Triggered when /upload/listings has no confirmed ack in 48h, feed is blind, all listing changes stuck.
At a glance
P1 alert. Fires when the Alibris outbound listings feed (/upload/listings) has not received a confirmed ack from Alibris in 48 hours. While active, every listing edit is stuck in a queue with no path to Alibris. The catalogue is frozen on the last successful cycle’s state.
| What it counts | Boolean alert state, 1 if time_since_last_acked_outbox_upload > 48h, else 0. Maintains a list of queued-but-undelivered outbox files. |
| API endpoint + report | Derived from the Pure-FTPd connector’s last-successful-ack heartbeat. Vortex IQ polls Alibris’s /download/acks directory every 4 hours. |
| Severity | P1. Every hour the alert is open, the merchant is operating blind on Alibris. Frozen catalogue; new listings invisible; sold-elsewhere stock still orderable on Alibris (stockout cancellations); price changes don’t propagate. |
| Fees / commission | Not applicable directly. Indirect: stockout cancellations during outage count toward seller-error cancellation rate (3% threshold). |
| Refunds / cancellations | Not directly. Downstream: cancellation spike during and 7 days after; watch Cancellation Rate. |
| Currency | Not applicable. |
| Common root causes | (1) Pure-FTPd credential rotation not reflected in connector config (~32%); (2) Alibris-side maintenance window overran (~22%); (3) Network connectivity loss (~18%); (4) Outbound file format violation silently rejected (~15%); (5) Disk-full or quota on outbox staging (~9%); (6) Other (~4%). |
| Multi-marketplace overlap | Each marketplace runs its own feed. Co-firing with AbeBooks Feed Cycle Failure suggests merchant-side cause. |
| Time window | RT. |
| Alert trigger | no successful upload >48h. |
| Roles | owner, operations, engineering. |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Alibris data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US bookseller, 32,100 active Alibris listings, 4-hourly outbound feed cycle. Incident timeline 28 Apr 26 to 01 May 26.| Timestamp (UTC) | Event | Operational consequence |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Apr 04:00 | Last successful outbox upload + ack | Catalogue snapshot frozen |
| 28 Apr 04:00 to 30 Apr 04:00 | 4-hourly upload cycle attempts continue, no ack | Files queued; no visible failure to merchant |
| 30 Apr 04:00 | Alert threshold crossed (48h since last ack) | Card fires |
| 30 Apr 09:14 | Ops team paged | - |
| 30 Apr 11:32 | Root cause: Pure-FTPd password rotated 27 Apr; connector still using old | Stockout cancellations: 9 between 28 Apr and 30 Apr |
| 30 Apr 12:48 | Connector config updated; reconnect succeeds | First successful upload acked |
| 30 Apr 13:14 | Backlog of 14 queued cycles re-uploaded and acked | All catalogue changes propagate |
| 30 Apr 14:02 | Card clears; cancellation-rate effect persists 7 days | - |
| Impact dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Listings frozen | 32,100 |
| Stock changes queued | ~340 |
| Stockout cancellations | 9 |
| Repricer updates queued | ~9,200 |
| Estimated revenue impact | 1,400 |
| Cancellation rate impact (30D rolling) | +1.4 percentage points |
- 48 hours is the standard threshold but tune to your cycle. 4-hourly cycle means a 12 or 24h alert threshold is more appropriate.
- Alibris’s Pure-FTPd credentials don’t rotate on a schedule but partner-side network drops happen. Subscribe to Alibris developer notifications.
- Stockout cancellation cascade is the second-order damage. During the 56h outage, 340 books sold elsewhere were still listed as available on Alibris.
- The 30 to 90 day reputational tail. A 9-cancellation cluster sits in the 30D average for the next 30 days; expect “at risk” seller-standing tile through early Jun 26.
- The 9,200 queued repricer updates. Letting them all fire post-outage causes a one-day price-change spike; phased re-upload (1,000/hour) is gentler.
- Library Services / institutional buyers may be MORE forgiving than retail. Net-30 procurement cycles mean the institutional cohort doesn’t notice a 2-day outage; retail buyers do.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Feed cycle failure is the P1 operational alert. Pair with these:| Card | Why pair it with Feed Cycle Failure |
|---|---|
| Last Successful Upload | Companion card; shows hours-since-last-good-cycle. |
| FTP Connection / Auth Health | Auth failures precede feed failures by 4 to 24h. |
| Failed Batches (7d) | 7-day history view. |
| Top Upload Error Types | Cause attribution post-recovery. |
| Inbound Orders File Lag | Cross-direction check. |
| Cancellation Rate | Downstream impact. |
| Suspended Listings | Downstream impact. |
| AbeBooks Feed Cycle Failure | Co-fire confirms merchant-side cause. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Alibris seller dashboard: Alibris’s seller dashboard does NOT publish a feed-health view. Three indirect views help during an active alert:- Sellers → Inventory → Upload History. Last N upload attempts; if most recent is >48h old, Alibris confirms it has not received your files.
- Sellers → Inventory → Manage. Spot-check a recently-edited listing; if Alibris shows OLD state, change hasn’t propagated.
- Alibris Developer Status Page (intermittent service).
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Alibris-side ack delay | Card alerts but feed is fine | 99th-percentile delays can trip false alerts. Wait one cycle. |
| Connector polling cadence | Card alerts 4h late | 4-hour poll cycle. |
| Outbox-empty edge case | Card silent during quiet period | 72h with no listing changes won’t trigger. |
| Manual upload via Alibris UI | Card unaware | Manual CSV uploads bypass Pure-FTPd. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
abebooks.ab_alert_feed_failure | Independent feeds. | Co-fires suggest merchant-side cause. |
amazon.amzn_alert_feed_failure | Different protocol (SP-API). | Different failure modes. |
shopify.alert_webhook_failure | Different mechanic. | Webhook-push vs FTP-poll. |