. (Traffic is usually at its highest early in the day.) This time includes waiting for FTP pickup and waiting for the system to read the file's contents and insert into the database.

Why did my new data feed fail the first time I loaded it?

The first time you load a new data feed into the system, it may fail because it surpasses the number of changes allowed. You may easily reprocess the feed following the directions under Reprocess Failed Data Feed in the Data Feeds Admin Screen article.

Be sure you are subscribed to email notifications for each data feed in both the Prod and QA/UAT environments so that you will know if one fails. See Notifications Admin Screen for details.

IT Team Without Chrome River Experience

Do I need to include every record in a feed every time I run it?

Some feeds require that you send every record every time and some only require the updated or changed records.

Feeds that require only the updated or changed records are

  • Matter
  • MatterOnSelect
  • MatterFilter
  • InvoiceVendor
  • InvoiceGL

Feeds that require every record, every time are

  • Person Feed
  • Entity Feed
  • EntityType Feed
  • Delegates Feed

These feeds need you to send everything because a whole new version of the data is created each time to ensure that everything is up to date. If a record isn’t included in these feeds, then that record will be automatically deleted from the system.

See Data Feed Specifications & FAQ for more details.

In our Person feed notification, we get this message: "The following issues have been found while processing BatchPerson050." It says there is an Invalid Username Error, but when I look in our file, there is nothing to correct. Why are we getting this message?

Batch50 errors that have the message "Issue: Invalid username. User AAAAAAA already exists with unique ID BBBBBBB in the system" result from our system detecting the reuse of a loginID (username) or email that already exists in our system—usually because it was assigned to a user whose Person record has been marked "Deleted" in Chrome River.

UniqueIDs cannot be updated via the feed. To fix these errors, you will need to go into the deleted profile of the user(s) and change the uniqueID to match what the new record should be. Then upload the latest Person feed file to update the other changes that are expected.

Related Links: Data Feed Specifications & FAQ

If we would like to send the Matter feed every hour, Monday through Friday, would this upload cause an issue for users who are accessing and entering expenses in Chrome River.

We see a lot of our customers send Matter feeds through every hour without issue. However, there are a few things to consider when doing so:

Does your organization send all existing matters in the Matter feed files? Or do you only send new matters and/or existing matters with changes? If your location increases the number of matters significantly, it is recommended that your Matter feed file contain only new and changed records. Otherwise, you might see your Matter processing take longer than usual.

How long does the upload process for a feed take?

Our system does a sweep of the FTP directory every 12 minutes. Afterward, the processing of a feed file depends on its contents and server traffic. (Traffic is usually at its highest early in the day.) This time includes waiting for FTP pickup and waiting for the system to read the file's contents and insert into the database.

Why did my new data feed fail the first time I loaded it?

The first time you load a new data feed into the system, it may fail because it surpasses the number of changes allowed. You may easily reprocess the feed following the directions under Reprocess Failed Data Feed in the Data Feeds Admin Screen article.

Be sure you are subscribed to email notifications for each data feed in both the Prod and QA/UAT environments so that you will know if one fails. See Notifications Admin Screen for details.

Are you updating users' email addresses and login IDs from our Person feed, or are they generated in another manner?

Person records may be modified via your organization's Person feed or directly in the Admin area of the Chrome River application.

There is no other way to change this information on your end.

Finance Team With Chrome River Experience

What is the best/quickest way to remove client matters from the drop-down list?

The Matter Feed's Closed Date value allows you to set a date on which the matter in question will become inactive. Once that date has passed, users will no longer be able to select this matter when filling out a report.

  • Using the Closed Date feature rather than permanently deleting the matter keeps it accessible in the Allocations admin screen and retains its historical data.
  • At any point, you may reactivate the matter by modifying the Closed Date field to a future date. This will make it visible to users again.

It is also possible to set a Closed Date via the People Admin Screen. However, entering the Closed Date is easier via the Matter feed if you have numerous matters you wish to close.

Why did my new data feed fail the first time I loaded it?

The first time you load a new data feed into the system, it may fail because it surpasses the number of changes allowed. You may easily reprocess the feed following the directions under Reprocess Failed Data Feed in the Data Feeds Admin Screen article.

Be sure you are subscribed to email notifications for each data feed in both the Prod and QA/UAT environments so that you will know if one fails. See Notifications Admin Screen for details.

In our Person feed notification, we get this message: "The following issues have been found while processing BatchPerson050." It says there is an Invalid Username Error, but when I look in our file, there is nothing to correct. Why are we getting this message?

Batch50 errors that have the message "Issue: Invalid username. User AAAAAAA already exists with unique ID BBBBBBB in the system" result from our system detecting the reuse of a loginID (username) or email that already exists in our system—usually because it was assigned to a user whose Person record has been marked "Deleted" in Chrome River.

UniqueIDs cannot be updated via the feed. To fix these errors, you will need to go into the deleted profile of the user(s) and change the uniqueID to match what the new record should be. Then upload the latest Person feed file to update the other changes that are expected.

Related Links: Data Feed Specifications & FAQ

Finance Team Without Chrome River Experience

If we would like to send the Matter feed every hour, Monday through Friday, would this upload cause an issue for users who are accessing and entering expenses in Chrome River.

We see a lot of our customers send Matter feeds through every hour without issue. However, there are a few things to consider when doing so:

Does your organization send all existing matters in the Matter feed files? Or do you only send new matters and/or existing matters with changes? If your location increases the number of matters significantly, it is recommended that your Matter feed file contain only new and changed records. Otherwise, you might see your Matter processing take longer than usual.

Will users of the Chrome River app notice any service impact when I send a feed?

Feed processing and insertion to your location's environment is done on the back end. Your users will see no difference in the appearance or performance of the Chrome River app when you are sending feeds.

How long does the upload process for a feed take?

Our system does a sweep of the FTP directory every 12 minutes. Afterward, the processing of a feed file depends on its contents and server traffic. (Traffic is usually at its highest early in the day.) This time includes waiting for FTP pickup and waiting for the system to read the file's contents and insert into the database.

Why did my new data feed fail the first time I loaded it?

The first time you load a new data feed into the system, it may fail because it surpasses the number of changes allowed. You may easily reprocess the feed following the directions under Reprocess Failed Data Feed in the Data Feeds Admin Screen article.

Be sure you are subscribed to email notifications for each data feed in both the Prod and QA/UAT environments so that you will know if one fails. See Notifications Admin Screen for details.

Are you updating users' email addresses and login IDs from our Person feed, or are they generated in another manner?

Person records may be modified via your organization's Person feed or directly in the Admin area of the Chrome River application.

There is no other way to change this information on your end.

Is there a way to reset user email addresses in bulk after unscrambling them for testing in the QA/UAT environment?

When your organization's QA/UAT environment was initially created, all user email addresses were scrambled to prevent them from receiving email notifications during QA/UAT tests. However, in order to test email notifications, it is necessary to unscramble those addresses for certain users. See "Email Notifications" in Get Started in the QA/UAT Environment for complete details on this process.

If you now need to rescramble user email addresss in bulk, you may do so by sending a Person data feed for your QA/UAT environment.

  1. Make a copy of the Person feed file with QA as the environment instead of prod. For example: Person-QA-HFD4-2019-01-08-1155.txt
  2. In the Person feed file for QA/UAT, simply replace everything after the @ with chromewallet.com.

Keep in mind that Person feeds are "Every Record, Every Time" feeds, meaning that you should include all QA/UAT users in this feed. Absence of current users in this feed will cause them to be deleted. Deleted users won't have access to QA/UAT until they are re-added. To avoid issues, please make sure all currently active users in QA/UAT are also included in this feed.

Related Links: How to Refresh Person Feed Data in QA/UAT and People Admin Screen.

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